WBB: NCAA Selection Show Watch Party

[The Mad Hatter]

Good points.

Getting neutral sites would help a lot, but I'm not sure of the financial feasibility.

[1972Shocker]

A more fair and balanced seeding process would help I suppose. What I guess we really need is for more and more of the unloved underdogs like Wichita State need to start pulling upsets on a regular basis and spoiling the party for some of the power conference teams.

May as well start now and may as well start with the Lady Shocks.

[wusphlash]

Good points.

Getting neutral sites would help a lot, but I'm not sure of the financial feasibility.

A quick check on ticket prices for first weekend sessions is around $30-40 for all session passes, lower bowl. All session passses to the Womens Final Four don't cost as much as first round single session tickets for the men. The NCAA is not going to lose that much money by having games at neutral sites. The "oh, we don't want empty seats on TV" is BS. Enough is enough. Level the playing field and people will come.

[1972Shocker]

Wichita State hosted a women's sub-regional in 2011 which included Michigan State, UALR, Wisconsin-Green Bay and Northern Iowa.

The attendance was pretty solid and the basketball was pretty entertaining and competitive. I believe Wisconsin-Green Bay advanced out of that regional.

As far as I know all teams that participated were very pleased with the experience.

It can work if you pick the right locations and promote it properly.

If the Valley can hold it's women's tournament at a neutral site there is no reason the NCAA should not be able to do the same.

[Shocker-maniac]

Not just for the benefit of men's basketball, but for the benefit of our ENTIRE athletic program, we MUST get out of the MVC.

[flyingMoose]

Some props after a fashion in #4.

[Play Angry]

Apologies if already posted but tip for our game against Cal is 6:30 PM CST on Friday.

Quite the day for Shocker hoops.

[The Mad Hatter]

Wichita State hosted a women's sub-regional in 2011 which included Michigan State, UALR, Wisconsin-Green Bay and Northern Iowa.

The attendance was pretty solid and the basketball was pretty entertaining and competitive. I believe Wisconsin-Green Bay advanced out of that regional.

As far as I know all teams that participated were very pleased with the experience.

It can work if you pick the right locations and promote it properly.

If the Valley can hold it's women's tournament at a neutral site there is no reason the NCAA should not be able to do the same.

I was there at it was great. If all the tournament worked like that it would be lovely. I also remember that Wichita turned out in way higher numbers than the average women's tournament neutral site. I don't know how much it costs to use the neutral site facilities, so I don't know the attendance they need to make it work.

[ShockerFever]

It is going to be hard to retain a top coach with crap like this. People complain about no parity in women's basketball and stuff like this is probably a big reason why it is the way that it is. Undefeated Princeton got an 8 seed, that's way worse than our screw job.

Yep. You're exactly right. It's one of the main reasons the women's game has so little interest to me. The women's selection process is the worst out there. It is so one-sidedly swayed to the P5 schools, it's almost hard to believe. And there certainly is no hiding it. It's utterly disgusting.

This is why the women's game will never grow and makes it dumb to follow. Nothing about it makes any sort of sense; there is no uniformity or consistency; there is no accountability. It's a big ass joke.

I will watch and support the Lady Shox. But as always, I will pay not iota of attention to anything else going on in that sham of an affiliation.

[Heinro]

Please ignore my utter ignorance of women's basketball. I occasionally watch WSU's women and occasionally UConn's but that is where it stops. I understand the talent disparity from team to team. But can someone explain the seeding process. I just checked out the bracket to see where WSU and Princeton were seeded and I obviously don't have a clue as it must be nothing like the men's.

