Bad Bracketology

                                                       Bad Bracketology

     The Final Four for the 2017 NCAA Men's Division I Championship has been established. The schools heading to Phoenix for games next Saturday and Monday are: Gonzaga University and the University of North Carolina, both no. 1 seeds; the University of Oregon, a number 3 seed; and the University of South Carolina, who is the "Cinderella" entry, coming from a 7th seed in the East bracket.

     68 teams have played in the tournament. 64 have been eliminated. Two no. 1 seeds did not survive--defending champ Villanova went down to the Wisconsin Badgers, and Kansas, who fell to Oregon in the Midwest Regional final. Three of four no. 2 seeds were eliminated before the Regional finals, the lone exception being Kentucky, losers to North Carolina on a heartbreaking shot with 0.3 left on the clock.
Oregon was the lone no. 3 seed to advance to a Regional final.

     Media critics thought that the Tournament Committee did a lousy job of seeding. Starting with Wichita State as a no. 10 seed in the South Region;  Michigan was a no. 7 seed and Rhode Island, a no. 11 seed in the Midwest Region; and Wisconsin, a no. 8 seed in the East along with S.M.U. being a no. 6 seed in the same region, the pundits claimed that the Tournament officials did not properly assess the teams given their regular season records. The fact that South Carolina made it to the Final Four was even greater evidence that the Committee got it wrong.

     Of course, those critics would put a spin on this "calamity" by noting that the NCAA Championships would always be known for underdogs providing thrills by beating opponents who, by subjective seeding, were rated to be better than the lower-seeded team who won. This country roots for underdogs, so those opting to participate in bracket contests, legal and illicit, understood that there were always going to be a fair number of upsets in each early round. The expectations would be that the high seeds would prevail as the games progressed. Nearly every expert touted their solemn belief that they had the right bracket choices.

     So it comes as no surprise this morning to read that a mere 657 out of 18,797,085, or .0003 percent of the entries in the ESPN Bracket Challenge correctly had the Final Four of Gonzaga, North Carolina, Oregon and South Carolina. What is surprising is that 657 people actually had this combination. Moreover, with a no. 3 and a no. 7 seed in the mix, how could they have foreseen the carnage of higher seeds, along with a slew of intermediate upsets? I guess that the preponderance of those 657 came via South Carolina fans. From those 657 survivors, I wonder how many, if indeed any, actually had a perfect bracket--that they picked all of the games correctly to this juncture?

     With all this in mind, I did my annual bracket. Which was a miserable failure. I selected only 36 winners, with my Final Four of UCLA, Duke, Arizona and Louisville not even making a Regional Final. I had only Gonzaga making a Regional Final, but there I had them losing to no. 2 seed Arizona.  I thought Arizona was good enough to make it to the Championship game where UCLA would prevail. Plenty of others chose UCLA based on the play of superior guards Lonzo Ball and Bryce Alford, son of Coach Steve Alford. Many others probably had Duke winning, but a poor performance coupled with being unlucky to have a game in Greenville, South Carolina against South Carolina where the Gamecocks fans outnumbered the Blue Devils contingent. Additionally, I believe that many Kansas faithful thought their team would make the Final Four, since the Jayhawks were playing their Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games in Kansas City, just across the border between the states and only 40 miles from the KU campus in Lawrence.

     I can go on and on about who chose what teams to win or lose in their brackets and for what reasons. That is the lure of picking the brackets. Most times, it is for a prize--whether it is for ESPN or simply an office pool. And a lot of it is for ego-- deciding who is a better prognosticator/expert...for at least this season.

     Understanding the risks involved, I entered a contest this year. A very small one. I was pitting my expertise from years and years of watching college basketball against that of my wife, who went to Rutgers games with me and watched Pardon The Interruption on ESPN. The prize was simple--the winner picks a 2 night getaway and does all the planning. The loser will only learn of the locale near the time to depart. Thus there was a very small downside to this competition. While she is quite the competitor, my wife would not have felt as humbled if she had lost as I would have become had she won. Because I believed I knew something more about college basketball.

     Although I won this challenge by either one or two games through somehow arriving at 36 wins, depending upon the outcome of the North Carolina- Oregon game (she picked UNC), I learned that, at least for this season, I was not such a hot shot. My wife's Final Four consisted of Duke, Notre Dame, Kansas and North Carolina. She had gone with two no. 1 seeds, a no. 2 seed (Duke) and a no. 5 seed (Notre Dame). She fared better than me with North Carolina making it to the Final Four as opposed to my coming up empty with my Final Four picks. Kudos to her.

