Just watched two really good games from the women’s tournament. DePaul upset Louisville by a point in a surprise for me. Louisville were the ACC champs IIRC.
Mississippi St and Michigan St in a pretty good game. Miss St was up double digits for a while, but Spartan women battled back and even took a 5 point lead in the second half. But the Bulldogs fought back and got back up and now have a 4 point lead with 22 seconds left. Spartan ball. One of the MIssissipi St girls his a deep three from the coach’s hash mark right after Mich St banked in a deep three at the end of the shot clock. Miss St ended up missing front end of the 1 and 1, giving MSU the ball back with a chance to tie or take the lead and they could not get it down from a close attempt.
Also, the Michigan girl’s team has a great chance to go far in the women’'s NIT. They are already in the Sweet 16 of that (women’s NIT has 64 teams) and will play San Diego tomorrow. If they win that game, they’ll play the winner of Ohio and Temple (both teams they shoudl beat). Could be a good stepping stone for this team that returns all major contributors next season and adds a couple talented freshmen.
Quality of wins, common opponents, statistics and a variety of other tools. If a single elimination tournament is the best form of evaluation, why do we even bother having a regular season? Just do a massive 350 or however many teams are in D1 and have a several month long tournament.
If you want a postseason in which the best teams move forward, eliminate automatic bids for conference tourney titles. The best mid majors don’t always get in the tournament. NCAA tournament would feature even more upsets if the regular season conference champions are given the automatic bids. If you want the best teams moving forward, you do it like the NBA and have a series. obviously that’ll never happen and I wouldn’t expect it to, but that is a far better way to decide the best teams than a single elimination tournament is.
The regular season gets you your seed in the tournament! As does all the rest of the stuff you cited! Then let’s get on the court and decide who is best!
Who can play different types/styles of games(fast,slow), which team can handle foul trouble, who can win when the outside shot isn’t falling, and most of all which teams can handle the pressure that is placed on you!
I can’t believe college and pro football does this. No way the Denever Broncos and Bama were the best team in a single elimination tournament that relied on a regular season to seed
Throw all that crap out the window. Stats, common opponents etc. Win and move on, lose and go home.
There is nothing more pure in sports. Whoever wins this tournament IS the best team in the country. Whoever makes it to the final 4 is one of the best 4 teams in the country and so on.
Bacon is basically saying that if he can’t put it in a pie chart, it’s not the best way of determining who is better. Very common problem for Michigan fans.
But I thought that single elimination was the best evaluator of teams? That renders the regular season useless if you continued that logic. We don’t need to determine seeds, just go out and play and winner takes all.
None of what you said has anything to do with single elimination. I love seeing different styles and different teams matching up. And we obviously need a NCAA wide postseason if we want a national champion because there’s not enough time to play everybody across the country. But single elimination will not determine the best teams in most years. Upsets happen. That doens’t mean that overall that the team that upset the other is the best team. Just that they were better on that day because a single game is like taking a snap shot of the front door of a house and just assuming that the whole house is nice or ugly.
What you’re saying is just not true at all. It’s not the four best teams in most seasons. We don’t even have the best 68 teams in the tournament.
What do you mean by pure? Entertaining? Raw? I would tend to agree. It is incredibly entertaining and beautiful and exciting.
That is not the equivelant of deciding who the best team is. Soccer has that down. Round robin home and away with every team, 3 points for a win, 1 for a tie. The one at the top of the table at the end of the season is the best team over the course of the season. Obviously that’s impossible in college sports. And I’m fine with that. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to use a single elimination tournament to decide which team is better or which conference is better. That’s just ridiculous.
Better team on that single day? Yes. But anybody that knows anything about evaluation knows that such a small sample size doesn’t really tell you much.
I’ll bow out of this conversation to save Dylan from eliminating anything off topic again. But I find the assertion that a single elimination tournament is the best evaluative tool to determine the best team completely ridiculous and illogical.
Not saying it ain’t an immense amount of fun and I’m glad it exists. It’s what draws people to the sport every single year.
I agree with you usually on here but I disagree whole heartedly. A lot of times the better team loses. In a series you would see way less upsets. in a three game series Michigan st would not lose to muddle Tennessee. Some times a team is really hot and other times really cold. Also the pressure of a favorite in a tight game is greater as they feel the choke coming. If they knew there was another they’d play way calmer knowing they have another shot. They’d be looser imo. Also the nba shows us upsets are tough. Especially big upsets ie one versus eight ect. Things will normally average out and the better team will win more often then not.
Well, Dakich shouldn’t be playing against anybody. I actually don’t think the press would bother us too much. JB teams have traditionally thrived against extended pressure if they take care of the ball. Rakh and Walton could do it IMO. Then we’d have open transition 3s all day and our bigs run the court decently despite doing little else. On a normal day, as long as we were shooting decently, I think we could win that matchup easily.
I think our biggest problem would be the energy of SFA. They are all over, riding high off the WVU upset and the enthusiasm of the fans and underdog role. We would have been playing our 6th game in 10 days. SFA only had to play 2 games in their conference tournament. We played three in three days in the B1G tournament, then played the late games on both Wednesday and Friday (didn’t get done til midnight). I think SFA would have had the energy and we might not of. And while our players are in the late teens and early 20s, fatigue eventually catches up with you. Especially if your opponent is rested.
Walkup would have shot 30 FT’s against us…or 15 layups. No one would be able to keep him in front and we don’t have a shot blocker normally on the floor.
Don’t turn the ball over and make them execute in the half court. Obviously he would still score quite a bit against us, but try and force him to shoot. He’s 27% from deep. The rest of the team are good shooters though, most of which come off penetration or in transition, I’m assuming. So limit transition opportunities.