Christ, I hope not. I suppose Michigan State snuck their way in by never beating a seed better than 4, but Butler has beaten a 1- and a 2-seed and deserves not to have the schedule rearranged to screw them.
Brendan Loy
Oh, they can’t reseed it this year. But this is one of those Final Fours that will, like 1996 and to a lesser extent 2002, cause some people to say the F4 should be reseeded in the future to assure the two best surviving teams can meet in the final.
Re-seeding prior to the Final Four is an implicit admission that the seedings weren’t done properly at the outset. Re-seeding the Final Four totally demeans the glory of cutting down the nets after winning your region. Commentators have always said that, once you get to the Final Four, any team can win it all. Re-seeding the Final Four tells the underdog teams who won their regions fair and square, “You’re not meant to be here, and we wish to hasten your exit”. For a tournament, nothing could be further from the ideal of fair competition than that.
Brendan Loy
While I agree with your second point, I don’t follow your first one: how is reseeding (or rather rebracketing, which is what advocates of “reseeding” really mean) “an implicit admission that the seedings weren’t done properly at the outset”? The fact that all the heavyweights on the left side of the bracket — Kansas, Syracuse, Ohio State, Kansas State, Georgetown, Pitt, etc. — were upset, doesn’t mean that Michigan State and Butler (and Northern Iowa and Tennessee etc. etc.) should’ve been seeded ahead of those teams. It just means they lost. Whereas two heavyweights on the other side survived. It’s just a quirk that it worked out that way, unlike other upset-laden years where the surviving heavyweights happen to be on opposite sides of the bracket (see, e.g., 2005). Rebracketing the Final Four so that the top two remaining seeds play the bottom two remaining seeds in the semifinals wouldn’t be an admission that, say, Kansas and Syracuse were improperly seeded. Obviously those teams deserved their #1 seeds. But they lost. Rebracketing would simply re-adjust for that reality.
But, as I said, I strongly oppose the idea, for the reasons you stated subsequently (and most of all for the reason noted by Brandon). I’m just nitpicking the first part of your argument.
Brendan Loy
As an aside, there were problems with “seeding at the outset,” though rebracketing doesn’t say anything about those problems one way or the other. For instance, Cornell was much better than a #12, and Temple was much better than a #5 — the pairing of those teams in the first round was a miscarriage of justice. Northern Iowa was also better than a #9; Kansas shouldn’t have had to play such a good team in the second round. Whereas upsets do not necessarily mean the seeding was wrong, the runs by the Panthers and Big Red are examples of where you actually can draw a straight line from bad seeding to upsets. (In other cases, hwoever, bad seeding can make upsets less likely, like when good teams are unfairly placed in #14 or #15 line while bad teams are placed on the #12 and #13 lines.)
Perhaps the biggest seeding problem, in terms of ultimate tournament outcome, is that Kentucky should never have had to play West Virginia in a regional final. Kentucky was the #2 overall seed, and WVU was, by universal acclamation, the best two-seed in the field. So WVU should’ve been paired with Syracuse or Duke, not UK. It’s a quirk of fate that UK and WVU were the only 1-2 pair to advance to the Elite Eight for the expected showdown. But it’s by no means a quirk that UK faced a tougher opponent in the regional final than it “earned” the right to face, based on its regular season performance. That is a direct result of bad seeding, or rather bad bracketing, by the committee, putting regional claptrap ahead of honoring the S-curve, which would be the top priority when dealing with the top 2 or 3 seed lines. It’s grossly unfair to Kentucky that Duke, the weakest or second-weakest of the #1s, got Villanova, the weakest of the #2s, in its region (and surprise surprise, the Wildcats lost early, opening up the region for the Dookies), while Kentucky, the second-strongest of the #1s, got the strongest #2. And, again surprise surprise, Duke made the Final Four and WVU didn’t.