     I prevailed only because I picked better on Days 1 and 2. My score was 26 out of 32 while she came in at 21 out of 32. Yet yesterday, had Kansas beaten Oregon, she could have tied me if North Carolina made it to the Finals. She stayed with three no. 1 seeds and all four no. 2 seeds reaching the Regional Finals. Almost a much more appropriate concept than my going with two no. 1 seeds--Villanova and Gonzaga to attain the Elite Eight.

     My wife will still have a rooting interest in North Carolina making it to the Finals. While I do like the Tar Heels, I will watch with her to see if first timers Gonzaga or South Carolina reach the Championship game. Oregon is compelling in that it is 78 years since the Ducks made the Final Four--in 1939 they won the inaugural NCAA Championship. North Carolina will be participating in its record 20th Final Four.

     Should the Carolinas play each other, the hostility between the schools still exists. Both were opponents in the Southern Conference and became founding members of the Atlantic Coast Conference, of which North Carolina still is a member. South Carolina won the ACC championship and the automatic bid to the 1970 NCAA Tournament under Coach Frank McGuire, a transplanted New Yorker who in fact coached North Carolina to the 1957 NCAA title in a huge win against gigantic center Wilt Chamberlain and his Kansas teammates.

     South Carolina basketball success more than bothered the North Carolina members of the ACC. "Tobacco Road" crowds were exceptionally hostile to South Carolina teams when they visited. Resentment and anger based upon on the court success plus the decidedly unfriendly nature of athletic directors and coaches in the ACC along with discrepancies in academic eligibility standards caused omnipotent Coach Mc Guire to force his superiors to mistakenly decide to withdraw South Carolina from the ACC in 1971. Subsequent inquiries into returning to the ACC after Mc Guire left South Carolina were rebuked. South Carolina only has resurrected its once storied athletic programs upon entering the Southeastern Conference in 1991.

     In football, UNC  has had the better of the series, with a 34-19-4 record. After South Carolina left the ACC, the teams have met on the gridiron only 13 times in 46 years. Recently the teams have played in a "neutral" site--Charlotte. This annual brawl was as popular and vitriolic as North Carolina playing in state rivals Duke, North Carolina State and Wake Forest, if not greater.

     Here's some reasons why. Both schools refer to themselves as"Carolina". They each have a trademark for that name, which adorns jerseys and other athletic apparel, along with the football end zones. North Carolina fans claim the nickname because UNC was the first public university in the United States. The Province of Carolina was established in North Carolina, yet its government seat was in Charles Town (now Charleston, South Carolina). Gamecock fans counter that South Carolina was the first to declare statehood.
     The debate continues even away from the arenas. There remains a North Carolina bias towards South Carolina--even this year, after 26 years of wrangling,  the border between the states was redrawn by 50-100' to incorporate about 50 more people into North Carolina. One family has its house literally divided--the living room and kitchen are in South Carolina while the bedrooms the children sleep in are in North Carolina. That particular circumstance creates a whole set of problems, from health insurance to schooling.

     Undeniably, it is novel and exciting that Gonzaga, from the West Coast Conference, a non-power conference, has become a powerhouse in the past few years and now has made its first Final Four and the record 78 year drought of Oregon between Final Fours is equally compelling, I am rooting for an all-Carolina final.

     Besides a little border tension, I am magnanimously pulling for my wife to be half-correct with her title game choice. I can wisely let the disharmony of March Madness extend down South and in Arizona for a day or two this weekend. Just not in her house.

Tournament Time II

                                                          Tournament Time II

     Since the basketball world in the midst of the major Division I basketball tournaments, I felt it is appropriate to write about my tournament experience. Which is a few games--3 games of the National Invitational Tournament and 5 NCAA games. With the need to be clear, I have seen only 3 Division I tournament games-- 2 N.I.T. games in 1967 and another N.I.T. game in 1969. I have never been to an Division I NCAA tournament game. My N.C.A.A. experience is at the Division III level via my alma mater, Franklin and Marshall College. I have not seen the Division I tournament yet because my favorite team, Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey, has not made March Madness since 1991, and I have vowed not to go until they make it there again. Not such a bright move.

