Jay Bilas' Plan to Reward Regular Season, Not Conf. Playoffs

[Stickboy46]

2011 UConn was 21-9 before their Big East Tournament run started. Using KenPom ranks...
Wins - @6, @21, @30, @52, N5, N25, N46, H6, H34, H63, H76
Losses - All 9 losses were to NCAA teams

2016 WSU was 24-8 with @Evansville (who missed the NIT) as one of their top 3 wins.

People screaming that WSU barely made the field this year think 2011 UConn was undeserving without their Big East Tourney run.

This is insanity.

Its hard to do a straight across comparison across years. Isn't the quality of the bubble a lot different each year. I think there is a lot of years, that WSU's resume this year doesn't get us in.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

Things change year to year? Sure. 2011 UConn's resume pre-Big East Tourney deserved to be a 4-7 seed depending on the year. To suggest it would ever be on the bubble is ludicrous.

In 2011, Marquette got in with a record of 20-14 and a weaker non-con than UConn. UConn was never anywhere close to the bubble that year.

[ShockingButTrue]

KenPom
Evansville 79
K-State 50

Let's be generous and say Evansville would have been a tad better than K-State in this year's Big 12. K-State went 5-13. Evansville goes what, 6-12? They would have been miles behind Texas Tech's 9-9.

Again, conjecture at best.

Man, I'm gonna' get off this computer, go take a shower, and get that filthy kenpom stink off of me. Enough already.

[ShockingButTrue]

Things change year to year? Sure. 2011 UConn's resume pre-Big East Tourney deserved to be a 4-7 seed depending on the year. To suggest it would ever be on the bubble is ludicrous.

A little closer to reality (non kenpom).

Kinda' like the way the refs bailed 'em out against The Shocks that year. Or was that an example of a Valley team getting lucky?

[ShockerPrez]

I would love to see a system that could reward conferences with bids based on wins in relations to seeding.

ie, conferences that have #1 seeds that lose in the 2nd round get penalized and teams that are, say 15 seeds that go to the sweet 16 could get rewarded by having their conference get an extra bid the following year.

Not sure how in the hell it would be done, but it would be fun to say, well, since the big 12 had 2 3 seeds lose in the first round, that equates to the conference only being able to send 5 teams, or something like that.

[ShockTalk]

Sorry if it's already been said (I didn't read the whole thread), but teams have 3 opportunities to prove they belong in the Dance.

1) Winning your conference regular season.

2) Winning your conference tourney.

If you didn't do either of the first two, you best have: 3) A good SOS of non-con games, including at least 4-5 road and neutral games and having a good OOC RPI.

Relying on one's conference coat-tails with a 9-9 or 10-8 conference record is not enough without #3.

As bad as the RPI may be, if a team is without key injuries, they should never see the Dance as an at-large if their RPI is 60 or below, maybe 55 and below.

To me, that low of an RPI is an indicator of other problems.

[WillieJeffJeffries]

Dumbest idea yet.

Thanks for confirming thats it's a great idea...You are the best fade ever.

[WSUwatcher]

Not a bad plan by Mr. I'm-A-Complete-Arsehole. I have no doubt, however, that the NCAA would simply morph this into a quicker way to fill the field with P5 teams. Would WSU have been in Mr. Bilas' top 68 at-large teams this year? With the invisible, moving target that is the committee's criteria for inclusion into the field, it's hard to say for sure.

I would like this proposal more if it included the actual criteria for inclusion so everyone would know in advance how they can best qualify for the 68 at large teams.

I didn't look at his rankings, and I'm not an ESPN Insider, but I do recall that WSU was a top-25 BPI team even after the annual St. Louis disappointment (and rightly so). Thus, they would almost certainly have been part of any at-large pool.

Anyway, TreeFan, you're exactly right. One thing that absolutely needs to happen, regardless of what reform is done -- and a reform is definitely needed, which in the corrupt world of the NCAA means it probably won't happen -- is the introduction of transparency. Back in the old BCS football championship days, the rankings were known to everyone, as well as how they were calculated, based on a combination of human (well, somewhat human, anyway) voting and metrics. One could quibble with the choice and weighting of components, but at least they were known in advance. Basketball needs to do the same thing, with slots in the field filled right down the line by however many teams that haven't already qualified. That approach could be adapted to Bilas's plan to define the pre-tournament field, or it could be used on its own. But either way, it would eliminate the egregious and incoherent committee blunders we see every year, and especially in 2016. (Speaking of incoherent, shouldn't the committee try at least to pick a chairman who is a reasonably competent spokesman and excuse maker? Or trot someone out there for the media who is? They may have hit yet another new low in that regard this time around.)