I think you misunderstood me, or perhaps I was not clear. What I meant was that re-seeding any round of the tournament prior to the Final Four (i.e., re-seeding the Round of 32, the Sweet Sixteen, or the Elite Eight) is a tacit admission that the original seeding was done improperly. This same logic does not apply to re-seeding the Final Four, but I provided other reasons why that is not an acceptable idea.
Brendan Loy
Ah, I see what you’re saying. I still don’t necessarily agree with you — suppose, for instance, you reseeded the Midwest Region after the first round, with #14 Ohio as (essentially) the new #8 seed; would this really imply that the committee was “wrong” in seeding Ohio so low in the first place? Or would it simply be a recognition that Ohio is a the lowest-seeded team that won a game? — but certainly reseeding at that level is unthinkable, for a variety of reasons, regardless of any nitpicking I might do with regard to your logic. 🙂
P.S. Such reseeding, or rather rebracketing, would look like this:
1 Kansas vs. 14 Ohio
5 Michigan State vs. 6 Tennessee
2 Ohio State vs. 10 Georgia Tech
4 Maryland vs. 9 Northern Iowa
And then suppose Kansas, MSU, tOSU and Northern Iowa win. Re-bracket again, and you end up with…
1 Kansas vs. 9 Northern Iowa
2 Ohio State vs. 5 Michigan State
Yuck. Though at least the Panthers still get their shot at Kansas, just one round later. 🙂
Regions are stand-alone bracket-units. If you re-seed every round to force the lowest seed to play the highest seed, that’s not too dissimilar to what the NFL playoffs do albeit on a much smaller scale. But the difference is, with a playoff, the teams themselves control their playoff seeding by their regular season performance; in a tournament, seeding is the product of a selection committee, taking into account regular season performance, conference tournament performance, and strength of schedule. The committee should make one attempt at the outset to seed as fairly as possible, then stand back and let the results sort themselves out on the basketball court. Furthermore, the seeding structure is designed to give the higher seeds built-in advantages (e.g., the 1 seed will play either an 8 or 9 seed in the second round, a 4 seed or worse in the Sweet Sixteen; and only then the 2 or 3 seed or worse). If 10 seeds are beating 7 seeds and 2 seeds and 3 seeds, that’s just a sign that the team probably weren’t seeded properly, not that the brackets should be redone.
Brendan Loy
“If 10 seeds are beating 7 seeds and 2 seeds and 3 seeds, that’s just a sign that the team probably weren’t seeded properly…”
See, this is where I disagree with you. There are certainly instances where this is true, but on its face, the fact that Team A upsets Team B doesn’t mean that they were seeded incorrectly. Was Hampton better than Iowa State in 2001? Was Ohio, the ninth-place team in the MAC, better than Georgetown this year? Of course not. But on any given day, any given team, blah blah blah. Upsets happen; an abundance of them doesn’t necessarily mean “the committee messed up,” and an absence of them doesn’t necessarily mean “the committee did a good job.” (This is a pet peeve of mine.)
Indeed, like I said earlier, poor seeding can sometimes lead to a dearth of first-round upsets, like a couple of years ago when Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, which would’ve been a real threat on the #12 or #13 line, was unfairly saddled with a #15 seed, and thus had to play a far better opponent than it “should” have, and lost a close game — while, at the same time, a weak Albany team was, for no apparent reason, given a #13 seed, and proceeded to predictably get slaughtered, where a “true” #13 seed (like TAMU-CC, perhaps?) might have had a chance to pull an upset. Mind you, I was making these gripes before the games were played. Those teams (and several others in recent years’ brackets) were the victims of gross seeding errors, and the result was not too many upsets, but rather not enough upsets, because the teams whose regular-season performance had shown their giant-killing potential weren’t seeded in such a way to realize that potential.