     Fifty years ago this past Saturday--March 18, 1967--I was with my childhood friend, Don Porges at the old Madison Square Garden, located at 8th Avenue and 49th Street in Manhattan to see Rutgers play for third place in the N.I.T. There happened to be a championship game, too, involving Southern Illinois University and Marquette University. We stayed for both games. but we really went to see Rutgers finish its run in the N.I.T.

     This day was Don's 17th birthday and our first trip to Manhattan from the cozy suburbs via the bus. Living in Highland Park, itself a suburb of New Brunswick, a city of 40,000 inhabitants which was home to Rutgers and its sister school, Douglass College, allowed easy access to the city--about 50 minutes away via train or bus from New Brunswick.  But this was our first solo venture without parents and that, alone, was exciting.

     What had gotten us to follow the Scarlet Knights was my attending a Rutgers game in 1966 in the old Rutgers Gymnasium, a 3,200 seat edifice on College Avenue where, on the other side of the wall behind the players' benches, was the school's swimming pool. Rutgers had somehow managed to attract two talented guards to play there. One was Jim Valvano, a smooth talker/hustler from Queens and the more quiet and reserved Bob Lloyd, a sharpshooting guard from Pennsylvania. The atmosphere was electric, from the very loud and brassy Pep Band, to the all-male cheerleaders, to the fans who were virtually on top of the court. With the play of Lloyd and Valvano, the fans were agog. The Knights managed a 17-7 record in 1966 behind Lloyd's 20.5 points per game and Valvano contributing just over 15 points per game.

     Rutgers was scoring and winning in bigger numbers in 1966-67. Lloyd upped his already lofty points per game average to 27.9 while Valvano came in at 18.1. Those two roommates and lifelong friends, were the highest scoring guard tandem in the country. Soph Bob Greacen added 10.1 points per game along with 6.5 rebounds each contest.

     The National Invitational Tournament at that time was an alternative to the N.C.A.A. Tournament and was not considered such a step down as it is today. In 1950, City College of New York won both the N.C.A.A.title THEN the N.I.T. crown. There was a lot of prestige attached to being invited to New York to play at the Garden. In spite of the point shaving scandals which enveloped local schools like C.C.N.Y. right after its twin victories,along with Long Island University and St. John's University, Madison Square Garden was considered to be the mecca of college basketball. The National Basketball Association Knicks were considered to be second fiddle to college hoops in New York and in the Garden.

     When Rutgers started winning and people began to notice Lloyd and Valvano, the chances for Rutgers' first N.I.T. invite grew. Moreover, with Lloyd making First Team All-American status, the hue and cry for a "local" team to be part of the 1967 tourney sounded louder. So when the team closed at 18-6, the N.I.T. made sure it had a drawing card in Rutgers; filling the seats was still of paramount importance to the tournament operators. Rutgers secured the bid it so coveted.

     The games were broadcast on local radio, WCTC 1450 AM, with the play-by-play coming from owner and operator and news director Tony Marano. Going to the Garden became an in thing to do. Rutgers won a tight first round match, 78-76,  against the Utah State Aggies and their heralded guard, Shaler Halimon, who boasted a 23.6 points per game average along with an average of 6.5 rebounds a game.

     Next up were the New Mexico Lobos, led by legendary All-America center Mel Daniels, who would play many years in the now-defunct American Basketball Association  for the Indiana Pacers; he averaged 21.5/11.6 for the Lobos in 1966-67. Rutgers managed to defeat New Mexico on Wednesday night, March 15th by a score of 65-60.

     This set up the big semi-final game against Southern Illinois. The Salukis had won the Division II national title the week before the N.I.T. Led by a superior guard named Walt Frazier, who would lead those Knicks to 2 N.B.A. titles on his way to the Basketball Hall of Fame, they were the premier team in the field invited to the Garden. Rutgers fought hard, but lost a close battle 79-70, as both Lloyd and Valvano were in foul trouble and the Knights had difficulty against the more athletic and talented Saluki guards.

     Rutgers was relegated to the consolation game which started at 11:30 a.m., so as to end well before the CBS 2:00 p.m. telecast of the N.I.T. Final between Southern Illinois and Marquette. I had heard that tickets were available to anyone showing a student ID at the Rutgers box office inside the Gym. Since they didn't indicate that tickets were only allocated for Rutgers students, I made it to New Brunswick, showed my high school ID, and walked away with 2 seats in the upper deck of the Garden.

