IF SOME IS GOOD, MORE IS BETTER... RIGHT?

Clearly, VCU belonged in the 2011 edition of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. The Selection Committee did the right thing by choosing VCU over the likes of Colorado, Virginia Tech, and Harvard. However, the Committee doubly disrespected VCU by giving them an 11 seed and then making them play an additional game just to get into the field of 64 teams.

Right?

Nope.

Based on their resume, they were a shaky 11 seed at best and they were a hair’s breadth from not even being in the tournament, First Four or not. But then how else can you explain the meteoric rise from a 23-11 regular season record to steamrolling a team from every major conference except the SEC and with the exception of their Florida State game, doing so by at least 10 points? Clearly they were underrated coming into the NCAA tournament.

Right?

Again, nope.

Every year, the NCAA tournament, accurately nicknamed “March Madness”, claims to crown the best team in all of college basketball. However, if you look at the winners closely and then look at the performance of teams during the regular season, that statement isn’t always true. In the past 29 NCAA tournaments, only 4 times has a team entered the tournament ranked #1 in the country and then gone on to win the national title. Let’s compare that, for just a moment, to everyone’s favorite punching bag; the BCS.

Since the inception of the BCS in 1998, how many times has the 10th best team in the country won the national title? That’s right, never. How many times has a team ranked as low at 40th had a shot at a national title this late in a season? Same as before, never. If you look strictly at seeds (and assume that each of these four teams was the best on their seed line), this Final Four is matching up the 9th, 13th, 29th, and 41st best teams in the country.

In this day and age of rampant parity, the NCAA Tournament does not necessarily crown the best team; it crowns the hottest team. The story has become downright famous by now but 24 days ago, Connecticut was 21-9 and facing a tremendous challenge. At some point in their preparation for the Big East tournament they caught fire and haven’t lost since and currently they are the highest seed left in the Big Dance.

No matter what format you choose to determine a national champion, as long as the results are determined on the field of play, there is always a chance that a lesser team will win and the true best team will be left behind. However, there is a way to minimize the chances of this happening but they are thoroughly impractical at the college level; playoff series.

Can a lesser team beat a better team in one game with everything on the line? Of course they can. VCU proved that last weekend by outplaying a better Kansas team. Could VCU beat Kansas 4 times in a 7 game series? Yes, they can, but if you want to put money on VCU, I’ll take that bet every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Playoff series expose lesser teams for all the faults that make them lesser teams; not as much depth, inferior coaching, and inferior talent among them. Therefore, the better team is far more likely to win a playoff series than a one game, winner-take-all slugfest.

As I said, series are impractical at the college level and they are also impractical for the sport of football. So we circle back to the original point which was the best team does not necessarily win the NCAA Tournament. Usually it is the hottest team and when the better team is not the hotter team, a significant gap in talent can make up for that difference. With star college players staying in college for less and less time at the NBA stepping stone schools, the overall talent level at those schools has decreased while the talent level at smaller schools has increased.

What all of this boils down to is smaller schools are led by talented veteran players while many big-time programs are led by veteran role players and green stars. Because of the shrinking talent disparity between the big and small programs, Kansas can’t afford to shoot 35% against VCU and win. Louisville can’t go scoreless for their first 7 minutes against Morehead State and win. Is all of this a bad thing? Not at all. In my personal pantheon of sporting events, the World Series ranks first and just behind it is the NCAA Tournament. I don’t care that I do poorly in my family pool and I don’t care if the best teams are left on the sidelines, watching the Final Four on CBS (if they wanted to be on the court and not on the couch, they should have played better). It is a wonderful event and this year should prove once again that by getting in with a seed other than 16, anything can happen.


MOTIVATION

Another reason for so many of these upsets is the end goal that the teams have in mind. The NCAA Tournament is set-up with several stepping stones before you even reach the national title game. For instance, let’s look at a 2 seed is playing a 7 seed in the second round. The 2 seed is seen by many as a national title contender and they are expected to give the 1 seed in their region all they can handle in the Elite 8. The 7 seed, on the other hand, had a breakthrough year and made the tournament for the first time in the program’s history. The 2 seed has dreams of winning a national title while the 7 seed has dreams of making the Sweet 16.

So what happens? The 2 seed falls flat because they were looking at their potential match-ups in the next two or three rounds while the 7 seed played like their entire season was on the line. Invariably, the 7 seed will fall flat in the next round because they already achieved their goal of playing in the Sweet 16.

To cross to a different sport for a moment, in 2007, the Colorado Rockies had a truly unimaginable run to make it to the World Series, winning 21 of 22 games down the stretch and through the NLDS and NLCS. They achieved something beyond their wildest dreams and they won the National League. When the World Series started, they were happy to be there while their opponents, the Red Sox, were not happy to just be there. Predictably, the Rockies never really got into the series and lost 4-0.

Was Kansas looking ahead to the Final Four when VCU blitzed them? Possibly. Will VCU maintain their focus and not settle for just making it to the Final Four? History would suggest no but anything can happen.


EXPANSION

So if VCU was the last team into this tournament and they made this unbelievable run to the Final Four, then clearly the tournament would be better served by having more teams… right? Yes and no. Financially speaking, they would be better served. There would be more games (for instance, depending on format a 96 team field would yield 79 games versus 65 this year) which would mean that there are more opportunities for advertising revenue and ticket revenue and so on and so forth. For all the hot air spewing forth about how people will stop watching when the NCAA’s greed becomes so obvious that everyone can see it, people will still watch the NCAA tournament and companies will still pay big money for advertising. At this point in time, there is little to no incentive for the NCAA to NOT expand the tournament.

At what point would expansion harm the integrity of the tournament though? At what point would first round games be so pointless that the tournament has become more about the advertisers and less about the players? I felt very conflicted about having play-in games at the 11 and 12 seed level this year but in retrospect, having play-in games at those levels matters. Everyone knew that no matter who won between the University of North Carolina-Asheville and the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, they were going to get blown out by Pittsburgh (which UNCA did, 74-51). So I’ll admit that this little quirk in the selection process worked this year. However, that is no guarantee that it will work next year or any other year in the future.

In short, expanding the tournament any further is not a good idea. There is a beauty and a symmetry of having 16 teams in 4 different regions and have one representative from each play-off for the national title and I think if you do a little searching around the internet, you’ll find a ton of people who agree with me. The problem is that those same people (myself included) won’t stop watching if the powers that be keep expanding it… which means there’s no reason not to.