This year, Cornell is probably the best example of a badly underseeded team “proving the committee wrong.” Wisconsin and Temple (which was itself grossly underseeded, adding insult to injury) paid the price for that error. You can also argue that Kansas paid the price for Northern Iowa being underseeded. (Not that UNI deserved to be seeded anywhere near Kansas’s level, obviously, but they probably should have been more like a #6 or #7 seed, so Kansas wouldn’t have had to play them until much later.) On the other hand, I don’t think that St. Mary’s was necessarily underseeded, for instance. They were properly seeded, give or take, given their regular season performance; they just rose to the occasion on the opening weekend. Similarly, Butler was seeded correctly: their victories over #1 Syracuse and #2 Kansas State don’t somehow imply that they should have been higher than a #5 seed based on their regular-season performance. They were seeded correctly, then played their best basketball of the season at the best possible time, and voila, they’re in the Final Four. It’s not like Butler “should” have been a #1 seed! Upsets are not necessarily damning of the committee’s work, and chalky brackets are not necessarily vindications of the committee. The two things are just distinct analytical questions.
You apparently chose to ignore my qualifiers “a sign” and “probably”.
A 13 over a 4 is an upset. A 13 in the Sweet Sixteen indicates that a couple teams probably weren’t seeded correctly.
Butler, Michigan State, and Tennessee are great examples of teams that have won deep into the tournament but nonetheless are reflective of their seed. They have not blown out their opponents; the games have been tight and could have gone either way.
On the other hand, Washington is a good example of a team that was underseeded. Looking at the Pac-10’s performance this year and the RPI, sure, they were not a glamorous team, but the Pomeroy stats suggested they should have been an 8 or 9 seed, not an 11.
In any case, the crux of my argument is that the very setup of the tournament seeding process is a built-in advantage that gives an edge to the top-seeded teams, and re-seeding is an undeserved multiplication of that advantage. Re-seeding is barely more fair to the rest of the field than doing away with the first two rounds in their entirety and starting with 16 teams instead of 64.
Duke 78, Baylor 71, final. Commence the “reseed the Final Four” bitching. #partylikeits1996
Christ, I hope not. I suppose Michigan State snuck their way in by never beating a seed better than 4, but Butler has beaten a 1- and a 2-seed and deserves not to have the schedule rearranged to screw them.
Oh, they can’t reseed it this year. But this is one of those Final Fours that will, like 1996 and to a lesser extent 2002, cause some people to say the F4 should be reseeded in the future to assure the two best surviving teams can meet in the final.
Reseeding has some merit in some situations . . . but not the Final Four. The sheer weirdness of this tourney is what makes it so fun!
Plus, if we reseeded the Final Four, we couldn’t do brackets anymore! And what kind of fascist America is that?
Re-seeding prior to the Final Four is an implicit admission that the seedings weren’t done properly at the outset. Re-seeding the Final Four totally demeans the glory of cutting down the nets after winning your region. Commentators have always said that, once you get to the Final Four, any team can win it all. Re-seeding the Final Four tells the underdog teams who won their regions fair and square, “You’re not meant to be here, and we wish to hasten your exit”. For a tournament, nothing could be further from the ideal of fair competition than that.
While I agree with your second point, I don’t follow your first one: how is reseeding (or rather rebracketing, which is what advocates of “reseeding” really mean) “an implicit admission that the seedings weren’t done properly at the outset”? The fact that all the heavyweights on the left side of the bracket — Kansas, Syracuse, Ohio State, Kansas State, Georgetown, Pitt, etc. — were upset, doesn’t mean that Michigan State and Butler (and Northern Iowa and Tennessee etc. etc.) should’ve been seeded ahead of those teams. It just means they lost. Whereas two heavyweights on the other side survived. It’s just a quirk that it worked out that way, unlike other upset-laden years where the surviving heavyweights happen to be on opposite sides of the bracket (see, e.g., 2005). Rebracketing the Final Four so that the top two remaining seeds play the bottom two remaining seeds in the semifinals wouldn’t be an admission that, say, Kansas and Syracuse were improperly seeded. Obviously those teams deserved their #1 seeds. But they lost. Rebracketing would simply re-adjust for that reality.