     This was to be the last game for seniors Lloyd and Valvano. They had become local legends and heroes to me. I could not believe that our parents were permitting us to go to the Garden let alone by ourselves to see Rutgers play out the season. This 16 year old, on Spring vacation from high school, could not have been happier.
   
     Game day was bitterly cold. The high was 20 degrees, but in the morning air of the city, it was barely above 10 degrees. Not wearing anything but my jeans and a shirt and sweater under my winter coat, I remember us both jumping up and down while anxiously we awaited the Garden doors to open. The chill was so great that I could smell the odor of the nearby Nedick's hot dogs, but I could not feel the heat from their being cooked. No one was more thankful when the doors to the Garden opened.

     I had only been in the Garden once before--on my 9th birthday to see the Rangers beat the Chicago Blackhawks 6-2 on a Saturday afternoon. We were seated low behind a goal, not in the upper deck.

     What I learned was that the view from upstairs was obstructed. While I could see the full court, I had to stand to see anything on the sidelines. Still, this did not diminish the joy and rapture I had from merely being inside the filled and raucous arena to watch Lloyd and Valvano play.

     And play they did. Lloyd scored 43 points, shooting the lights out as Rutgers thrashed Marshall University 93-76. Valvano pitched in with loads of assists and steals, leading to the rout. Lloyd averaged his 27.9 points per game that season without 3-point goals, which made his three year career at Rutgers more remarkable. He also led the nation in free throw accuracy at .921. Small wonder his number 14 jersey is retired and that he and Valvano are members of the Rutgers Basketball Hall of Fame.

     I was euphoric with the Rutgers victory. We watched the Championship game as interested spectators. I recall that the Garden crowd favored Marquette because they had some New York City/Long Island high school players on that squad. The athleticism of the Salukis and particularly Frazier won the game for Southern Illinois.

     It was a fun if not cold day in New York. I was glad to escape the smoke-filled Garden (smoking was permitted at that time, floating a dense cloud in the all-to-close rafters of the building) to return to Highland Park where I practiced my shots on our hoop and backboard hanging from the outer garage wall as if I was Bobby Lloyd.  Lloyd would go on to a successful career in business. Valvano would become the head coach at Johns Hopkins, Bucknell and finally at North Carolina State where his 1983 team won the N.C.A.A. title in a stunning upset. Jim Valvano succumbed to cancer after waging a courageous battle. The V Foundation for Cancer Research was established in his memory. Best friend and teammate Bob Lloyd oversees it.

     I went to the new Garden on March 15, 1969 to see Rutgers once more in the N.I.T. The Bob Greacen-led team ended a remarkable season at 21-4 with a loss to a very talented University of Tennessee squad in the first round bowing out, 67-51. What I recall about the Volunteers was that they were tall and they rode unicycles onto the Garden court while dribbling and  twirling basketballs. I am not making this up. Plus I did go on another student ticket, sitting downstairs this trip, behind a basket with a much better and closer vantage of the action.

     I have not been to another N.I.T. game. My magical memory of 50 years ago seems fresh enough in my mind.

     This is one of the greatest reasons why a 5'5" Jewish kid from the New Jersey suburbs, whose best sport was baseball, became a college basketball devotee for life.

Selection Sunday

                                                               Selection Sunday

     Selection Sunday is as much rite of Winter as it transcends into Spring as the leap into Daylight Savings Time. For the college basketball junkie, it is the very inexact parallel of the Presidential primary season for the politicos. Months and months of contests until the winner of the big prize is determined.

     I am one of those junkies--both political and basketball. Thankfully the political version occurs once every four years. Not so with college basketball. That sport is played every year, from November to April

     All of the Division I schools have competed to get to this point--Selection Sunday, This is the day the regular season games and post-season tournaments have concluded.  All the pre-season training, the daily workouts and practices surrounding the 31 regular season games now fall to 68 meritorious teams who have qualified for the tournament by winning the conference tournament in the last 2 weeks or who have compiled a resume during the aforementioned 31 games which has impressed the eminent Men's Selection Committee sequestered in the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City since Wednesday. Those teams who just did not have enough to become an at-large berth in the Big Dance were relegated to the National Invitational Tournament (N.I.T.) or a couple of even lesser events.

