The NCAA Tournament Is Close Enough
[Patrick Barron]
From time to time you'll see an assertion that the NCAA basketball tournament is a bad way to determine a champion, because it's single elimination, not particularly fair, and doesn't really prove who the best team is. The Ken Pomeroy:
I feel like the best argument would be, "makes bracket contests more difficult", which isn't a case the NCAA can make. I feel like the second-best argument is, "this is an insane way to determine a champion anyway, so why bother making it more fair?"
— Ken Pomeroy (@kenpomeroy) March 22, 2018
He's in the middle of arguing for a re-seed after the first weekend, FWIW.
I bring it up because I think the tournament actually does a good job. The point of playoffs is to spit out a worthy champion, and college basketball almost always does. My favorite method to judge championship-worthy teams is a score-blind strength of record ranking. SOR is an attempt to calculate which team accomplished the most over the course of the season, and that seems like the best way to pick a champion. ESPN's version of that stat goes back to 2008. Final Fours since:
| YEAR | #1 | #2 | semi | semi |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | #1 UNC | #3 Gonzaga | #24 South Carolina | #9 Oregon |
| 2016 | #3 Nova | #2 UNC | #5 Oklahoma | #30 Syracuse |
| 2015 | #3 Duke | #2 Wisconsin | #1 Kentucky | #13 MSU |
| 2014 | #8 UConn | #10 Kentucky | #1 Florida | #3 Wisconsin |
| 2013 | #1 Louisville | #2 Michigan | #9 Syracuse | #17 Wichita State |
| 2012 | #1 Kentucky | #3 Kansas | #9 Louisville | #4 OSU |
| 2011 | #3 UConn | #30 Butler | #7 Kentucky | #46 VCU |
| 2010 | #1 Duke | #7 Butler | #4 WVU | #12 MSU |
| 2009 | #1 UNC | #4 MSU | #2 UConn | #7 Nova |
| 2008 | #2 Kansas | #3 Memphis | #1 UNC | #4 UCLA |
Only one champion in ten years finished the season ranked worse than #3, and surely there's enough wobble in any stat to declare that good enough. Only four times has a team ranked outside the top 4 even reached the title game, and the lone winner from the depths still finished 8th.
Unless Loyola pulls an upset on Saturday, this will continue: Villanova, Kansas, and Michigan are 2, 3, and 4, respectively. Loyola is 21st.
This situation does not hold for college hockey, by the way. Despite having far fewer competitive programs—about 40—KRACH ranked 2015 champion Providence 16th, 2013 champion Yale 13th, 2011 champ Minnesota-Duluth 7th, 2008 champ BC 10th, and 2007 champ MSU 12th. It's little better than a coin flip between a team that can claim to legitimately have had the best season and some rando that just squeezed in. That's why this space rails against that single-elimination tourney while being sanguine about basketball's.
I think a better argument against the re-seed is that it disfavors lower-seeded non-power conference teams, and devalues their early round upsets. If a #16 seed UMBC beats UVA, only to be re-seeded and play another #1, that takes much of the magic away from March Madness.
Conversely, it favors the higher-seeded, power conference teams. They already have the brackets tilted in their favor. To allow them to play the weakest-possible seed on a per-round basis artificially inflates the value of the #1 and #2 seeds which, as March Madness shows time and time again, are not very stable.
We had the same discussion in another sport. Reseeding helps the highest seeds some but it crushes the low seeds who pull off a big upset or two.
Ultimately, what it does in amplify the importance of the seeding decisions of the committee. And that's an inexact science that already has a huge effect on the outcome.
Yeah, the committee would just re-seed every team back to their original projections. It would be a self-fulfilling exercise.
"Damn you Loyola, we said you were a low seed, now stay a low seed!!"
We have the sporting event that is widely considered the best 3 weeks in all of American sports. March is known, first and foremost, as the month of March Madness. This is a cultural phenomenon and something that is highly anticipated and appreciated nearly universally. Brian has done the work to prove that a worthy champion always arises with the current system. Maybe my view is overly simplistic, but why fix what clearly is not broken? I am not saying that things cannot be improved b/c something is excellent, but this thing is excellent and the proposed change would change the nature of this thing in a very undesirable way.
Reseeding is an awful idea.
The NCAA tourney draws a LOT of interest from the fact that filling out brackets is
"fun." People who don't care about basketball one iota 11 months out of the year get geeked for filling out brackets and competing against coworkers and friends.
You can't fill out a bracket the same way if everything gets reseeded.
Why mess with a good thing that draws in so much outside interest and money?
