Geography, Conference Match Ups and BS

[canebreak]

Here is my thought. If you are going to make geography the focus then you have to completely and totally ignore potential conference match ups when seeding the tournament. How freakin dumb is it to think you can seed a decent tournament if you try to accommodate both. It has to be one way or the other or it is inconsistent for many teams. UL and UK play every year so they may as well be in the same conference so why not keep them from meeting until region final. Same goes for UK and UNC. And a lot of conference teams only play once anyway. Does it matter if Duke and UVA meet in the sweet sixteen if they only played once?

I really wish the major teams would give the NCAA the boot and setup something that makes sense. As it stands, the committee has so many conflicting criteria they can do what ever they damn well please. I say put the one seeds in their region as a reward and then assign the remaining seeds in order of rank. So the 4th best two seed would go to the top one seeds region as would the fourth best three seed, etc. Forget geography, conferences and every other criteria. This way the top one seed has the forth best of each seed level.

Or go with geography and totally ignore conferences. You cannot go with geography and try to prevent conference match ups any better than you can shag a woman in a public restaurant and then say you are going to make men out of boys as a coach.

This post was edited on 3/10 8:58 AM by canebreak

 

[UKUGA]

MLB requires an all-star from every team. Well, the league kept adding teams. Something had to give, either you had to expand All-star rosters, or you had to do away with the requirement for each team to be represented.

They chose the former.


Now, the NCAA doesn't like for teams in the same conference to play before the Final 8 and BYU can't play on Sunday (just thought I'd throw that in).

You have 30+ automatic qualifiers and there is not a maximum number of teams allowed from each conference.

there are 68 teams. There are only 4 regions.


Add it all up, and from time, someone must get messed over.


the best solution? probably opening things up a bit as people have discussed here in the last few days. Make sure the top seeds are protected (to some extent), and then, que sera.


I got pretty annoyed when pods were introduced in 2002. The concept was ridiculous. If we can stick you close to home, we will do it. However, the negative impact on other team's was ignored.

The best example of this that I recall from that 2002 tourney was SEC tournament champion Mississippi State being seeded #3 and sent to Dallas, where they had the good fortune of playing #6 Texas in the 2nd round. (OU was also in the building).
What was an attempt to help Texas players stay home, was actually a bit of a detriment to MSU, who basically played a road game in round 2 against a lower seed.

I got into a friendly argument with a writer from the New Orleans Times-Picayune on Friday night (2 days before the Texas-MSU game) who was praising the pod system, because it kept more teams in their own time zone.

My retort was simple: "What about those teams that get sent out of their time zone, especially higher seeded teams; aren't we placing them at an unfair advantage?"


The NCAA tournament is supposed to be a neutral site tourney. If they could find a way to return it to that more purely, I would be all for it. I would gladly stay up late to watch Kentucky play in Spokane, if it meant Duke had to leave the state of North Carolina for their first two games, as well.

 

[bluedog79]

yea they are just making a big deal about geography so they can get away with stacking the deck on us. They stacked the deck on Wichita state last year too. NCAA only wants one team to have a unbeaten season...DUKE.

 

[BlueBlood66_rivals34314]

Originally posted by UKUGA:

The NCAA tournament is supposed to be a neutral site tourney. If they could find a way to return it to that more purely, I would be all for it. I would gladly stay up late to watch Kentucky play in Spokane, if it meant Duke had to leave the state of North Carolina for their first two games, as well.

Have you ever been to a set of first round games in North Carolina? It's almost entirely an anti-duke crowd. I guess it's still an advantage that they don't have to travel far but it's definitely nothing like home court advantage.

If I had to guess something like 15% of basketball fans in north carolina are duke fans and the rest hate them.

 

[ukfan79_rivals214498]

Originally posted by BlueBlood66:

Originally posted by UKUGA:

The NCAA tournament is supposed to be a neutral site tourney. If they could find a way to return it to that more purely, I would be all for it. I would gladly stay up late to watch Kentucky play in Spokane, if it meant Duke had to leave the state of North Carolina for their first two games, as well.

Have you ever been to a set of first round games in North Carolina? It's almost entirely an anti-duke crowd. I guess it's still an advantage that they don't have to travel far but it's definitely nothing like home court advantage.