     CBS Sports and the NCAA have had a powerful marriage since 1991. The money generated by the contract between the two giants is enormous. Back in that initial year of the partnership, one of my favorite rituals of the year, The NCAA Men's Basketball Selection Show, began. As I can recall, the program was there to announce the brackets for the Tournament, a way to drum up interest in the weeks ahead, since so much money was invested and so much more cash could be made with enhanced viewership. Who knew back then that from a simple half hour slot this show would become a staple of NCAA basketball.

     The format and content was, and to a large extent still is simple--to announce the present 68 team tournament field. Many of the teams are set going into the selection meetings, the result of winning their conference tournaments. So 32 slots are already taken, leaving the Committee the task of choosing the best 36 schools to complete the field. Those at-large bids are the product of heavy scrutiny by the media experts once teams have failed to win their conference tournaments.

     It is no small task that the Committee faces, holed up in the hotel. Based upon a few metrics, the members try to agree as to who they deem to be worthy enough to play in the games. They consider won-lost record, strength of schedule (S.O.S.) and the opponent's S.O.S.; they are combined into what is called the Ratings Percentage Index (R.P.I.). 75% of  the R.P.I. is a calculation of the S.O.S.--2/3  of the R.P.I. is the school's own S.O.S., with 1/3 assigned to the opponents S.O.S. The remaining 25% incorporates the school's own winning percentage.

     In mathematical terms, R.P.I.=(W.P. 0.25) + (OWP 0.50) + (OOWP 0.25), where WP stands for Winning percentage, OWP stands for Opponents Winning Percentage and OOWP stands for Other Opponents Winning Percentage. WP is calculated by the number of wins divided into the total number of games played. There is tweaking for whether the game is at home, away or on a neutral floor. OWP is derived from the average of the WP's for each of the team's opponents with the requirement that all games against the team in question must be removed from the calculation. OOWP comes from adding the average of each opponent's OWP. 

     The R.P.I. is very heavily balanced towards the major conferences--the Atlantic Coast Conference (A.C.C.); the Big East Conference; the Big Ten Conference; The Southeastern Conference (S.E.C.); the Big 12 Conference; and the Pacific 12 Conference (Pac-12). That they play each other in 18 regular season tilts and then play for 3 to 4 more games adds to their insular advantage. What helps non-Power 6 schools R.P.I. is a win against a Power 6 school and more so, if the losing school is a top tier member of their conference.  Most of those games occur on the home court of the major conference schools, with some coming in pre-conference tournaments.

     What the R.P.I. fails to take into account are two critical things--the margin of victory in the games and when they are played. That is left to the Committee to assign value. Let's say that Gonzaga University of the West Coast Conference (W.C.C.) defeats the highly-rated University of Arizona from the Pac-12 in December. The score is a factor for the Committee; the locale is also a factor--if it is at Arizona or on a neutral court. While Gonzaga's R.P.I. is enhanced, the teams it plays in the W.C.C. do not have such a high R.P.I., which cumulatively lowers the value of that victory at Arizona.  

     In assessing the non-automatic bid colleges, the Committee must plug that R.P.I. into its formula along with how the particular school has fared over its last 10 contests. A school like Monmouth University of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (M.A.A.C.), which roared thru its conference schedule and was the M.A.A.C. regular season champion and which secured a couple of wins versus Power 6 teams, still had to win their tournament to qualify. They lost to Siena University on Siena's home court and the M.A.A.C. title ultimately went to Iona University, which will represent the M.A.A.C in the tourney. Thus Monmouth is thrown into the pool of the 36 at-large berths available for the N.C.A.A.'s. In this instance, the resume of many of the power schools up to the last 4 selected which  meet in play-in matches on Tuesday at the University of Dayton Arena--Kansas State from the Big 12; Wake Forest of the A.C.C.; the University of Southern California from the Pac-12; and Providence College of the Big East--were greater than what Monmouth had accrued during its season. Which leaves Monmouth to play in the N.I.T.

     Those four schools in the play-in games are part of what are called "bubble" teams. The University of Rhode Island Rams, winners of the Atlantic 10 (A-10) regular season crown, virtually had to win the A-10 tournament to insure inclusion in the NCAA's given their R.P.I. compared to a number of other Power 6 teams who did not win their conference tournaments. Otherwise, in a twist of irony, they would have been competing against cross-state rival Providence for perhaps the final berth in the N.C.A.A. Tournament. Mercifully for U.R.I., they won the A-10 tourney, thereby excluding them from having the Selection Committee determine their fate.