From Princeton's metrics, they are 30-0, RPI 12, NPI 2, 3-0 vs. Top 50, 6-0 vs. 50-100, with 15 road wins. I understand they were suprisingly underseeded, but even so bracketology looked like it had them at around a 6 seed. I guess by my comparison, the closest thing to non-power 5 in the men's are SMU at 26-6 with an RPI of 12 and UNI at 30-3 with an RPI of 14. They both got 6 and 5 seeds respectively. I guess I just don't understand, are computers just entirely useless in WBB? Is the women's bracket just a huge screw job for the mid-majors? Just very interested in trying to understand this. A men's bracket seeded that way would lead to a war crime tribunal against the committee.

[The Mad Hatter]

Please ignore my utter ignorance of women's basketball. I occasionally watch WSU's women and occasionally UConn's but that is where it stops. I understand the talent disparity from team to team. But can someone explain the seeding process. I just checked out the bracket to see where WSU and Princeton were seeded and I obviously don't have a clue as it must be nothing like the men's.

From Princeton's metrics, they are 30-0, RPI 12, NPI 2, 3-0 vs. Top 50, 6-0 vs. 50-100, with 15 road wins. I understand they were suprisingly underseeded, but even so bracketology looked like it had them at around a 6 seed. I guess by my comparison, the closest thing to non-power 5 in the men's are SMU at 26-6 with an RPI of 12 and UNI at 30-3 with an RPI of 14. They both got 6 and 5 seeds respectively. I guess I just don't understand, are computers just entirely useless in WBB? Is the women's bracket just a huge screw job for the mid-majors? Just very interested in trying to understand this. A men's bracket seeded that way would lead to a war crime tribunal against the committee.

3 factors:

1. Insane P5 bias that they get away with because the deck is so tilted and there isn't the national attention given to expose it (which is a self fulfilling prophecy because such bias harms growing the women's basketball fanbase, guaranteeing that the majority of the people paying attention are the fans of the teams that already benefit from the bias).

2. Insane geography based seeding approach that chucks out any concept of seeding by actual merit in favor of an arbitrary and unclear geographic model (which is often used as cover for the insane P5 bias).

3. By allowing higher seeds to host on their home floors, underseeded teams often lose close games that they might have won on a neutral court, but it let's the committee act like they made a good bracket since the higher seed won.

[boyshocker]

I believe this is the current list of the women's selection committee. A little surprised by the mid-major representation...

Sybil Blalock, Mercer University
Rhonda Bennett, University of Nevada
Shonna Brown, America East Conference
Leslie Claybrook, Southeastern Conference
Chris Dawson, Pac 12 Conference
Terry Gawlik, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Dru Hancock, Big 12 Conference (chairwoman)
Kathy Meehan, St. John’s University (New York)
M. Dianne Murphy, Columbia University
Brad Walker, Ohio Valley Conference

[flyingMoose]

If Cal pays as little attention to us as their fans, we'll destroy them. They are not only not talking about the game with us, they are not talking about the Texas/WKU winner and jumping right into talking about UCONN.

http://bearinsider.com/forums/showth...-Wichita-State

Cooler heads have prevailed, starting at post #19 on page 2. Posts #19, 21, 23, 26, 31-34, #34 being the latest at this point.

The Sagarin stuff in the latter posts is interesting, especially the Strength of Schedule.

[The Mad Hatter]

Cooler heads have prevailed, starting at post #19 on page 2. Posts #19, 21, 23, 26, 31-34, #34 being the latest at this point.

The Sagarin stuff in the latter posts is interesting, especially the Strength of Schedule.

Yeah, I noticed that. They pretty much came to the same conclusion as us, i.e. that the committee was wildly inconsistent in seeding.

[1972Shocker]

They might as well just seed the Top 16 teams like they do in Volleyball and then just do the rest primarily on geographic proximity. The results will be pretty much the same as the pretense of seeding the entire field and at least it's up front and honest about what the goal is. The process is clearly rigged to get as many of the Top 16 teams through to the Sweet 16 as possible. I have to believe that is being driven by whoever has the TV broadcasting rights which, of course, is all about the money.

At least that way more fans of the smaller schools might at least have more opportunities to see and support their teams in person.