NCAA Confrence Playoffs

That is a great accomplishment ...but I do not think the Big East is as strong this year as it has been in the last couple years.

 

The Big East doesn't have a super-star team this year like they did last year with UConn. But I don't see many other teams out there that do either.

West Virginia did well, but playing four games in four days is tough. No team has ever won the tournament when playing on Wednesday.

http://postgazette.com/pg/05072/470828.stm

I think that UConn and Syracuse have as good a chance of going to the Final Four as anyone in the big dance.

 

That's encouraging! I'm a big UConn fan (I grew up in CT). I've been so busy I haven't watch them play much this year.

 

Just a question about the brackets.
Do you ever wonder why the committee never seems to spread the teams of a conference around all of the brackets?
I follow the SEC and this year there are 5 teams in the tourney. They are in three brackets. This seems to be a normal practice. Have you noticed this with the conferences that you follow?
Not meaning to whine, I was somewhat surprised to see five SEC teams in.
Tom

 

Supposedly they don't consider conference, but just individual teams. The Big 10 also has 5 teams in 3 brackets this year.

 

Ever notice that every year we hear that the committee doesn't consider conferences in picking teams, but every year the media implies that they do?

Furthermore, I was listening to sports radio today and they were talking about how one of the regionals are "stacked". We hear this from the media every year, and it never makes sense to me. Doesn't every region have good teams? I've never understood the media's fascination with saying that one region is better than another. These are the best teams in the country, so it stands to reason that every region is "stacked".

As to how the teams are spread throughout the brackets, I think it has to do with the pod system in place. Before the pod system, if a conference sent 5 teams, at least one team would be in each bracket, and obviously, one bracket would have 2 teams.

Somebody on the sports radio show also complained about the pod system, and they liked it better when it was East, West, Midwest, and South and the teams traveled all over the country. However, the pod system was introduced because of media complaining.

A few years ago, on the west coast, a 2nd round game was played between Maryland and Georgetown. More than one media person (common-tators as my wife says), complained that that particular game was the biggest problem with the tournament, that you could have a Maryland-Georgetown game on the west coast where it made more sense to have it on the east coast. The NCAA agreed, so they implemented the pod system, only to have complaints from the media that they liked it better the other way.

Finally, continuing with the media rant, the commontators were talking about the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry and the fact that they will play 19 regular season games in 2005, and that's just too many games. But, these were the same media people complaining a few years ago that baseball teams within the same division didn't play enough games against each other. In response, MLB changed the schedule, and now the media is complaining that teams within a division play too many games against each other.

I guess it just goes to show that a) sports media people have too short of a memory, and b) be careful what you wish for.