But, as I said, I strongly oppose the idea, for the reasons you stated subsequently (and most of all for the reason noted by Brandon). I’m just nitpicking the first part of your argument.
As an aside, there were problems with “seeding at the outset,” though rebracketing doesn’t say anything about those problems one way or the other. For instance, Cornell was much better than a #12, and Temple was much better than a #5 — the pairing of those teams in the first round was a miscarriage of justice. Northern Iowa was also better than a #9; Kansas shouldn’t have had to play such a good team in the second round. Whereas upsets do not necessarily mean the seeding was wrong, the runs by the Panthers and Big Red are examples of where you actually can draw a straight line from bad seeding to upsets. (In other cases, hwoever, bad seeding can make upsets less likely, like when good teams are unfairly placed in #14 or #15 line while bad teams are placed on the #12 and #13 lines.)
Perhaps the biggest seeding problem, in terms of ultimate tournament outcome, is that Kentucky should never have had to play West Virginia in a regional final. Kentucky was the #2 overall seed, and WVU was, by universal acclamation, the best two-seed in the field. So WVU should’ve been paired with Syracuse or Duke, not UK. It’s a quirk of fate that UK and WVU were the only 1-2 pair to advance to the Elite Eight for the expected showdown. But it’s by no means a quirk that UK faced a tougher opponent in the regional final than it “earned” the right to face, based on its regular season performance. That is a direct result of bad seeding, or rather bad bracketing, by the committee, putting regional claptrap ahead of honoring the S-curve, which would be the top priority when dealing with the top 2 or 3 seed lines. It’s grossly unfair to Kentucky that Duke, the weakest or second-weakest of the #1s, got Villanova, the weakest of the #2s, in its region (and surprise surprise, the Wildcats lost early, opening up the region for the Dookies), while Kentucky, the second-strongest of the #1s, got the strongest #2. And, again surprise surprise, Duke made the Final Four and WVU didn’t.
I think you misunderstood me, or perhaps I was not clear. What I meant was that re-seeding any round of the tournament prior to the Final Four (i.e., re-seeding the Round of 32, the Sweet Sixteen, or the Elite Eight) is a tacit admission that the original seeding was done improperly. This same logic does not apply to re-seeding the Final Four, but I provided other reasons why that is not an acceptable idea.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. I still don’t necessarily agree with you — suppose, for instance, you reseeded the Midwest Region after the first round, with #14 Ohio as (essentially) the new #8 seed; would this really imply that the committee was “wrong” in seeding Ohio so low in the first place? Or would it simply be a recognition that Ohio is a the lowest-seeded team that won a game? — but certainly reseeding at that level is unthinkable, for a variety of reasons, regardless of any nitpicking I might do with regard to your logic. 🙂
P.S. Such reseeding, or rather rebracketing, would look like this:
1 Kansas vs. 14 Ohio
5 Michigan State vs. 6 Tennessee
2 Ohio State vs. 10 Georgia Tech
4 Maryland vs. 9 Northern Iowa
And then suppose Kansas, MSU, tOSU and Northern Iowa win. Re-bracket again, and you end up with…
1 Kansas vs. 9 Northern Iowa
2 Ohio State vs. 5 Michigan State
Yuck. Though at least the Panthers still get their shot at Kansas, just one round later. 🙂
Regions are stand-alone bracket-units. If you re-seed every round to force the lowest seed to play the highest seed, that’s not too dissimilar to what the NFL playoffs do albeit on a much smaller scale. But the difference is, with a playoff, the teams themselves control their playoff seeding by their regular season performance; in a tournament, seeding is the product of a selection committee, taking into account regular season performance, conference tournament performance, and strength of schedule. The committee should make one attempt at the outset to seed as fairly as possible, then stand back and let the results sort themselves out on the basketball court. Furthermore, the seeding structure is designed to give the higher seeds built-in advantages (e.g., the 1 seed will play either an 8 or 9 seed in the second round, a 4 seed or worse in the Sweet Sixteen; and only then the 2 or 3 seed or worse). If 10 seeds are beating 7 seeds and 2 seeds and 3 seeds, that’s just a sign that the team probably weren’t seeded properly, not that the brackets should be redone.
