re: If the Big East Didn't Play Itself in the Round of 32

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What is your agenda here?

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Stop telling us that the conference you have the cushiest contract with is the best ever.

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When 6 top-four seeds lose, and you have 4 of them, you are OVERRATED. That is more than a trend.

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Every team lost this year. Is every team overrated?

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What is your ranking of the conferences this year?



I'll wait until the tournament is over, thank you.

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There have been almost 6,000 games played, and 15 remain. The conferences must be ranked really close. Care to tell us where they stand right now and how they can change?

Even in the tournament alone; 52 games have been played, and 15 remain. You think these 15 games will tell you who the best conferences are?

I'm not going to rate the conferences, because I just don't know. And the point is that nobody knows. All I know is this:

The Big East isn't as good as people thought.
The ACC is not a two-team conference.
BYU and SDSU didn't have great records just because they played a bunch of teams you don't know.
Some of these mid-majors deserved more bids instead of giving the Big East 11.

This is all stuff the "experts" did not believe. The difference between me and them is that I know that I don't know.

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I'm not going to rate the conferences, because I just don't know. And the point is that nobody knows.

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No, plenty of people know. They've all been playing since November.

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The Big East isn't as good as people thought.

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And you're obviously basing this on a four-day period, which isn't really how you do these things. Over the course of the season, the Big East was #1 with the Big Ten a hair behind. In the past four days, the Big Ten has inched a half-hair ahead of the Big East. The two have been neck-and-neck all season; little has changed.

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BYU and SDSU didn't have great records just because they played a bunch of teams you don't know.

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No shite.

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Some of these mid-majors deserved more bids instead of giving the Big East 11.

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Marquette was the worst Big East team who got in. What mid-major should have gotten in over them?

Also, VCU and UAB were two of the last four in. Colorado, Virginia Tech, and Alabama were two of the last four out. Obviously the selection committee isn't out to screw the middies.

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This is all stuff the "experts" did not believe.

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No, it isn't.

If the Big East was as good as people thought, they would have gotten two 1-seeds.
The committee put a third ACC school in the tournament.
BYU and SDSU were the top seeds in their respective pods.
No mid-majors got screwed by the selection committee.

The BE gets looked at as a better conference because of the competition IN the conference, not who they have played outside the conference.

The only way to objectively measure the quality within the conference is to compare BE teams to teams outside the conference using OOC SOS and W/L. Tournament time is the best time to do that because many of the BE teams pile up a good OOC record while playing a very weak OOC SOS. When tournament times comes (and they play better teams), the BE usually folds.

Looking at kenpom top 40 teams, Ohio State is the only team not from the BE that has a OOC SOS below 180 that actually made the tournament (Wichita State, Maryland, and Virginia Tech are the others). Compare that to 7 from the Big East.

3 of the Sweet 16 teams left have an OOC schedule below 180 and 2 are from the Big East. The BE makes up 50% of both categories....and possibly only because they played each other to make the Sweet 16.

From kenpom:

Big East OOC SOS for teams in the tournament:
14 - WVU
34 - Georgetown
77 - St Johns
162 - Villanova
165 - UConn
194 - Syracuse
208 - Notre Dame
217 - Pittsburgh
247 - Marquette
277 - Louisville
327 - Cincinnati

Compare to OOC SOS of teams that beat BE teams in the tournament:
17 - Butler
39 - Kentucky
44 - VCU
45 - Morehead State
49 - Gonzaga
65 - George Mason
122 - Florida State

OOC SOS for teams still in the tournament:
17 - Butler
35 - North Carolina
39 - Kentucky
44 - VCU
63 - San Diego State
78 - Duke
86 - BYU
101 - Florida
103 - Arizona
119 - Richmond
122 - Florida State
135 - Wisconsin
156 - Kansas
165 - UConn
247 - Marquette
223 - Ohio St

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As a matter of logic and math, the only thing that can make a conference look good or bad is what happens outside of conference games.

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Playing high RPI teams improves your RPI. When a majority of your conference schedule is against other high RPI teams (Big East) vs other low RPI teams (SEC), it compounds the problem. In that case, all the Big East teams continue to rise in RPI (they keep playing each other) and the SEC keeps dropping in RPI for the same reason.

As for RPI, it's much better to follow the Big East format of scheduling a very weak OOC (while scheduling a big name here and there) and win those games than play a much more difficult OOC schedule and lose those games (like Tennesse - losing to CoC, Oakland, UConn, USC).

One more.....

OOC SOS for all at-large teams. 7 of the bottom 10 are from the Big East. Another reason why the BE should NOT have gotten many of those teams in.

14 - West Virginia
24 - Temple
25 - Tennessee
27 - Xavier
30 - Michigan State
34 - Georgetown
35 - North Carolina
44 - VCU (playin)
46 - Illinois
65 - George Mason
67 - USC (playin)
70 - UCLA
71 - UNLV
74 - Texas
76 - Kansas State
77 - St Johns
82 - Vanderbilt
86 - BYU
96 - Michigan
101 - Florida
103 - Arizona
122 - Florida State
125 - Penn State
134 - Georgia
135 - Wisconsin
139 - Purdue
144 - UAB (playin)
162 - Villanova
178 - Clemson (playin)
194 - Syracuse
208 - Notre Dame
217 - Pittsburgh
247 - Marquette
264 - Missouri
277 - Louisville
302 - Texas A&M
327 - Cincinnati

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Playing high RPI teams improves your RPI.

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How did the high RPI teams in the first part of your sentence become high RPI teams?

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As for RPI, it's much better to follow the Big East format of scheduling a very weak OOC (while scheduling a big name here and there) and win those games than play a much more difficult OOC schedule and lose those games (like Tennesse - losing to CoC, Oakland, UConn, USC).

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True, and that's why RPI should be used only as one of many factors in determining at-large bids.

But, literally every system available, whether based on math, "eyeball tests," or simple chickenshit opinions of blowhards, had the Big East and Big Ten as the top two conferences, with a slight edge to the the Big East during the regular season.

And they were right. And they're still right (except that the Big Ten has the slight edge right now).

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The Big East didn't deserve to get in 11 teams....4 more than any other conference.

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So which Big East school got in and didn't deserve it, and which team on the outside deserved to get in instead?

Conferences aren't granted bids. Individual teams are granted bids.

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For example, a team like Virginia Tech who had a OOC SOS at 182 and a record on par with the bottom 4 BE teams that made it in.

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Is that to say Virginia Tech deserved to get in over Marquette? If that's what you're saying, I definitely disagree. Let's assume that they're in a virtual dead heat for whatever criteria we want to use. A good tie-breaker would be the fact that Marquette, going into the tournament, had six wins over ranked teams; VT had 3.

Marquette, the worst Big East school to get in, had a much better resume than Virginia Tech did anyway. There's virtually no one arguing that VT deserved it more than MU, and for good reason.

Arguing that a conference "deserved more bids" is what I call Billypackery. It's an argument that makes absolutely no sense since a bids are given to teams, not conferences. Plain and simple, Marquette was better than any of the other bubble teams, so yes, the Big East deserved 11 bids, and no, the ACC (or any other conference) didn't "deserve" more at the expense of the Big East.

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I would argue that the ACC with 3 of 4 teams in the Sweet 16 and a 7-1 record is better than the Big 10 and BE right now

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Careful if you're going to use w/l record in the tournament to prove anything. The Big East is guaranteed at least 10 losses, and the ACC is guaranteed no more than four. And losing 10 in the tournament is much better than losing four, anyway.