MARCH MADNESS: Should The NCAA Selection Committee Trust NET Rankings?
One of the terms that college basketball fans will hear in the next few weeks is NET Rankings, which is the analytical chart the NCAA men's basketball tournament selection committee uses as a tool to determine the worthiness of potential at-large teams or appropriate seeds in the bracket.
We are not going to go into the value of Quad 1 wins, strength of schedule, etc. That's above our pay grade.
What we are very much into, however, is sheer common sense, generated in many instances by the "eye chart'' system.
In basic terms, you look at two teams and you make a subjective selection: One team is better than the other.''
Which brings us to the the latest NET rankings, and the help of the always (in his own mind) astute former columnist of the Providence Journal, Jim Donaldson, who posed an interesting question.
"UCLA'' said Donaldson, before taking on an even larger challenge--hitting golf balls at his country club on a spring like afternoon in March--"is first in the Pac-12 with a 12-5 record. Their NET ranking is 76.
"Washington is last in the Pac-12 with a 3-13 record and lost both of its conference games against the Bruins. Their NET ranking is 70''.
"Explain?"
I can't, nor will I try and defend the NET rankings.
But I did check on other computer rankings, such as BPI and the highly regarded KenPom rankings. Washington was ahead of UCLA in both, by bigger margins.
The real concern here is not the numbers, but with the criteria the committee uses in makings its selections.
Thankfully, UCLA is very seriously being considered by almost every bracketologist, while the only way that Washington can make anyone's post season tournament is by earning an automatic bid by winning the Pac-12 tournament.
But that ignores a bigger overall picture.
What values are any of those numbers if it can have a disparity such as UCLA vs. Washington.
March Madness and the NCAA tournament is my favorite sports event and I have covered almost all of them over a career that will hit the 50-year milestone this June.
I love the anticipation of Selection Sunday. I love watching the tournament unfold over a three-week period, with Cinderella teams and (many) more than one shining moment of highlights.
The system is flawed, with my biggest gripe being that winning a regular season championship over anywhere from a 14 to 20 games season, doesn't guarantee you anything in the NCAA tournament.
You have to have your game face on for two or three games during the ESPN created frenzy of Conference Tournament Championship Week, which began its 32 conference showdowns on Tuesday night.
If the NCAA can tweak that flaw--making the 32 regular season champions automatic qualifiers--I can live with whatever compromises are made in the size of the field or in the importance of the conference championships.
But what continues to bother me is the continuing trend to using computerized numbers.
What would happen, for example, on Selection Sunday weekend in Indianapolis, if there were a three day power outage and the Selection Committee had to put its field together using game tapes, head to head results and some gut instincts by people who were selected because they were familiar with the game of basketball?
No computers, just common sense, and a gut feeling for which team is better.
That would be like wishing for a return to the type-writer instead of a lap top, of course.
Not going to happen.
Oh, well.
Obladi Oblada.