“If 10 seeds are beating 7 seeds and 2 seeds and 3 seeds, that’s just a sign that the team probably weren’t seeded properly…”
See, this is where I disagree with you. There are certainly instances where this is true, but on its face, the fact that Team A upsets Team B doesn’t mean that they were seeded incorrectly. Was Hampton better than Iowa State in 2001? Was Ohio, the ninth-place team in the MAC, better than Georgetown this year? Of course not. But on any given day, any given team, blah blah blah. Upsets happen; an abundance of them doesn’t necessarily mean “the committee messed up,” and an absence of them doesn’t necessarily mean “the committee did a good job.” (This is a pet peeve of mine.)
Indeed, like I said earlier, poor seeding can sometimes lead to a dearth of first-round upsets, like a couple of years ago when Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, which would’ve been a real threat on the #12 or #13 line, was unfairly saddled with a #15 seed, and thus had to play a far better opponent than it “should” have, and lost a close game — while, at the same time, a weak Albany team was, for no apparent reason, given a #13 seed, and proceeded to predictably get slaughtered, where a “true” #13 seed (like TAMU-CC, perhaps?) might have had a chance to pull an upset. Mind you, I was making these gripes before the games were played. Those teams (and several others in recent years’ brackets) were the victims of gross seeding errors, and the result was not too many upsets, but rather not enough upsets, because the teams whose regular-season performance had shown their giant-killing potential weren’t seeded in such a way to realize that potential.
This year, Cornell is probably the best example of a badly underseeded team “proving the committee wrong.” Wisconsin and Temple (which was itself grossly underseeded, adding insult to injury) paid the price for that error. You can also argue that Kansas paid the price for Northern Iowa being underseeded. (Not that UNI deserved to be seeded anywhere near Kansas’s level, obviously, but they probably should have been more like a #6 or #7 seed, so Kansas wouldn’t have had to play them until much later.) On the other hand, I don’t think that St. Mary’s was necessarily underseeded, for instance. They were properly seeded, give or take, given their regular season performance; they just rose to the occasion on the opening weekend. Similarly, Butler was seeded correctly: their victories over #1 Syracuse and #2 Kansas State don’t somehow imply that they should have been higher than a #5 seed based on their regular-season performance. They were seeded correctly, then played their best basketball of the season at the best possible time, and voila, they’re in the Final Four. It’s not like Butler “should” have been a #1 seed! Upsets are not necessarily damning of the committee’s work, and chalky brackets are not necessarily vindications of the committee. The two things are just distinct analytical questions.
You apparently chose to ignore my qualifiers “a sign” and “probably”.
A 13 over a 4 is an upset. A 13 in the Sweet Sixteen indicates that a couple teams probably weren’t seeded correctly.
Butler, Michigan State, and Tennessee are great examples of teams that have won deep into the tournament but nonetheless are reflective of their seed. They have not blown out their opponents; the games have been tight and could have gone either way.
On the other hand, Washington is a good example of a team that was underseeded. Looking at the Pac-10’s performance this year and the RPI, sure, they were not a glamorous team, but the Pomeroy stats suggested they should have been an 8 or 9 seed, not an 11.
In any case, the crux of my argument is that the very setup of the tournament seeding process is a built-in advantage that gives an edge to the top-seeded teams, and re-seeding is an undeserved multiplication of that advantage. Re-seeding is barely more fair to the rest of the field than doing away with the first two rounds in their entirety and starting with 16 teams instead of 64.