Ten Bids for Big Ten? Nothing Wrong With That. And a Plan to Let Everybody In.
The Big Ten continues to stay on track for a conference-record 10 NCAA bids.
Some people, including some of my distinguished colleagues here at TMG, have a problem with teams who have modest records in conference play getting into the Big Dance.
I have no problem with that. And you shouldn’t, either.
When leagues like the Big Ten and the Big East, which is tracking for seven bids, are loaded, not everybody is going to have a great conference record. That has happened often in other conferences, especially the ACC—and occasionally in the other power conferences. When you’re good, you’re good.
The Big Ten’s two 8-8 teams are excellent examples of that.
Both have played strong non-conference schedules. Ohio State beat Cincinnati, Villanova, North Carolina and Kentucky early. Indiana beat Florida State, Notre Dame and UConn in non-conference play.
And both have rallied lately to make their cases, capped by impressive home victories on Sunday.
The Hoosiers, who were looking shaky at 6-8, won at Minnesota last week and beat No. 9 Penn State on Sunday to get to .500.
The yo-yo Buckeyes, who were No. 2 in the nation at Christmas, were looking dead in the water after a 2-6 conference start. They have won six of eight since then, including a Sunday takedown of No. 7 Maryland.
What matters more? Notching quality wins or avoiding bad losses? Playing consistently well all season or becoming tough as nails at the end? I know there are lots of formulas and theories. To me, though, a lot of those debates are tastes great/less filling debates.
If you watch basketball, you get a feel for how good or weak teams are. Some people just need to lean on stats to justify their beliefs.
I sympathize with schools from smaller conferences that have difficulty building their at-large-bid cases because of schedule strength.
But I do not think the solution is to make arbitrary rules about teams needing .500 conference records to qualify for March Madness.
Many years ago—in 1994 to be exact—I did a story about Johnny Dee’s plan to make the NCAA tournament into a high-school-style-everybody-in event. A very successful coach at Notre Dame in the Sixties (Austin Carr!), Dee retired on top in 1971, with a string of four straight 20-win seasons in an era when 20 wins meant something. He practiced law in Denver after that.
Anyway, Dee’s idea was to start the NCAA tournament on a very local basis. In Illinois, for example, teams like Chicago State, Illinois-Chicago, Northern Illinois, DePaul, Loyola, Northwestern and Illinois would be bunched together in the first and second rounds, with some play-in games to whittle the nation's 353 teams into a field of 256.
If you’re a college hoops fan, you can figure out who would be in your local pod. It could be a fun and dramatic alternative to conference tournaments—especially in places like Boston, Philly, North Carolina, southern California, the Pacific Northwest, Texas, the Southeast. Anywhere, really.
That would whittle the field down to 64 teams, which could be put into a traditional bracket.
Dee believed his plan would give every team an incentive to play on until the very last game. I believe a couple of geographically-correct early rounds would potentially create some great drama.
Little schools would get shots at their nearby big brother, who would never schedule them otherwise. And every so often, one of those big brothers would fall. Which would put more Madness in March.
That said, we all know that that kind of all-in NCAA tournament is not going to happen. But in a way, I believe that we already have that scenario with the conference tournaments.
Is it completely fair to the smaller schools? No. But as retired Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany liked to tell us, ``Who said life was fair?’’
This is a year where the Big Ten could get 10 bids while the ACC gets five. A year where the Big East could get seven bids while the SEC gets four.
I say, Deal with it. These things change from year to year.
The rules are skewed toward the bigger, richer schools. And the Tax Code is skewed toward wealthy people.
Deal with it.
HOW THE BIG TEN SEEDS SHAPE UP
No guarantees. There are a lot of games to play. And if you don’t watch until the NCAA tournament, that’s your choice.
But if the Big Ten gets 10 NCAA bids, here’s a look at how their seeding is shaping up:
Maryland is looking very solidly like a No. 2 now that could even sneak into a top seed. But setbacks are costly for teams that high in the projections.
There are a pack of teams in the 4-to-6 range: Penn State, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State.
There is also a cluster in the 5-to-8 range: Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio State.
At 9 to 11 are Rutgers and Indiana.
Two big factors will determine the final bracketing. First, obviously, is how these teams play for the rest of the season. And second, not to be overlooked, is that teams easily could be adjusted by a line or two when a league has 10 bids.
Once the seeds are set, people tend to think they’re handed down from the heavens. But that’s not really true.
That’s also a function of trying to keep teams from the same conference from meeting too soon. That happens every year, but is especially likely for the Big Ten and Big East this year.
Not a big deal. Sometimes it’s better to have a lower seed with a better geographical draw. And hindsight always produces schools that are seeded too low. Avoiding them is a good thing.
Most of us just don’t know who they are until they prove it.
That’s why it’s called March Madness.