I don’t know if you heard, but the UConn men recently won a little something we call March Madness. Or the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship if you have no interest in fun. While the title game itself has been generally regarded as a bust—I choose to characterize it as a master class on defense—it is generally agreed that this year was one of the more thrilling tourneys in history.
This, of course, means we must destroy it!
Before we get too far into this debate, can we all just agree that this fella here is the most adorable mascot ever?
I’m not talking about the idea of 96 teams…although for the record I think that is an atrocious idea that will achieve approximately nothing of any worth besides a longer tournament. What I refer to is this idea that the NCAA tourney crowns a champion, but not the best basketball team in the country. And to this I say…and?
Look, I don’t think there is any championship system in any sport anywhere that actually determines the “best” team.
(Before you say it, yes, college football is different. I also believe most people seem to hate the BCS system so I’m not sure that’s great evidence. And even then, there is often debate about whether or not Team A got snubbed or Team B was overvalued.)
They are all susceptible to teams getting hot at key moments and beating arguably “better” teams because of it. It happened with the Texas Rangers and the San Francisco Giants reaching the World Series last year. It happened with the Boston Celtics who made the NBA Finals last year after a mediocre regular season and came within a quarter of winning it all. In the 2007-2008 NFL Season, the New York Giants barely made the playoffs. As of Week 12, they were left for dead. But by the time the end of Super Bowl XLII rolled around, they had defeated the undefeated (until then) New England Patriots. Long story slightly shorter, this is not unique to college hoops.
It also demonstrates that the solution of a “best of” playoff is not much of a solution at all. Not only would it suck the immediacy out of the current system of the NCAA Championships, but it still doesn’t guarantee anything. Best of’s may more often favor the better team, but upsets still occur with more than “once in a blue moon” timing. The Rangers, the SF Giants, and the Celtics, all mentioned above, had to battle through Best of-series to make their stories a reality.
Since 2001, the team with the best regular season record in baseball has won three times. Of those three, only the Yankees in 2009 beat a team with the team with the best record from the other league. The other two beat the wild card teams. In 2001, the Mariners, with one of the best records of all time, failed to even make the World Series. In 2002-2004, wild cards won each year. In 2006, a team from the NL, the St Louis Cardinals, had 12 less wins than their opponents, the AL Wild Card Tigers, and beat them. And you get the idea. You get similar results in the NBA, with the team with the best record winning only once, the team with the overall best record failing to make it twice, and the two best record teams (from the West and East) missing the Finals entirely three times.
Yes, I know the best record does not necessarily indicate the “best.” However, the moment you make that argument, the best becomes subjective and voila! We are right back to not being able to name a definitive best. And if best record does determine the best team, why bother with playoffs at all?
My bigger question, though, is this: does it matter? Does it really matter to you if UConn are “just” this year’s champions? If the New York Giants are “just” the champions of Super Bowl XLII? What about knowing the “best” is more satisfying than knowing the champions? There are many ways of crunching numbers to determine the best teams, there are many opinions…there is nothing definitive there either. So what is so wrong with appreciating a champion who came on strong, who defied the odds, who beat “better” teams at the right moment? Do we really need the best when we can have champions?
I personally would like to see the NCAA tournament return to 64 teams, and if anyone expands, it is the NIT.
In fact, I’d like to see college basketball set up a system like the brits use for socceer.
Have a Premier division. this would be comprised of say, the best 100 teams in the country. Every year, the bottom 10 teams would be relegated down. The top 64 teams in the priemer division would play in the NCAA tournament.
The second division would be comprised of the next 100 best teams in the country. The top ten teams would regulate up. The bottom ten teams would regulate down. The top 28 teams (or more if you expand the NIT) would compete against the bottom 36 teams from the premier division in the NIT.
Thus theoretically, if a division three school got a great group of freshmen in, who kept succeeding and stayed together, when they were seniors they could play for the national championship.
As long as we acknolwedge that the winner of the NCAA Tournament is just that, the winner of the tournament it would be one thing. But we don’t. UConn got voted as the #1 team in the post tourney polls. Even though it was obvious to anyone who followed basketball that they WEREN’T the best team overall.
The problem with the BCS is not that the Champion isn’t arguably one of the few best teams in the country, actually the BCS does a great job of pitting two very deserving teams against each other. The problem with the BCS is that it pits ONLY two of the deserving teams against each other when there are arguably a few more in any given year.
