At this juncture, a little less than three weeks from Selection Sunday, it seems likely that the 2015 NCAA Tournament will be somewhat overpopulated with Big 12 and Big East teams. Chris Dobbertean's latest bracketology has seven Big 12 schools dancing, more than two-thirds of the 10-team conference, and six Big East entrants, or 60 percent of that conference.
How much does conference size matter in March?
Getting chances because of a conference schedule is nice. But college basketball teams have to make good on those chances.
Frank Victores-USA TODAY Sports
Compare this to the 14-team Big Ten getting eight schools in, most in Dobbertean’s field. That would assuredly lead the nation in number of entrants, but it’s “just” 57 percent of the league. The 14-team SEC will almost certainly have the No. 1 overall seed for the second consecutive year. Even doubling its number of Tournament teams, though, — as Dobbertean projects — yields just 43 percent of its members getting a chance going mad. And the ACC? Six teams, sure, but that’s only 40 percent from a pool of 15.
This phenomenon may be “a thing” this year, and it’s the premise of Nicole Auerbach’s piece on how small leagues’ full round-robin schedules are helping those leagues. The thinking is that the full round-robin schedules of 10-team leagues — in which every team plays every other team twice, home and away — will help those schools avoid rolling snake eyes. Being forced to play a great team only on the road will allow fewer chances to claim RPI-boosting pelts.
This year, it’s a nice theory.
Last year, that didn’t work out so well, at least, not for the Big East.
The league is probably locked in on six bids in 2015 — with St. John's checking in at the No. 10 line — lowest among Big East squads, on Dobbertean's bracket. But it received just four in 2014, and one of those went to Providence, which, appropriately, won the Big East Tournament and likely jumped from outside the field to a No. 11 seed. Xavier, a No. 12 seed in 2014, probably needed its Big East Tournament win over Marquette to secure its ticket. And on the flip side, Marquette might not have made the field had it won that game.
The Big East’s small league size probably hurt in 2014, too: Villanova and Creighton were the big dogs, and gave every other team beat downs. Villanova lost twice to Creighton, but apart from that they didn’t lose in-conference play during the regular season. Creighton scattered its four Big East losses, and didn’t lose at home, though, that hampered their efforts to build solid résumés.
Villanova and Creighton benefited from a relatively weak schedule, at least in comparison to an “ideal” Big East, but the top-three seeds each team earned didn’t help either one make it to the Sweet Sixteen. On the other hand, the Big 12 was about this successful last year, despite every team but Iowa State ending the year with at least 10 losses. But the Big 12 always will be successful, to an extent, because it has Kansas.
Unlike other teams, Kansas routinely pulls the twin feats of being good year-in and year-out and scheduling rigor like few other programs under Bill Self. Also, the Jayhawks were 24-9 entering the 2014 NCAA Tournament, and 2-3 in their last five games, and yet still pulled a No. 2 seed, mostly thanks to an insane non-conference schedule.
The way RPI works, though, allows every Big 12 team to benefit significantly from having Kansas — and, consequently, the Jayhawks’ murderous schedule — on its schedule twice, even if those teams donate wins to the Self Fund. Conference depth also matters more in terms of allowing for “good” losses than we probably want to admit.
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Oklahoma State went 8-10 in Big 12 play in 2014, including a seven-game skid in the middle of conference play, but it only lost one of those games to a team (Texas Tech) that wouldn’t make the NCAA Tournament. Xavier, which ended up with the same 21-13 record for 2013-14 that the Cowboys did, went 10-8 in the 2014 Big East. However, Xavier lost twice to Seton Hall and once each to Georgetown and Marquette, all teams fairly well-removed from the field.
Oklahoma State got a No. 9 seed. Xavier was a No. 12 seed, and banished to a First Four game against N.C. State, where it made a quick exit.
It’s not quite as simple as differentiating between those teams in terms of conference strength, but it’s fair to note that the smaller conference slate worked for Oklahoma State and against Xavier. For teams wanting to make the NCAA Tournament, it’s not the number of dogs in the fight that helps a team in conference play, but the number of dogs that can fight.
Furthermore, this is all cyclical. The 12-team Pac-12 had five bids last year, but just four in 2013 — none higher than a No. 6 seed — and they are trending toward four, possibly three, again this year.
