NCAA Sweet Sixteen Games for March 25

[ScrabbCuse]

I can't get over the fact that the committee put them on the same side of the bracket. What were they thinking?

They were probably thinking UNC would get nowhere near the final four so placement didn’t really matter.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Counterpoint, here.

Jim Larranaga was on PTI yesterday. He made the point that, with the portal, we are in a brand new era of NCAA hoops. The roster turnover from season to season for many teams will be extensive. That being the case, he concluded that the relative worth of teams will not be known until January. The squads where the pieces fit together (or don't) won't show their true worth until the conference season gets rolling in earnest.

If he is correct--and I think he makes a good case--maybe the committee needs to adjust the value they put on early-season vs. late-season games.

Meh.

I'm not compelled.

Whether we know a team's worth early or late in the season, each game still has a winner and a loser, regardless of when it was played.

We'll need a few years of data after the portal era to really see if there's any more actual volatility in tournament results to suggest that the way teams are evaluated is getting it wrong. And even at that, there are buttloads of other factors.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

They were probably thinking UNC would get nowhere near the final four so placement didn’t really matter.

Or they thought if they do meet in the Final 4, well, that's just swell. Real swell.

 

[jncuse]

They were probably thinking UNC would get nowhere near the final four so placement didn’t really matter.

Agreed.
I used to put brackets together in the past. There is a lot of bracket rules and minutiae that they need to consider including location. Trying to avoid things or create long-term game scenarios is not easy.

Often on the 8 line its like a puzzle putting the bracket together. You have the four 8 seeds, and they may only fit in one or two spots.

 

[kirbivore]

Just missed out on them matching up for 1991 title. UNC lost to Kansas in the early semi-final before the Duke/UNLV game. I think the game was already decided but I remember a grandstanding ref giving Dean Smith an out of the box technical foul. Coach was maybe two steps outside. Thinking back it's funny compared to clowns like Buzz and Jamie Dixon that never get T'ed up and are over the sideline half court.

 

[kirbivore]

Arkansas can beat Duke.

Absolutely. But if it's close will the refs call it down the middle? I think not.

 

[SWC75]

The portal factor was true. But it was true for every conference as well. How can you just assume it impacted the ACC more than others when selecting teams. You can't just guess who is good. You have to look at what conferences did to others.

How can you give equal credit to an ACC team going 6-4 to end the season vs a Big 12 team going 6-4 to end the season. Don't you have to consider those Big 12 opponents were actually winning quality games out of conference and more importantly not crapping the bed. 9 of the 14 ACC opponents were doing stupid things like losing to NorthWest Central Library School and Bill's Hairstylist Institute. You can't just ignore that.

Should we just take all power conference schools over .500?

Are you comfortable with treating Virginia (12-8 in the ACC) the same as Marquette who went 11-8 in the Big East because those schools had similar end of seasons. I just don't the rationale for doing it.

If you want to argue that you should not discount an ACC tourney team or appreciate that an ACC team may be better than the seed they earned that is perfectly fine and valid. But we can't let such assumptions dictate who is actually getting in.

And the fact of the matter those assumptions will not be made in the future because they are pure guesswork-- which means that until Syracuse gets out of the middle of the pack lull it has been in, it needs the middle and bottom of the ACC to be better.

One other consideration: 8 of our 12 conference losses, (including the ACCT) were to the teams that made the NCAA tournament, so their improvement must be noted in assessing Syracuse's record. Our other 4 conference losses were to Virginia, Wake Forest, Florida State and Pittsburgh. the only one of those teams that had a worse record, overall or in conference) than us was the second Pittsburgh game. So the yuckiness of the lower part of the conference was no so much of a factor in our season. it was our one really bad loss of the conference season. Since Colgate did pretty well, I'd pick that and the Georgetown game as the two really bad losses of the season. the others were frustrating losses against good teams.