     Are you still with me so far?

     Analysts at CBS Sports and on ESPN make a living on accurately predicting the NCAA field. The hype that occurs in the days leading up to Selection Sunday is immense. If your team loses during that time, then you, as a fan, are honed in on the predictions of these experts as to what might happen with your particular school.  ESPN utilizes something called the Basketball Power Index (B.P.I.) to further muddy the waters. Gratefully, the NCAA does not use this in its calculations, preferring to retain the partially-flawed R.P.I. as the simplest method of calculation.

     So when we reach the time for the Selection Show, there is significant drama for a number of teams whose fate is left in the hands of the Selection Committee. CBS sets up cameras at numerous college campuses where the teams have watch parties--some in the team's video rooms and others prepare to celebrate with the fans in packed arenas. CBS learned the hard way to avoid going to places where teams might be waiting and waiting to hear their names called out by host Greg Gumbel--Rutgers was one of those on the bubble and disappointed a number of years ago and the long faces of disappointment were unfairly shown.

     The announcement of the field is started with identifying the top four seeds for the tournament. Those four number 1 seeds are assigned to the East, South, Midwest and West Regions. All 68 teams are seeded from 1 to 68, so this year, Gonzaga, seeded number 1 in the West, could eventually play the number 5 overall seed, Arizona, in the West Region final in San Jose, California for the right to go to the Final Four in Glendale, Arizona. In all, each region has a first seed and the remaining teams are seeded 2-16. The winners of the Providence-USC and Kansas State-Wake Forest play-in games are 11 seeds. The winners of the Mt. St. Mary's-New Orleans and NC Central-UC Davis games are slotted into the brackets as 16 seeds.

     Seeding also has an additional and significant role. It is used to promote competitive balance. Theoretically, the 8 versus 9 matchups are supposed to be the most competitive early round games. However, conference winners from the non-Power 6 schools who have very good records but underrated R.P.I. numbers due to their conference having few if any wins against the Power 6, may rise up and defeat a Power 6 team in the first round if not further into the tournament. While no 16th seed has EVER beaten a number 1 seed, there have been some 15th seeds who have won versus number 2 seeds. More upsets abound in games involving the 4 to 7 seeds.

     This is what the supporters of the teams look for--who they are playing--to gauge their team's chances--and where. UCLA fans are probably okay with the first 2 rounds in Sacramento, California. I doubt that the U.R.I. and Iona fans are too thrilled with games in Sacramento. Ditto Cincinnati followers.

     The teams go where they are slotted. Loyal fans do in fact follow. The NCAA does like to show full houses on the TV screens of CBS and its broadcast partners from Turner Sports--Tru TV, TBS and TNT.

     The Committee can be a little mischievous at times. Kentucky, a 2 seed in the South, will play in state Northern Kentucky in Indianapolis, with the winner to play the survivor of Wichita State-Dayton. Wichita State was tumbled from the undefeated ranks by Kentucky in 2014, so the Shockers, if they play the Wildcats again, are in a position to exact some measure of revenge. Plenty of people feel the Selection Committee got it wrong placing Wichita State as a 10th seed. This could provide added emotional drive for the disrespected 30-4 Missouri Valley Conference regular season and tournament champs, who are currently ranked 20th in the Associated Press poll.

     Such is the drama inherent in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament. Which, to me, is why I watch the Selection Show on the Sunday before the start of the annual event rightfully called March Madness. I like to see the pairings, to see where I think the Committee went wrong and how they may have made the Tournament enjoyable from a fan's perspective. I enjoy taking a stab at picking the winners of each round--even if I rarely choose wisely. To others, there are brackets to be completed to win money in challenge events from CBS, the NCAA, Yahoo and FOX-Sports Illustrated to name a few.

     When the East Coast is consumed by snow tomorrow night, I will be watching the telecasts from Dayton to see if I could get the First Four right.Each succeeding round--first 32 games, then 16, 8, 4 and 2. All culminating in the National Championship match on Monday night April 3. For the record, I have the top 2 teams from the Pac-12 squaring off--UCLA and Arizona. UCLA is my prediction.

     Go have some fun--maybe you will do better than the talking heads like Clark Kellogg and Seth Davis of CBS Sports who yesterday spoke like they could really foresee the outcome of this 55 game extravaganza. Get it right and you instantly are a college basketball expert. Even if you happened to pick the games by colleges you know of or their colors or even their mascots.

