how to expand the tournament to 96 teams.
i wouldn't expand the tournament, but if it were to happen, here's how i think it should happen:
1. every conference champion is an auto-bid.
corollary: every conference champion is guaranteed a top-16 seed if they win their conference tournament.
2. every conference tournament champion is an auto-bid.
3. every top-40 rpi team is an auto-bid.
What would that look like this year?
Here are the "locks" from the Top-40 RPI:
Kansas, Duke, Syracuse, Kentucky, Kansas State, Villanova, West Virginia, New Mexico, Pitt, Baylor, Vandy, Texas A & M, Purdue, Georgetown, Temple, Tennessee, Butler, Wisconsin, Xavier, Maryland, BYU, California, Northern Iowa, Clemson, Texas, Michigan State, Oklahoma State, Richmond, Ohio State, Rhode Island, Utah State, Missouri, SDSU, Wake, Georgia Tech, Gonzaga, Old Dominion, Louisville, Florida State, and Siena.
Note that, in all likelihood, there is a lot of overlap between 2 and 3.
In addition, the non-RPI top-40 conference champs: Stony Brook (America East), Lipscomb (Atlantic Sun), Weber State (Big Sky), Coastal Carolina (Big South), UCSB (Big West), UTEP (C-USA), Cornell (Ivy), Kent State (MAC), Morgan State (MEAC), Quinnipiac (Northeast), MURRAY STATE (OVC), Lehigh (Patriot), WOFFORD (Southern), Sam Houston (Southland), Oakland (Summit), Jackson State (SWAC) Troy (Sun Belt).
We're up to 57 teams. For argument's sake, I'll assume some crazy stuff so the following teams win:
WCC: ST. MARY'S won already
WAC: Nevada
Sun Belt: MTSU
Summit: Oral Roberts
SWAC: not Jackson State
Southland: SFA
Patriot: Lafayette
Northeast: Robert Morris
MEAC: Delaware State
MAC: Akron
Horizon: Wright State
CUSA: Tulsa
Big West: Pacific
Big South: WINTHROP won already
Big Sky: Montana
Atlantic Sun: ETSU won already
America East: Maine
This still leaves us with 22 at-large births in a worst-case scenario format.
Some notes:
From the A-10, 4 teams were top-40 RPI and I did assume that one of those teams won.
Pac-10 is really hurt in this scenario as I assumed Cal won.
Here are my 22 at-large:
ACC: Virginia Tech (6 RPI top-40 already included)
Big East: Notre Dame, Seton Hall, South Florida, and Marquette (5 RPI top-40)
Big 12: no more (7 RPI top-40)
Big 10: Minnesota and Illinois (4 RPI top-40)
Pac 10: Arizona State and Washington
SEC: Mississippi, Mississippi State, Florida (3 included already)
C-USA: Memphis, UAB, Marshall
A-10: Dayton, St. Louis, Charlotte (4 RPI top-40 already included)
Colonial: William and Mary, Northeastern
MVC: Wichita State
WCC: Portland
The following teams are still excluded: Cincinnati, UConn, Wright State, Harvard, Fairfield, Iona, Illinois State, Arizona, IUPUI, Vermont, VCU, Charleston.
A couple of points:
One is that some conferences have too many births. Many conferences would stand to get two births, and it could be argued (albeit somewhat unconvincingly) that conference champions would lay over and die to get another team in their conference in. There are two problems with this: one, it definitely doesn't happen in the larger conferences. Look at the history of the ACC tournament- lock teams still knock out their counterparts. It only could happen in the small ones. To eliminate this problem, one could easily incentivize the conference tournament somewhat, possibly by guaranteeing a top-16 seed to a conference champion who wins, ensuring that the lower-conference teams have a relatively better chance to win their first round game.
Another is that this model assumes straight-forward behavior in all the major conference tournaments this year. The SEC is a notorious crapshoot, and the Pac-10 appears to be similar this year. I would like to claim that I get around this assumption somewhat by assuming that every small conference (as of today) has a surprise champion and takes two bids. This is wildly unrealistic, and it is likely that even more at-large bids would open up.