The problem with the NCAA’s is that the Champion, as is the case this year is easily NOT a team that you could have picked at the end of the season and said “yeah, they deserve a shot at the title”.
There are ways to improve both systems. For the BCS expand the field of potentially champions from two, to four or at most eight. For the NCAA’s I think 64 is too big, but 32 is too small and they are unlikely to drop down to an interim number like 48. So how do you fix the field of 64? Well you place limits on the number of teams from a given conference for example. Also, do away with conference tournaments, or atleast do away with the auto bid going to the tourney champ. Giving the bid to the tourney champ is actually a good way for conferences like the Big East to get in more teams. How? A great team who happens to lose in the conference tourney is still a likely at large pick. On the other hand, if you had only say, 3 slots at most for teams from your conference you might be incentivized to choose the regular season champ as your auto selection to increase your chances of winning the tourney.
David, your propositions make no sense. If UConn’s run through the Big East and NCAA tournaments failed to cement them as the best team in college basketball, how does reducing the NCAA tourney to 48 or even 32 teams fix that? With UConn being a 3 seed, that means they were somewhere in the 9 to 12 slot going into the tournament, and you’re saying that six consecutive victories thereafter still doesn’t convince you. Then what’s your answer — an 8-team tournament and UConn is on the outside looking in? If anything, you as a mathematician should know that the larger the tournament, and henceforth the more number of games that must be won to reach the final, will increase the statistical probabilities that a worthy champion will be crowned. The same logic tells us why it’s a lot easier for an 8 seed to upset the 1 seed in NHL or NBA playoffs in a best-of-five series vs. a best-of-seven series. Thus, logic dictates that if UConn is a questionable “best” team, expanding the NCAA tourney to fit more teams — not less — is the mathematician’s answer to the problem.
UConn finished in the bottom half of its conference, how can you call them the best team in the country when they weren’t even in the top HALF of their conference? Yeah they finished strong, but then those loses and struggles early ni the season, when other teams were doing well mean nothing?
And how do you know UConn would have been in a smaller tournament? Especially if the auto bid goes to the conference champ not the conference tourney champ?
Ohio State was 34-3 but because one of those losses ( by 2 points) happened to come at the end of the season they were out of consideration for the best team.
One of the arguments for a tournament is that you are winning on the court right? Well UConn lost to Notre Dame. TWICE. They lost to Louisville. TWICE. Why doesn’t that matter once the tournament starts?
And heck, did you even watch that last game? Did UConn REALLY look like the best team in the country that night?
Also, you don’t even need to reduce the tournament to 8 teams to leave UConn out, as I said if you limit each conference to 2-3 teams UConn would have been on the Bubble as Pitt and ND were higher seeds at 1 and 2, and Syracuse was a 3, plus Louisville at 4 might have been a choice to go in especially since, as I mentioned they beat the Huskies. Twice.
There’s a lot to criticize here, but I’m going to stick with one key point. You know I love the mid-majors, David, but limiting each conference to 2-3 teams while maintaining a 64-team tournament, is ridiculous and nonsensical, full stop. How the Hell are you going to fill out a 64-team tournament with a maximum of 18 BCS teams? Does the Big Sky get 2 bids? The Sun Belt 3? C’mon now. Even DU Bally thinks that’s silly. Not to mention, by drastically reducing the quality of the field (by keeping out many teams that are better than teams you’re letting in, simply because they play in conferences with other good teams), you make it EASIER for mediocre teams to reach the later rounds, since they’ll be playing weaker teams in the opening weekend. No, no, no. This makes no sense at all.
Okay, one more point. David, you write:
As long as we acknolwedge that the winner of the NCAA Tournament is just that, the winner of the tournament it would be one thing. But we don’t. UConn got voted as the #1 team in the post tourney polls.
I agree with this — UConn should not have been voted the #1 team in the post-tourney polls. It should have been Kansas or Ohio State. But who the Hell cares about post-tourney polls? The voters clearly felt obligated in some weird way to vote for UConn, and that was wrong and dumb. How does voters being wrong and dumb justify reforming the NCAA Tournament? We all know, don’t we, that UConn isn’t really the “best team”? You could ask 100 basketball fans this question and I can’t imagine that more than 10 would say they really believe UConn is the best team in the country (and 5 of those 10 would be from Connecticut, 4 would be fans of other Big East teams, and 1 would be a confused women’s basketball fan). You’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Everybody already knows UConn is “merely” the national champion and not truly the “best team.” The pollsters got it wrong; so what? Their crowning UConn as #1 (and Butler #2, VCU #6, etc.) is a fiction; we all know that. And anyway, it profoundly doesn’t matter.