     It beats dealing with reality. At least until April 4th.

Tournament Time

                                                         Tournament Time

     I am not going to deny that Rutgers beating Illinois on Saturday to finish the regular season 31 game slate (way too many games) 14-17 and 3-15 in the Big 10 didn't feel good--it did.

     Nor did it not feel good to see Princeton end the regular season undefeated in Ivy League play including watching a televised win against second place Harvard on Friday night from Jadwin Gym.

     Seton Hall went out to venerable Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Saturday and handed the Butler Bulldogs a defeat, closing their season with 20 wins and a possible NCAA bid. Nice.

    Moreover,  New Jersey's Monmouth University finished the regular season by winning the Metro Athletic Athletic Conference title once more. A positive.

     Plus, the University of Connecticut women remained the only undefeated squad in Division I men's and women's play. Excellent.

     This is all well and good. For Princeton, Seton Hall and Monmouth, they are at least somewhat likely to play in the Big Dance, alternatively known as the NCAA Division I Men's Championship, which starts next week. Rutgers would have to have a miracle happen for it to entry into the NCAA's. UConn is a lock for the Women's Championship and should be the overall No. 1 seed when the field is announced.

     Winning the regular season in your conference guarantees just one thing--that you are the top seed in the conference post-season tournament. A conference post-season tournament was rare when I was younger. Only the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Missouri Valley Conference and the Southern Conference held such events to crown their champion.

     The NCAA tournament back in the 1950's and 60's had not morphed into the big deal it is today with 68 teams invited to play. At the outset in 1939 through 1950, 8 teams, fewer regular season games and, for most schools, finishing first in the conference sent the team to the NCAA's. Second place might get you to the National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York City.  For a number of years thereafter, the size of the field was between 22 and 24 teams. The great UCLA Bruins, 10 time winners between 1964 and 1975 and coached by the legendary John Wooden, did not have to travel the maze which todays' teams like Villanova last year had to do--win 6 games over nearly 4 weeks.

     There was a lot of grumbling when teams would finish second and not make the NCAA tourney. For a while, the head of the NCAA, Walter Byers, resisted any change in the format. The primary genesis for the expansion of the NCAA Championship came when a talented University of Maryland team coached by Charles "Lefty" Driesell, won the ACC regular season but lost the tournament. They sat home with a very talented team, rewarded with nothing for their efforts, and defeated in an event held almost always in Greensboro, North Carolina, to the delight of the in-state fans from the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke University and Wake Forest University.

     After a failed second place tournament run by the NCAA,  the field was expanded to a robust 32 teams in 1975. Rutgers, in its bicentennial year of 1976 run to the Final Four, which was now a big thing nationally, played 4 games plus a consolation match when they lost in the semi-finals.

     With longer schedules and more money coming from national television rights, from 1979 to 1985, the field kept expanding to ultimately 64 schools being selected by a committee. It stayed that way only until 2000, and then a play-in contest was added for a 65th school. In 2011, the current field of 68 was established with 2 play-in games.

     The Final Four had left its home in Kansas City nearby the NCAA Headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas and went from college home floors to bigger "neutral" site venues. With interest peaking and having seen in 1968 that a bigger arena like Houston's Astrodome, the first-ever indoor baseball stadium, could be jammed to the rafters when UCLA was involved, the Final Four and some of the regional matches were transferred to places like the New Orleans Superdome, the indoor home of the NFL's Saints to accommodate larger crowds and make more money for the NCAA coffers.

     Thus, getting into the NCAA's became big business. The perennial winners--Kentucky, North Carolina--did not necessarily have to win the regular season to get into the field; they were virtual locks to be invited. Believe it or not--5 colleges--Army, The Citadel,  Northwestern, St. Francis (Brooklyn) and William and Mary--have NEVER played in an NCAA tournament game (it appears that Northwestern just might break that streak this season). Many, many more colleges have long droughts from their last appearance in the field--Rutgers' 26 years without a return appearance pales in comparison to Dartmouth College's 57 year skein, and that was less than Harvard's 66 year wait  which ended in 2012.