The 12-team ACC had four bids in 2013, leaving fans pining for expansion. However, it netted six in a 15-team configuration in 2014 and left one of them going to N.C. State, which felt a bit like a gift. The Wolfpack may again be the league’s sixth Tournament outfit in 2015, just barely, but from 15 teams that still feels like nothing.
The 14-team SEC received just three bids in 2014, despite two Final Four participants hanging out in the conference. Yet it’s chugging toward six bids in 2015, even though two of those 2014 dancers — Florida and Tennessee — languish far from the door.
When the bigger leagues are down, there will be more room for smaller leagues and mid-majors, which are both somewhat outside of the viewing lens for scheduling by power conferences. But the bigger leagues were formed partly on the premise that a bigger pool of possible NCAA Tournament teams would yield more actual NCAA Tournament teams. When that doesn’t happen, at least initially, it leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of the big-league boys.
Clemson’s Brad Brownell, Auerbach’s chattiest quote, spoke at length about the difficulties of being outside the power in the ACC:
”Subconsciously, it’s easier to finish fourth in a 10-team league than it is to finish fourth in a 15-team league. It’s a heck of a lot harder to finish fourth out of 15 teams.
“We have scheduling quirks — we only play four teams twice. There is some uniqueness to that (and) whether it presents problems or not, it’s different. ... Sometimes, you may not get as many opportunities for ‘the big win,’ if you will — or big wins on your home court.”
Brownell has a gripe with Clemson, who drew only one game each against four of the ACC’s five NCAA Tournament locks (Duke, Louisville, North Carolina, and Virginia). Clemson had to play three of those games on the road, and has already missed its shot at Notre Dame on its own floor. However, Brownell’s Tigers are not going to make the NCAA Tournament as result of losses to Winthrop and Gardner-Webb in November, rather than an imbalanced schedule.
The Big Ten has one of those imbalanced schedules, too — it’s a huge factor as Wisconsin runs away with the league — but is going to have seven or eight teams in the NCAA Tournament because its teams are better, and because they scheduled better, too.
Iowa is 17-10, but it’s safely within the field for now because it went to North Carolina and won. Also, all three of Iowa’s four non-conference losses came against Texas, Iowa State, and Northern Iowa. Illinois is also 17-10, but it beat Baylor and played Villanova, and didn’t take a truly bad loss in non-conference play.
Compare those teams to Syracuse, and Syracuse’s loss to Cal sticks out more than its 8-6 conference mark or its win over Louisville. At the moment, Syracuse is the only ACC team at 17-10, and they are the proud owners of a win over Iowa and a “better” loss to Villanova (at Philly, in OT) than Illinois (at Madison Square Garden, by 14 points).
Illinois and Syracuse have eerily similar résumés — both played Hampton and Kennesaw State, in addition to Villanova in non-conference action — and one team is on the right side of the bubble. Meanwhile, the other was far enough out that even three weeks ago it decided falling on its sword to prostrate itself before the NCAA made sense. The difference between those teams isn’t the size of conference or non-conference scheduling, it’s performance.
Really, that’s what making the NCAA Tournament comes down to. A team’s answer to the question of “What did you do this year?” has to be good enough for the Selection Committee. Conference strength helps, and conference size helps to magnify or minimize the effects of strength, — Kansas’s steroids-for-its-foes’-RPI schedule wouldn’t help so much in the ACC — but teams mostly make, and fail to make, the NCAA field on their own steam, or lack thereof.
Kansas State just scored a massive win over Kansas on Monday night, and it’s not going to put the Wildcats in the field. Nor will the Big 12’s vaunted rep do that, because K-State still gambled with a minefield of a non-conference schedule and lost, notably to Long Beach State and Texas Southern, while going 7-6 before January.
Florida played a brutal non-conference schedule — even with UConn being down, Miami being inconsistent, and a whiff on a path that would’ve netted a game against Wisconsin in the Battle 4 Atlantis — and is in the most competitive SEC in a while, but it’s got a sliver of a prayer of donning dancing shoes.
Meanwhile, Oregon got its signature win over Utah on Sunday, playing in a relatively low-calorie Pac-12, and is now in Dobbertean’s field despite its second-best win coming against fellow bubble team Illinois.
Looking at conference effects matters, yes, and the number of teams a conference has in the NCAA Tournament really matters because of hhow the NCAA distribute the lucre of its Tournament TV revenues. Just don’t confuse the good fortune of scheduling quirks for actual accomplishments of teams, because the Selection Committee won’t. Well, mostly. Hopefully.
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