The main advantage I see with this model is that, while it does not have the 96 best teams (or even close), it does suitably incentivize regular-season play. Marginal teams like Cincinnati, UConn, Virginia, or Arizona are not rewarded for very poor showings because of the potential of multiple slots being taken up by less-qualified teams. If rule 1 were eliminated, probably 10 conference champions would not be selected by the tournament committee, and instead we would see a handful of teams from big conferences with poor records and no real profile. The 22 teams that were selected already contain stretches such as Charlotte, Marshall, Minnesota, and Seton Hall: teams with little on their resume to discuss.
I think the real point of this exercise is to show how yucky a 96-team tournament could be. I don't know if a tournament would really be enhanced by taking out Morgan State *should they not win their conference tournament* and putting in a Cincinnati, since both teams are not likely to make a sweet 16. Most bubble teams do not make big runs in the tournament.
1. every conference champion is an auto-bid.
corollary: every conference champion is guaranteed a top-16 seed if they win their conference tournament.
2. every conference tournament champion is an auto-bid.
3. every top-40 rpi team is an auto-bid.
What would that look like this year?
Here are the "locks" from the Top-40 RPI:
Kansas, Duke, Syracuse, Kentucky, Kansas State, Villanova, West Virginia, New Mexico, Pitt, Baylor, Vandy, Texas A & M, Purdue, Georgetown, Temple, Tennessee, Butler, Wisconsin, Xavier, Maryland, BYU, California, Northern Iowa, Clemson, Texas, Michigan State, Oklahoma State, Richmond, Ohio State, Rhode Island, Utah State, Missouri, SDSU, Wake, Georgia Tech, Gonzaga, Old Dominion, Louisville, Florida State, and Siena.
Note that, in all likelihood, there is a lot of overlap between 2 and 3.
In addition, the non-RPI top-40 conference champs: Stony Brook (America East), Lipscomb (Atlantic Sun), Weber State (Big Sky), Coastal Carolina (Big South), UCSB (Big West), UTEP (C-USA), Cornell (Ivy), Kent State (MAC), Morgan State (MEAC), Quinnipiac (Northeast), MURRAY STATE (OVC), Lehigh (Patriot), WOFFORD (Southern), Sam Houston (Southland), Oakland (Summit), Jackson State (SWAC) Troy (Sun Belt).
We're up to 57 teams. For argument's sake, I'll assume some crazy stuff so the following teams win:
WCC: ST. MARY'S won already
WAC: Nevada
Sun Belt: MTSU
Summit: Oral Roberts
SWAC: not Jackson State
Southland: SFA
Patriot: Lafayette
Northeast: Robert Morris
MEAC: Delaware State
MAC: Akron
Horizon: Wright State
CUSA: Tulsa
Big West: Pacific
Big South: WINTHROP won already
Big Sky: Montana
Atlantic Sun: ETSU won already
America East: Maine
This still leaves us with 22 at-large births in a worst-case scenario format.
Some notes:
From the A-10, 4 teams were top-40 RPI and I did assume that one of those teams won.
Pac-10 is really hurt in this scenario as I assumed Cal won.
Here are my 22 at-large:
ACC: Virginia Tech (6 RPI top-40 already included)
Big East: Notre Dame, Seton Hall, South Florida, and Marquette (5 RPI top-40)
Big 12: no more (7 RPI top-40)
Big 10: Minnesota and Illinois (4 RPI top-40)
Pac 10: Arizona State and Washington
SEC: Mississippi, Mississippi State, Florida (3 included already)
C-USA: Memphis, UAB, Marshall
A-10: Dayton, St. Louis, Charlotte (4 RPI top-40 already included)
Colonial: William and Mary, Northeastern
MVC: Wichita State
WCC: Portland
The following teams are still excluded: Cincinnati, UConn, Wright State, Harvard, Fairfield, Iona, Illinois State, Arizona, IUPUI, Vermont, VCU, Charleston.
A couple of points:
One is that some conferences have too many births. Many conferences would stand to get two births, and it could be argued (albeit somewhat unconvincingly) that conference champions would lay over and die to get another team in their conference in. There are two problems with this: one, it definitely doesn't happen in the larger conferences. Look at the history of the ACC tournament- lock teams still knock out their counterparts. It only could happen in the small ones. To eliminate this problem, one could easily incentivize the conference tournament somewhat, possibly by guaranteeing a top-16 seed to a conference champion who wins, ensuring that the lower-conference teams have a relatively better chance to win their first round game.