     Along with the expansion of the NCAA field came a corresponding phenomenon. Post-season tournaments which guaranteed an automatic bid to the Dance. Before long, almost every conference held a post-season tournament to establish a winner of that coveted automatic bid. Colleges that did not win that event would be selected to at-large berths based upon complex analysis by a group of athletic directors holed up in a hotel, usually in Kansas City, who would ultimately determine the Championship participants.

     The bigger and better basketball conferences like the ACC, the Big East, the Big 10, the Southeastern Conference to cite a few, would receive multiple bids for their teams, while the "lesser" conferences like the MAAC or Northeast Conference or the Ivy and Patriot Leagues rarely if ever had two teams playing. For the latter schools, who normally played the power conference teams only in an in-season tournament or more likely at the home of the bigger school, had their secondary chances minimized. Those schools had to win a post-season conference tournament to attain an automatic bid. Thus--win and you're in; lose and you play elsewhere for a lot less prestige. Or you can join the rest of us and watch.

     The expansion of the NCAA men's field led to miraculous upsets like a Villanova team defeating a much more heralded Georgetown team; ditto N.C. State upsetting the University of Houston.  These lower seeded at-large teams which no one expected to win much at all and were in effect filling out the field, led to the coining of the nickname March Madness attaching to the NCAA's. Whether a 15 seeded team from the Atlantic Sun Conference could upset any Power 5 school or another lower-seeded school could epically have a Cinderella-like "march" to the title game during the month of March when the bulk of the games are played was good for viewer interest. (Illegal office pools sprung up everywhere, so people were betting in some form on teams to win).

     Seeing that ESPN television money could help a conference's revenue stream, almost every conference with the exception of the august Ivy League, held a conference championship tournament to designate the automatic bid to the NCAA's. Invariably, just like the Big Dance, the aforementioned Cinderella teams would emerge and run the gamut--some with overall losing records.  And now, capitulating to the way things are in college basketball, for the first time this year, the Ivy League will have the top four teams square off at the University of Pennsylvania's home floor, the venerable Palestra. Plus all of this is mirrored in microcosm for the women.

     But that kind of scenario resonated excitement, at least in the smaller, less powerful conferences. With the bigger conferences, the tournaments captured and captivated the big cities--the Big East Tournament is perennially in New York at the Garden to capacity crowds, or a locale like Las Vegas can end up holding 2 almost simultaneously. Tournaments became big moneymakers for the cities like New York; so much so that the Big 10 expansion to include Rutgers and Maryland to make inroads into the New York and D.C. markets has led to abandoning the normal, more geographically-centered sites of Chicago and Indianapolis to this year holding court in Washington and next year taking over Madison Square Garden AFTER the Big East concludes its business.

     I especially feel  for the bubble teams left out to play in marginal post-season tournaments led by the NIT, which was actually more prestigious than the NCAA's through 1950 when CCNY won both and then was exposed in a gambling sting which tainted New York basketball and kept the NCAA's out of the Garden. This is akin to the plethora of unnecessary bowl games in college football. How many games need to be played in one season--where does academics fit in anyway? I feel for the 1 and done conference schools too. There is no equity in big time college basketball.

     Nonetheless, as a prelude to the NCAA's,  I found myself rooting for Wichita State to win the Missouri Valley, which they did or to marvel at the wild heave to the basket by the St. Francis (PA) player which somehow went in at the buzzer to beat Wagner in the NEC tourney. I was hoping Monmouth could remain dominant in the MAAC but Siena capitalized on its home floor in Albany to upset the Hawks and imperil the Jersey Shore five's chance at an NCAA bid; that Princeton survives two games in Philadelphia; that Seton Hall plays like last year and upsets the Big East field again enroute to the Big East title; or that Rutgers emerges from the #14 seed garnered by finishing last in the Big 10 and knocks off a team or two. I want the UConn women and Hall of Fame Coach Geno Auriemma to beat all comers again, while maintaining their incredible streak of over 100 straight victories.

     We're in March Madness. As artificial a thing as can be--like it or not. It sure beats the boring repetitiveness of the NBA right now or exhibition baseball games. It is the precursor to warmer weather which baseball used to be. Just as Spring brings hope to us as we spend more time outdoors, so does tournament time act as an ingrained rite of passage between the seasons.

     I see a bevy of TV time ahead for us basketball junkies. For some, wives and children become secondary unless they too join in the craziness. We better buy plenty of provisions for the next month and fasten our seat belts, for the roller coaster ride has begun in earnest.