If I had to guess something like 15% of basketball fans in north carolina are duke fans and the rest hate them.

You are exactly right. If Duke wanted a home crowd advantage they'd want to always be Washington DC and northeast of there.

As for the 15% I'd say you are about 3 times too high on that number. More like 5%

 

[bluedog79]

Originally posted by ukfan79:

Originally posted by BlueBlood66:

Originally posted by UKUGA:

The NCAA tournament is supposed to be a neutral site tourney. If they could find a way to return it to that more purely, I would be all for it. I would gladly stay up late to watch Kentucky play in Spokane, if it meant Duke had to leave the state of North Carolina for their first two games, as well.

Have you ever been to a set of first round games in North Carolina? It's almost entirely an anti-duke crowd. I guess it's still an advantage that they don't have to travel far but it's definitely nothing like home court advantage.

If I had to guess something like 15% of basketball fans in north carolina are duke fans and the rest hate them.

You are exactly right. If Duke wanted a home crowd advantage they'd want to always be Washington DC and northeast of there.

As for the 15% I'd say you are about 3 times too high on that number. More like 5%

I like the sound of this place you talk of that hates DUKE. 85% dislike? Almost as nice as 99.9% who hate duke in Kentucky. the .1% belongs to Matt Jones who is their Alum. wtf I couldn't resist the jab

This post was edited on 3/10 9:35 AM by Bluegrass79

 

[bthaunert]

Just a clarification. Conference teams that only met once during the season can meet as early as the round of 32.

 

[UKnVT]

"This is why it's imperative the committee remember its most important tool is not MapQuest, but the basketball judgment that leads to selecting and seeding the participating teams. The bracket should not be built of bricks."

This post was edited on 3/10 9:53 AM by UKnVT

Sporting News Article ...

 

[BoulderCat_rivals187983]

Originally posted by BlueBlood66:

Originally posted by UKUGA:

The NCAA tournament is supposed to be a neutral site tourney. If they could find a way to return it to that more purely, I would be all for it. I would gladly stay up late to watch Kentucky play in Spokane, if it meant Duke had to leave the state of North Carolina for their first two games, as well.

Have you ever been to a set of first round games in North Carolina? It's almost entirely an anti-duke crowd. I guess it's still an advantage that they don't have to travel far but it's definitely nothing like home court advantage.

If I had to guess something like 15% of basketball fans in north carolina are duke fans and the rest hate them.

I've always understood that most Duke fans are not only in the East, but the Northeast. Yet everyone has them going to Houston instead of Syracuse. It'd be no further for Virginia, and especially their fans vs. Duke's to go to Houston. It's hard not to believe there's some sort of agenda behind putting Duke in the South regional, if in fact that's what happens.

 

[UKUGA]

Krzyzewski complains about just about everything. He complains about ESPN scheduling ACC games on Monday.

He complains the Duke-UNC games being scheduled too close together.

I have never once heard him complain about opening the tournament in the state of North Carolina.

But it is true, North Carolina is pretty much a UNC and NC State - state. But, having lived here 3 years, I am a bit surprised at how often I see "country folk" wearing Duke t-shirts, etc. I expected their fans to be pretty much isolated to Charlotte and Raleigh, but they are spread around a good amount.

 

[UKUGA]

Originally posted by BoulderCat:

Originally posted by BlueBlood66:

Originally posted by UKUGA:

The NCAA tournament is supposed to be a neutral site tourney. If they could find a way to return it to that more purely, I would be all for it. I would gladly stay up late to watch Kentucky play in Spokane, if it meant Duke had to leave the state of North Carolina for their first two games, as well.

Have you ever been to a set of first round games in North Carolina? It's almost entirely an anti-duke crowd. I guess it's still an advantage that they don't have to travel far but it's definitely nothing like home court advantage.

If I had to guess something like 15% of basketball fans in north carolina are duke fans and the rest hate them.

I've always understood that most Duke fans are not only in the East, but the Northeast. Yet everyone has them going to Houston instead of Syracuse. It'd be no further for Virginia, and especially their fans vs. Duke's to go to Houston. It's hard not to believe there's some sort of agenda behind putting Duke in the South regional, if in fact that's what happens.

In 2010, we got sent to Syracuse and they got sent to Houston. We saw how that turned out.