4-4 pending Auburn. Most alarming is that all four losses were to lower seeds. Jimmy Dykes must be depressed.
Glad to see it, hoping that it improves our chances of a great recruiring class. I can't root for those teams - never will. I do, however, have a soft spot for Kentucky due to family. My father in-law was a good friend with Cliff Hagan and I can't very well dis his friends school. So, the Cats are OK to me.
The Big 10 and the SEC by far with the worst showing in recent decades. All SEC teams lost to lower seeded teams. Only Arky remains. The issue is parity. When your conference is really good and you are a top seed, you will go far in the tourney. But if your conference sucks and you are a top seed, you are ripe for upsets. The issue for the SEC this year is once we all got into conference play, there went the benchmarks to knowing if the conference is any good. Bama played one OOC opponent after the conference schedule began and they beat then-#4 Baylor at home. Not bad. But Bama would go 5-6 from that point on before losing in the 1st round of the NCAA tourney. Interestingly, Bama peaked pounding us on the road. They were 11-3 at that point but would finish 8-11. So what about the rest of the conference? Arkansas - beat West Virginia 77-68 Auburn - beat Oklahoma 86-68 Florida - beat Oklahoma St 81-72 Georgia - no OOC games Kentucky - beat then #5 Kansas 80-62 LSU - lost TCU 77-68 Miss St - lost Texas Tech 76-50 Missouri - lost Iowa St 67-50 Ole Miss - beat Kansas St 67-56 SC - no OOC games Tennessee - lost @ Texas 52-51 TA&M - no OOC games Vandy - no OOC games Interesting. The SEC's lower half sucked given they didn't fare well all season even against equally bad OOC games. In many cases, some SEC teams didn't play any OOC games after the conference games started. I also notice we all played the same teams OOC except for Arkansas, which makes you wonder if that was why they are the only SEC team remaining. Outside of Kentucky and Bama playing ranked OOC games after the conference slate began, it made the SEC artificially good. It comes down to playing quality OOC games, and the SEC for the most part did not play any good teams. Proves the SEC had the most overrated teams in recent memory. I wonder if this may cause the committee to syphon a few games away from us next season? Give a mid-major a chance.
Arkansas is left, yes. But they've only survived a 12 and 13 seeded teams. Granted, some weren't able to even do that... I think the SEC was a legit conference this year though. The tournament is pretty random and the SEC tends to have good showings. I wonder if this year is more of a fluke. Looking back, UK and Auburn clearly weren't playing their best basketball over the last month or two of the season (call it peaked early or whatever). Bama was incredibly inconsistent all year.
I remember a comment years ago when parity really started to become more and more widespread. Something to the effect that parity is good but randomness is not. Seems like we are heading for randomness more and more each year.
I hope you havent been listening to the crowing by Finebaum et al (including people here) about how great Oates is when they finished the year no better than the Gators with the talent he has. I can understand Finebaum and the Alabama connection but here? Oh boy.
Auburn was over seeded. They shouldn’t have been a 2. LSU was way way way over seeded. They weren’t playing well and then they lost their coach. They were DOA Other than that the seeds were fair. TAMU should have gotten in
Simply a dismal showing all the way around for the SEC but for Arky. Losing Quinerly doomed Bama, but they weren’t Sweet 16 material at the end of the year.
Parity brings randomness. The NCAA tournament crowns a national champion, but very often doesn't confer it on the best team. I can say that in 2007 it did as a fact. In 2006 we had some good luck go our way and we took advantage. When you look at football, basketball and baseball in football the better team (taking into account home field advantage in all three) almost always wins, in basketball odds favor the better team, in baseball even after a 162 game schedule the better team doesn't always prevail. Does anyone not a Duke fan actually think that Duke was a better team than UNLV in 1991? Yes, they did win a close game but that doesn't prove that they were better. They just had luck on their side for one 2-point game. And does anyone think that NC State in 1983 was the best college basketball team? Or the Villanova team that won it all as an 8 seed? The NCAA tournament is random. You have to be good and lucky to win it. The better you are the less luck you need. Expanding the field has more to do with the randomness than anything. Shrink it back to 16 teams like the old (but not good) days and there would be a lot less randomness.
I don’t want to hijack the thread but this is why an expanded MLB playoff AND a 162 game season make no sense. After 162 games, the best have risen and you need a tiny tournament. In college basketball, you have 300 teams. A 36 game schedule doesn’t provide us with the data we need to pick a 16 team tourney. You need a bunch of spots because of uncertainty in quality. But as you state, a single elimination tournament which is both big and has parity will generate lots of randomness.
I believe that the "portal" has made parity the thing of the past, particularly if you can transfer once without having to sit a year. That said, I was shocked that Kentucky, with two significant transfers, lost to St Peters.