“As long as we acknolwedge that the winner of the NCAA Tournament is just that, the winner of the tournament it would be one thing. But we don’t.” Yes, we do. So that settles that. No need for further reform.
I agree with this — UConn should not have been voted the #1 team in the post-tourney polls. It should have been Kansas or Ohio State.
I don’t see how you come to that conclusion. To me, UConn gelling late in the year and going undefeated through the Big East and NCAA tournaments solidifies them as the best team IMO. Kansas and Ohio State clearly had better records, but when push came to shove, they had glaring weaknesses (OSU: depth and inexperience; Kansas: inconsistency and questionable coaching) that toppled them.
College basketball is fundamentally different from college football in that the latter requires you to take into account the whole season due to the limited number of games and the lack of a playoff. The former has a lot more games, and the much higher player turnover in college basketball implies that a team in the second half of the season and the tournaments may be a very different team than you see in the first half of the season — they might be the same players but they become a different team as the kids mature together. Then a good chunk of your rotation graduates or goes pro and the cycle starts all over again the following year.
Put another way: If we could assume the entire roster of every team was coming back for next year, who would you vote for Preseason #1? My vote would go to UConn. Would you really vote Ohio State or Kansas ahead of UConn going into next year if you knew all three rosters would be fundamentally the same?
Yes, I’d vote Ohio State higher. They lost by TWO POINTS to lose their third game of the entire season. They showed the ability to play consistently well but because they lost one of those three games in the tourney that was it, no chance to adjust or move on. UConn couldn’t come near that level of consistency for the whole season, I doubt they could do it again.
How many games did UConn win on a neutral court, with the stakes increasingly higher and higher? Compare that to Ohio State’s record. UConn increasingly got better on offense and defense, and their bench was more and more a strength as the year went on. Ohio State had a limited rotation and Sullinger was effective almost right away; I see little likelihood the young Buckeyes would have improved at the trajectory that UConn’s players improved over the latter half of the season.
To me, UConn would be my preseason #1, followed by Ohio State, Kansas, and Duke in coin-flip order.
Ohio State did nearly as well, they won their conference tourney and advanced deeply in the NCAA’s, a mere two points away from going further. UConn was two points away from losing to Arizona. Flip those two scores and are you still saying UConn is clearly the #1 team in the country last season?
Ohio State was better from start to finish than UConn, and there were other teams that could make that argument too, the only difference is that UConn lost a bunch of games when losing didn’t mean you were out.
the only difference is that UConn lost a bunch of games when losing didn’t mean you were out.
LOL … in other words, the only difference is that UConn was the better team when the stakes were highest and it had to win…
If the regular season is going to be trivial, why not just move to a giagantic tournament instead? I’m more impressed by a team that wins consistently throughout the season than one that only picks up at the end.
The regular season isn’t trivial, it’s just … well, regular. I’m more impressed by a team that wins in the clutch. That is the essence of any competition, really.
Many teams view the regular season in much the same way that NFL teams view the pre-season.
Or more accurately, the point of the season is to become eligible for the postseason, which is what really matters. I don’t see why this is a big deal. If the Oklahoma City Thunder win the NBA championship, is David really going to complain that they are not the best team in the NBA because the Bulls, Celtics, Heat, Spurs, Mavericks, and Lakers all had better records?
Every game should matter. If a team loses by 1 point at the buzzer in the final four after going undefeated, and the team that wins comes in to the tournament with 10 losses you are saying that the 10 loss team is better? Really?
I’m not saying ti should all be decided by win/loss record, but it shouldn’t all be decided by a wide open tournament either.
I’m not saying ti should all be decided by win/loss record, but it shouldn’t all be decided by a wide open tournament either.
Uuhhmm….isn’t that the whole point of having the tournament?
If a team loses by 1 point at the buzzer in the final four after going undefeated, and the team that wins comes in to the tournament with 10 losses you are saying that the 10 loss team is better? Really?
It completely depends on how that 10-loss team did in the tournament — who they beat, how they won, etc. In any case, of course if you draw an extreme comparison, you can say that team X that didn’t win the tournament is the best team, vs. team Y that did win the tournament… but this scenario does not apply well to OSU and UConn. We are not debating hypotheticals, we are debating UConn and OSU, and to me, UConn’s run through the Big East and NCAA tournaments was more impressive than OSU’s entire resume.
Yeah that final game was extremely impressive…