Yes, it absolutely does. In the case of Strength of Record, though, I think that might be OK. The difficulty of beating those tournament-quality teams should be acknowledged too.
more like the NBA, and play a best-of-three series for the championship between the top two teams, just to claim that the Villanova's of the world were not worthy champions when they beat Georgetown, or that Webber's timeout without any left, deprived Michigan of valid shot to beat UNC, or that Indiana State might have shocked the Magic-led Spartans with two more chances, or that NC State's victory over Houston was a fluke, then I guess they have a point.
For me, one loss and your done, is the essence of one shining moment and survive and advance. In no other college sport other than baseball, is your postseason extended if you lose a playoff matchup. That goes for Olympic sports and football.
Not that the system is being challenged but it is what it is. And what it is has been and continues to be is pretty damn entertaining without changing the world order of things when miracles happen and there is no recourse to erase them. Life is short. The tournament satisfies the opportunity for risky business. And we accept that challenge every year.
At the end of the day, college basketball is about entertainment.
It's a contrived event that does not actually need to occur. We made it up.
And the NCAA Tournament is a damn entertaining event. I would not change a thing.
The apparent resentment a lot of talking heads in the sports world are struggling with this year? Too many underdogs winning... I miss the days when the blue bloods dominated... Something odd about that. I'm not sure I've completely put my finger on it but it is somehow related to sour grapes.
Izzo already used it as an excuse for his piss poor tournament performance... "It's not the NBA, it's not a 5 game series." I would expect as much from him, but it's not just him this year. Very odd time for college basketball.
my only complaint with the MBB tourney is that they let in power 5-6 conf teams with 500 or worse conf. records sometimes. I'd let in a mid major with a 13-3 in conf and 22-9 record over a P5/6 with a 22-9 but 9-9 in conf. IMO, you need to have a better than 500 record in your conf games to get in
March 28th, 2018 at 11:40 PM ^
That way more of the unknown teams get in. Some of those mid-majors are darn good teams and a lot of fun to watch.
no. just b/c they CAN beat a couple teams doesn't mean they blew their chance to play for the title by losing more than they won against peer level comeptition.
There's no point in letting in a team with a losing record.
I will take the Miracle on Ice vs the best of seven thanks.
March 28th, 2018 at 10:47 PM ^
You likely don't have a Hoosier's Milan/Hickory movie either if it is a best of 7.
You've just described the World Cup.
The big schools already have enough advantages. The tournament format gives the underdog the best chance to advance every now and then, and that keeps the tournament interesting. I don't necessarily want the "best" team to advance out of each pod. That takes a lot of the fun out of it.
I don't care how many games you play, whether it's single elimination or a best of 7 series. If you want to claim you're the "best" team so badly, WIN. End of story.
The only league-champion play-in games are 16 v 16. The other play-in games -- the 11 seeds or whatever -- are the last at-large teams into the field (UCLA, St. Bonaventure, Syracuse, and Arizona State, this year).
Personally, I'm a fan of going back to 64.
March 28th, 2018 at 10:09 PM ^
March 28th, 2018 at 10:15 PM ^
March 28th, 2018 at 10:16 PM ^
March 28th, 2018 at 10:26 PM ^
I would be opposed to reseeding not just because it would diminish the fun of filling out the brackets, but because it would needlessly give the committee a second opportunity to interject their bias into it.
UMBC beat #1 seed Virginia, they deserved the winner of the 8/9 game...not to be rematched up with another #1 or #2 seed based on their still crappy RPI.
Some teams naturally get stronger or weaker as the season progesses and not just from injuries. Yet, this is hard to measure. By some computer metrics UofM was the #2 team in the country since the start of February - yet we were rewarded as the bottom 3 seed and sent outside of our region. There is no perfect system.
Sure, there are minor quibbles, but each quadrant is roughly similar to one another at the start.
I seriously doubt that they would ever re-convene the committee to reconsider the seeds. Instead, they'd just do the same thing that's done in the NHL and NFL -- after advancing to the Sweet 16, the highest remaining seed in the region would play the lowest remaining seed and the other two would be paired together.
So, you'd keep everything the same, except that Michigan would have played Florida State (the 9) in the Sweet 16, while Gonzaga (the 4) would have played Texas A&M (the 7). The idea is that you would reward the top remaining seed with the easiest path through the region and eliminate a potential scenario where you've got the 1 and the 4 on one side of the bracket and the 11 and the 10 on the other side of the bracket.
anything that ruins the "fill out the bracket contest" everybody and their mother holds would be dumb. </story>
anything that ruins the "fill out the bracket contest" everybody and their mother holds would be dumb. </story>
I've never understood the rationale behind reseeding. You manipulate the tournament to ensure the top-rated teams' odds of advancing are maximized at the expense of the lower ranked teams? And we're absolutely, rock-solid certain that we got the seeding correct in the first place?