The other thing that absolutely needs to happen is the abolition of RPI. It has to NOT be part of what's used to determine the field. Every serious analyst -- which unfortunately doesn't include some who play that role on TV or the Internet -- knows that RPI is a bad tool. It's crude, simplistic, and not terribly meaningful. The selection committee claims to know that too. And yet there's RPI, still lurking around as the criterion on which top-50 or top-100, or "quality," wins are based, which pretty much kills any credibility the committee has when they say they ignore it. In reality, they not only don't fully ignore it; they also misuse it in ways that have been described in amazement by various SN posters. So just get it the hell out of the system. The NCAA shouldn't calculate it, and if anyone wants to do so just for historical interest or because he has nothing better to do (Jerry Palm, for example), then make it clear that it is in no way part of the ranking criteria.

Do those two things and the selections and seeding would automatically be better than they are now. They might or might not be that different -- probably not all that much, because the controversies are usually around the margins, which is inevitable. But at least the charge of favoritism toward mediocre P5 (or P5 wannabes like the Big East, A-10, and AAC) teams would be all but eliminated, and you wouldn't have the spectacle of a committee chairman babbling in transparently bogus ways about why this team was in or that team wasn't. No selection committee meetings would really even be needed, because the numbers would be right out in the open for everyone to see, and the NIT could be filled with the teams who just missed the NCAA cut.

Finally, you wouldn't have silly spectacles like the one I just saw looking at KenPom, whose overall rankings now list the seeds for each team in the tournament. The closest thing to an outlier in his top 20 is skidding #20 Iowa, which drew a #7 seed. Oh, wait -- there's #12 Wichita State, actually #11 among eligible teams, having fallen that low only because Purdue and especially Oregon were on fire during their conference tournaments, also SEEDED 11th. Nice job, committee. Play angry, guys.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

As bad as the RPI may be, if a team is without key injuries, they should never see the Dance as an at-large if their RPI is 60 or below, maybe 55 and below.

1 - The cut line falls in the mid to high 40s every year. This year it was 46.
2 - You say the RPI is bad
3 - If teams beyond RPI #55 are banned, then you are banning the #56 RPI team from being given the #46 spot in the field.

It seems problematic to say the RPI is inaccurate, but you are going to make a hard and fast rule requiring almost zero wiggle room for the committee to consider other factors besides RPI.

[ShockerFever]

Thanks for confirming thats it's a great idea...You are the best fade ever.

Clearly you didn't read any other responses to your post.

Enjoy life in the bubble.

[Kel Varnsen]

@WSUwatcher: - Very in-depth and well thought out. Kudos.

[The Mad Hatter]

I'd be plenty happy to see a rule that excludes any team that can't be better than .500 in conference play from an at-large bid, but even if you don't want to do that, I think there should absolutely be a rule that any team at or below .500 in conference play cannot be seeded higher than any at-large team with a winning record in conference play.

Here are this years seeds of teams with .500 conference records: 7, 8, 8, 10, 10.

Having such a rule says that you aren't penalized for playing in a tough conference because you still get your shot at the NCAAs, while making it clear that regular season success still does matter and that being mediocre in a P5 conference doesn't vault you over teams that dominated their conferences (or in the case of Oregon State and Colorado this year, doesn't give you a better seed than a team that finished higher in the same conference and has a higher Kenpom ranking).

[wusphlash]

I have a concern with hard and fast criteria not including the .500 conference record part. How do you keep the money schools from figuring out how to manipulate schedules away from mid-level conference teams and thus eliminate their opportunity for "quality" wins? Seems like those in control always find a way to doctor results. It may be possible to use absolutes but it makes me wonder.

[ShockTalk]

1 - The cut line falls in the mid to high 40s every year. This year it was 46.
2 - You say the RPI is bad
3 - If teams beyond RPI #55 are banned, then you are banning the #56 RPI team from being given the #46 spot in the field.

It seems problematic to say the RPI is inaccurate, but you are going to make a hard and fast rule requiring almost zero wiggle room for the committee to consider other factors besides RPI.

I don't believe the RPI is as good as many other metrics, so "bad" was a poor choice of words. The cut line for RPI ONLY was 72.

Michigan 56, Butler 57, Tulsa 58, Temple 60 (won conference), Vandy 63, and Syracuse 72 with several not challenging themselves enough OOC, while the Bonnies 30 (tied for champ conference that was good enough to have 3 other teams in), Akron 34 (won conference), St. Mary's 38 (won conference), San Diego St 41 (won conference, scheduled OOC well), Valpo 49 (won conference with good OOC SOS and RPI), and Monmouth 52 (won conference, good OOC and tried to schedule even better).

That's quite a range from 30 to 72 for the RPI. Not saying ban teams at 55, but more consideration should be given to team who went out and did well with what they had to work with. Yes, I feel a lot of P-5 are riding coat tails.

[WillieJeffJeffries]

Clearly you didn't read any other responses to your post.

Enjoy life in the bubble.

Responses??? I saw one with another followup that said they should just cut around 100 teams from D1 which is basically the samething I did....gawd you need to smarten up and stop hugging on my nuts, it's embarrassing man.