To go further into the argument I posted a week ago about college basketball becoming a knee jerk industry, lets analyze Eamon Brennan of ESPN's, Bubble Watch. You can see it here:
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bubblewatch
The way I figure it is as follows, please correct me if I'm wrong, because I did poorly in Fundamental Math in undergrad where we learned to count disparate elements.
Brennan lists eight distinct conferences. At the end, he lists "others," and includes teams from five other conferences: Utah State (WAC), UAB (CUsa), Butler (Horizon), ODU, Mason (CAA), and Gonzaga, St Marys (WCC).
He lists thirteen conferences in total. By this logic, he is assuming that any other conference will be a one bid league......and I agree with this - although this definitively eliminates Missouri State.
So thirteen conferences = 13 auto bids. Lets now assume (somewhat big assumption here), that the conference champions of each conferecne come from either a team that is listed as a lock, should be in, or work left to do category on Brennan's list. This is and isn't a big stretch. The teams that can possibly, even remotely, slimly destroy this are:
ACC: Maryland, Miami
Big East: No one
Big10: Penn State
Big12: Baylor
Pac10: Cal, Wash State
SEC: No ONe
MWC: NEw Mexico, Colorado State
A10: Dayton
CUSA: A lot of teams
Horizon: Decided tonight, Milwaukee
WAC: Idaho?
and the WCC, and CAA are done.
Now, keep in mind that the teams I listed above all have less than a 10% chance of winning their tournament. Further more, they all NEED to win. Odds are that one of them wins.
Getting back though, Between the 13 auto bids these 13 conferences get, and 37 at-large bids for the NCAA tournament, we are looking at 50 bids. How many teams does Brennan have listed? He has 53 listed. Now lets aim high, and say that 3 teams from the above list win the tournament, come out of no where, and steal a bid. That gives us 56. So six teams are in danger. Or should be. SIX. Is that a lot? FUCK NO. But, how many of the 53 teams of Brennan's does he have at work left to do, or should be in status? ---- 19. Come on. You would think that with 2-3 games left, we could pare it down a little bit more. Brennan has 19 people as in limbo, and were talking at MAX, 6 should be in limbo. Theres no harm in assigning some of the other teams lock status. Make a prediction already.
Why all the drama? Well, if theres more uncertainty, theres more likelihood youll watch this week, obviously. Otherwise, you wouldnt watch Boston College Wake Forest.
Lunardi actually did this math on his own, and came up with a different number than me. He has 10 openings in his bubble, and 22 teams competing for them. This is even worse. Above, I said there are at most 3 spots in limbo, and with every bid steal, it goes up. Lunardi has it at 10 though. 22 looking to qualify. Let me put this as clear as I can.
With 5 days left in the season, in no way, should there be 22 teams still competing for 10 spots.
Each of these teams will realistically play 1-2 more games, out of a total of 30 games. This week comprises 3-6% of their total schedule. It should not be more than that. It shouldnt be a 50-50 game that decides their fate. We should have a very good understanding of who is in and who is out at this point. Not 22 for 10. More like, as I was saying earlier, 7 for 3.
The longer this goes on, the more excitement it causes, the more drama, the more ratings. That, I can understand to a certain degree. Because after all, ESPN doesnt determine who is in the tournament. Some committee of unknowns does. So, maybe this committee is confident on who they are going to select. But, if they're not, this is a problem.
Let's say that BC, Colorado, and Michigan were all on the bubble.......oh wait, they are? What a coincidence. Lets look at who they have this week, along with their RPI rank (ill use it just cause theyll use it):
BC (43) plays Wake Forest (255)
Colorado (76) plays Iowa State (124)
Michigan (55) plays Illinois (38).
So, it is clear that Michigan plays a much tougher opponent than BC and Colorado. Furthermore, if Michigan were to win, they would in all likelihood have to play Ohio State, who is #2 in RPI, #1 in the rest of the universe, (Kansas is #1 in RPI). So why would Michigan get penalized. If these games in the final week are for some reason more important than the other 30 games, why would Michigan be held to different standards than BC or Colorado? If any of these three games took place in January, they would be played out without much fanfare. Yet, now, they are elevated to a higher level of importance. This shouldn't be because: a) Its just one more game out of 30, and b) teams don't play equivalent opponents simply due to the structure of their tournaments. You can't put Colorado in because they beat Iowa State, and Michigan out because they lose to Illinois, (if this is what happens).
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