Part of being the “best team” is winning on the spot. If you get beaten by a low seed you should have crushed they may we’ll be exposing a flaw; even if that flaw is only “you were too cocky”
… between finding the best team on a given day versus finding the best team for an entire season, no?
Tick, tock..... Come on Saturday, we're waiting!
Go Blue!
March 29th, 2018 at 10:21 AM ^
It would also be incredibly easy to make a bracket online that automatically does the reseeding for you based on your picks in each round. Am I missing something here?
I’m really struggling to see the downsides, other than the usual complaint of don’t fix something that isn’t really broken.
March 29th, 2018 at 10:53 AM ^
You would need to have all 16 teams in a regional at the same location if you reseed after the first round.
March 29th, 2018 at 10:31 AM ^
March 29th, 2018 at 11:19 AM ^
The biggest problem with single-elimination hockey is that one bounce, leading to one goal, can represent 20,25,33.. even 100% of the winning team's offense. Even the luckiest of all "crotched-in" threes is only worth maybe 5% of the winning team's score.
Yes, that one three may be the difference between winning and losing, but the losing team has had a lot of opportunities to outplay the winning team at that point. That's less true in hockey.
*Hat tip* for addressing this. I feel partially responsible for that last paragraph due to my recent Anti-Plinko ranting. This is just riddled with holes, though.
First, since when are we using ESPN Strength of Record? This site is the #1 KenPom fan of all time. You use KenPom for absolutely everything at every turn. Why are we now looking at SOR?
(Probably because KenPom has both UConn winners in '11 & '14 ranked in the teens which looks more like hockey and SOR keeps them at #3 & #8. Hmm..that's convenient.)
And why are we using KRACH for hockey now? What happened to Pairwise? Again, all year/every year this site leans on Pairwise for hockey rankings. Giving benefit of the doubt, that's probably because hockey fills the tourney on Pairwise. Maybe you have a deep-seated love of KRACH that has never before been put in print. I can't disprove that.
(But boy, that looks pretty convenient that KRACH ranks MSU 12th instead of Pairwise's 9th & BC 10th instead of 7th on Pairwise. The rest are admittedly pretty even.)
Point #3: Path to the championship is much easier in basketball. Especially given the Barely Weighted Basketball Plinko results of the initial rounds of the NCAA tournament, Michigan can make the National Championship without playing one single team from the current KenPom Top-16. They'll have to essentially beat one "tournament team" if it were the same as hockey. They played #71, #18, #29 & #28 to get to the Final Four. Not one of those opponents would have made the hockey tourney. Neither will Loyola.
And yeah, there are way more teams in hoops. But it's undeniable that the NCAA hockey tournament is condensed and filled only with quality teams where the basketball version is filled with 4 times the number of teams, half of which have no business being there and only participate because of binding conference tourney auto-bids.
And it's not just Michigan. Loyola's played #37, #13, #40 & #25. Only ONE of Loyola's opponents would have made the hockey field - Tennessee as a 4 seed. Kansas played #125, #26, #14 & #3. Pretty fair given hockey starts at the sweet 16. Kansas has played the hockey equivalent of a 4 seed and a 1 seed. Villanova has played #170, #58, #12 & #11. A 3 and a 4 seed.
Half of the Final Four is comprised of teams that had a dramatically easier tournament path to the final game than in hockey. These are easier paths for the better teams.
Last but not least, actually, most importantly: KenPom and ESPN's strength of record for basketball rankings UPDATE THROUGHOUT THE TOURNAMENT!
Of course the basketball champion is going to have an excelltent SOR or KenPom ranking, they just won 6 games in a row! About half of those against Top 20 teams! That's a HUGE boost to your computer ranking!
Meanwhile, KRACH? Let's take a look. Oh, this blurb is interesting:
"Historical data is shown as of the date just prior to the start of the NCAA tournament"
Well, holy moly. All of your Providences and Yales and MSUs don't factor in the 4 games they won against top-16 teams to win the championship. If they did, each and every champion you listed would shoot up those rankings like a rocket and probably look identical to your basketball champs.
What you've done in this post is complete Apples and Oranges loaded with selective rankings and samples that are in no way equal. I award you no points.
Appreciate the effort.
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