Letters to the Editor
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home games
We've got two practically home games in this part of the world. KU and KState are both playing in Omaha. best, hild
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Fate
In what can only be attributed to a perfect alignment of the stars, my university breaks for Easter starting late this week, freeing up all day Thursday and Friday for March Madness viewing. Maybe God really is on our side? Go Hoyas!
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The RPI
And little Jeffie Sagarin and his computer are bogus. It's an attempt to come up with scientific formulas to draw meaningful conclusions with a bank of data that is way, way too small. There's not nearly enough games for any formula to be even remotely close to legitimate. You'd need at least 5 times the number of games. Probably 10. And the more games you played the more obvious it would become how slight the differences are.
There's not much difference at all between the major conferences from top to bottom. They all got players and they all have coaches schooling them on making every offensive and defensive possession count 2 or 3 hours a day in practice. In front of a home crowd any team can get lathered up and give anybody a game. Georgia was the SEC bum and they just beat 3 of the SEC NCAA tourney teams in 30 hours. Big Ten bum Illinois almost won their conference tourney. North Carolina damn near lost in their semis and finals.
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To WES
For the record, UNC's two close games were against the 4th and 3rd place teams in the ACC, so I don't know how much of a difference one is looking for there.
Also, you hammer at this idea a lot, but seasons are meant to separate teams over time, not in every single game played. Is the best team in a conference completely, 100%, guaranteed to play better than the worst team every single time? The last team isn't that bad and the best team isn't that good, and everyone knows that. It's actually kind of the point of having leagues and conferences: to group teams of comparable abilities.
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Even With The Formula They Use
And with too small a bank of data the RPI gives us the ACC, PAC-10, BIG-12, SEC, Big East, and BIG-10 rankings as .5733, .5673, .5663, .5634, .5620, and .5466 respectively.
I don't know how they came up with these numbers and don't care, but they lead to trash talk between conference fans or possible dance selection ramification debates like "Hey punks, we are .5673 and you are .5663"..or "Why doesn't .5733 get as many as .5634?"
This stuff is strictly for, well you know (clue, begins with n and rhymes with turds).
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RPIssed off
I suppose I would get a little chuckle out of it if I knew for a fact that the selection committee screwed VA Tech just to set Billy Packer off, but any way you size it up VA Tech got screwed.
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It's The Old Americano Diet Staple
Everything must be ranked. Even if the rankings are obvious bullshit.
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RPI
And with too small a bank of data the RPI gives us the ACC, PAC-10, BIG-12, SEC, Big East, and BIG-10 rankings as .5733, .5673, .5663, .5634, .5620, and .5466 respectively.
I agree that the differences are often less pronounced than they are made out to be, and I agree with King's assessment of the ACC (it basically has the best worst teams, hence its RPI advantage). How much the committee wants to consider that beating NCState is probably way better than beating Penn State is probably unknowable, but it's not completely outrageous to think that the strength of the bottom matters, especially when one is evaluating the wins of a middling team. The worse the bottom teams are, the more likely they are to lose to those middling teams, allowing the middling team to pile up wins (and better RPIs--RPI?). The only team that is really bitching in the ACC is VA Tech, who kind of has a legitimate complaint and kind of doesn't. I do think, however, that some outrage is justified about the seeming haphazardness of the selection criteria. RPI matters except when it doesn't to more people than Billy Packer. Kentucky is in, at least in part, because it's Kentucky, not because it's done all that much this year (and it's certainly a much lesser team without Patrick Patterson). And conference reputation certainly seems to matter sometimes and not others. I can imagine that not too many people are crying for ACC fans because the ACC has probably received a similar advantage by reputation in the past.
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getting screwed
V. Teck screwed themselves by losing 13 games.
Want to get in to the tournament? Win more. It works every year.
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I Always Enjoy
The Bottom To Top Argument...........Like if the 10th place team of one conference played the 10th place team of another conference tonight, it's pretty sure thing one team will win, based on bottom to top, or RPI, or any other halfwit hocus poscus. The home team would probably be the Vegas favorite or damn near it. And even if the anticipated victor did win, they could play again in 3 days with the opposite result.
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Kentucky Is In
Because they went 12-4 in one of the 6 major conferences. A 12-4 conference record in one of the big 6, deserves a bid in all cases, except maybe not being under .500 overall.
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Kentucky
And WES has successfully baited me into an argument about conference strength.
I probably overstated the importance of Kentucky's reputation, but I think that it matters. And I think that a Pattersonless Kentucky isn't the Kentucky that went 12-4 in the SEC, which has (here we go) a weak, weak bottom (AU, USC, Alabama, and LSU plain suck, and UGA sucked until this weekend).
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Nerd?
Dang, WES, you are all getting your nerd on today! In-depth analysis and math and stuff!
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ACC - you made your bed you lie in it
How much does this hurt the powers that be in ACC-land to see the Big East getting 6 bids while it gets 4 and to see it's Holy Grail of a BCS championship go again to an SEC school. The conference once had the market on top level college b-ball, but now appears to have been 'too clever by half' and forgetten KK's axiom about including curve-setters in your calculus class.
Anyway, good to see some traditional ACC also-rans get in with a shot at some damage. Beware Clemson.
Totally loving seeing IU plummet to #8 seed. Good news for IU Nation - Dakich will not pull a Mike Davis and totally overachieve in his first NCAA, followed by 4 years of comic ineptitude. IU gets a real coach next season.