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.
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.
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