Another is that this model assumes straight-forward behavior in all the major conference tournaments this year. The SEC is a notorious crapshoot, and the Pac-10 appears to be similar this year. I would like to claim that I get around this assumption somewhat by assuming that every small conference (as of today) has a surprise champion and takes two bids. This is wildly unrealistic, and it is likely that even more at-large bids would open up.
The main advantage I see with this model is that, while it does not have the 96 best teams (or even close), it does suitably incentivize regular-season play. Marginal teams like Cincinnati, UConn, Virginia, or Arizona are not rewarded for very poor showings because of the potential of multiple slots being taken up by less-qualified teams. If rule 1 were eliminated, probably 10 conference champions would not be selected by the tournament committee, and instead we would see a handful of teams from big conferences with poor records and no real profile. The 22 teams that were selected already contain stretches such as Charlotte, Marshall, Minnesota, and Seton Hall: teams with little on their resume to discuss.
I think the real point of this exercise is to show how yucky a 96-team tournament could be. I don't know if a tournament would really be enhanced by taking out Morgan State *should they not win their conference tournament* and putting in a Cincinnati, since both teams are not likely to make a sweet 16. Most bubble teams do not make big runs in the tournament.
posted by mike at 10:39 PM
2 Comments:
I like it.
I've gotten into following EPL soccer recently, which has gotten me to thinking about fairness is sports and how to make regular season's matter. The ideal number of teams in a league should be decided by, "Teams can reasonably play X number of games in a season. So the number of teams in your league should be (X-1)/2 - that is - a home and away against each other team in your league. Perfectly fair. In college basketball, that would limit the size of the conference to 10 to 11. 20 being the absolute maximum number of conference games to play, and 18 be preferable.
Also, to incentivize the regular season, the regular season title must mean something. In the EPL, there is no postseason! The winner is just the winner, because it's based on a fair schedule. In the American sports system, unbalanced schedules are the norm. My theory is that this has to do with the size of our country. Teams used to be grouped into geographic locations because playing a baseball game in Chicago one day, catching a train to New York and playing a game the next day may not have been entirely feasible. Now, not so much - at least for schools at the huge power conferences. So we have our imperfect imbalanced schedule - and we're going to be stuck with it.
Although, you may say, in the EPL, you have relegation and teams are fighting for spots in international competitions, so that even if a team runs away with the championship, the rest of the league still has meaningful games - they are still playing for something. Well, postseason seeding kind of works that way - although it's a lame argument. Conference tourney's act kind of like the Cup tournaments that are held in various international leagues. They give the little teams a chance to play with the bigs and earn something. Which what our post season should do. One of the most sane things Bob Knight has ever said is that he hates the conference tournaments because they make the regular season meaningless - they only exist to make money. If you want to make money fine, just reward the regular season champs as well.
You can't convince that Murray State is one of the best 64 in the country, but if they go 17-1 in the OVC, I'll fight for their right to be in the tourney. You can't tell me they aren't the best team in their league, even if they don't win the tourney, which, thankfully they did. But these postseason tournaments should mean something for everyone too - a la Bill Simmons Entertaining as Hell proposal for the NBA.
I agree - I don't want to see the tournament expand. But if it does, let it reward regular season conference champs of smaller leagues before the 8th place ACC team. No one is going to agree on who the best 96 are, but I'm all for a system that improves on, "A bunch of guys got together in a room and subjectively decided you were/weren't good enough."
Yeah. Something to note here is that there are still 9 Big East teams, 7 Big 12, 7 ACC, 6 SEC, 6 Big 10, 7 A-10, 4 MWC, and 3 PAC-10. The big conferences are hardly underrepresented.
If you wanted to include some aspect of relegation, you could have the bottom four RPI conferences only get their conference champion in the tournament. That would reward the big conferences and put pressure on smaller conferences, if that's something worth pursuing. I agree that having two Big Sky teams in the dance is potentially pointless.
Of the 17 conference champions who I arbitrarily project not to win their conference tournament, there are at least five who would get at-large in a 96 team tourney anyway: Kent State, UTEP, Cornell, probably Oakland, and probably Coastal Carolina (they have a really good record, and all of those teams will get invited in a 96-team tourney). That would leave 12 slots for currently omitted teams, so who do you invite? All 12 teams I listed? What makes IUPUI more deserving than Virginia?
(Note that somehow I counted Wright State twice)
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