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Message: [QUOTE="jncuse, post: 4208887, member: 1969"] Overall, I have to largely disagree with your bolded statement, even if I think Texas A&M got jobbed. The Committee has done some strange things or mistakes over the years in my view, but I don't think there is a trend on de-valuing conference tournament games. In terms of this week not really mattering. Ask Indiana who played themselves in with 2 Q1 wins. Or better yet ask Wake Forest and Xavier if their opening round Q3 losses mattered this week? Not that I don't think Texas A&M didn't get jobbed -- but I think its more of a committee "mistake" rather than devaluing tourney conference games. It clearly mattered for some teams -- I guess the question for Texas A&M is why -- and will try to address that below, my theory is a bit of an inherent blind spot A big part of the problem is that people expect conference tournament games to be valued more or for "conference titles" to mean more. They are just one single game... just like one single game in November. Some mentioned above or in other threads that the NCAA committee is not clear on this. They have been very clear on this principle year after year for at least 10 years. "Last 10 Games" was removed as a point of consideration well over 10 years ago. There is no lack of clarity on it, every committee says it. Time of the game does not matter. You can dislike the policy of not placing higher importance on later games, but that means the issue is the policy not the committee. Just because the committee is not giving the game more importance does not mean they are devalued. Your point does apply to Sunday games (in particular the BIG final) - they typically have no impact on seedings -- it has been the case for awhile in most years, and I figured in the age of computers some program could have been built to quickly address this. But nope. But that is always a flaw of the committee that can be criticized. From my observations they have always considered games up to end of Saturday with no trending issue in my view. Virginia Tech at a 10/11 seed is hardly offensive to me or people who projected the bracket. ACC teams played at the same level this year as MWC, WCC and not much better than some A-10 years in the past. When a team from a mediocre conference starts on the outside before tourney week they are not going to jump to a great seed. Why did Texas A&M get jobbed. Really Tough to answer because I thought they should have got in over a Notre Dame. But I think there is two reasons: 1) The committee "Blind Spot" - There is a clearly defined process for determining who is on the "bubble" when the committee meets. This process of identifying bubble teams at the start is documented in their procedures. Point is those teams that get identified early on the bubble get discussed early and a lot. And the committee likely falls in "love" with certain things about the teams it picked over others early on. Texas A&M was very likely not on this list when the week started. In my thread, at the beginning of last week I had noted that they were maybe a team that could get in with a run to the SEC final and a loss. But it was hard to tell. They were not one of the last 8 teams out when last week started per the matrix for example. So they were not discussed early on, and what probably happened was that the committee started to really like certain aspects of the teams they put above the line... like a Notre Dame. There is a process to bring Texas A&M onto the bubble reporting sheet which they must have been after a few games (which probably happened after the Friday game). But by that point the committee has found things they really like. "Group think" to a certain degree for teams that are just in. So it makes harder for Texas A&M to get chosen above them. And issues like their non-conference SOS get used against the, Now Indiana, Wake, and Xavier would have all been on this list when the week started. So they were probably all discussed and followed early on so were treated correctly. But a deep charger like Texas A&M came in late. So you can argue late, late chargers perhaps are placed in a hole in this process. But for teams that are clearly on the line when the week started they seem to get treated fine. 2) Their non-conference SOS was not good. Probably was used against them when they arrived late to the party when other teams had established strong factors the group had liked. [/QUOTE]

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