We got hosed.....
Yesterday was a hard day for me. I was getting very excited for the NCAA basketball tournament and expecting Saint Mary’s my team to make the field. Unfortunately they did not. Going into selection Sunday I knew that Saint Marys was a bubble team due to one fact, the injury of star Aussie point guard Patty Mills.
As we and the rest of the nation know Patty Mills is the man. He faced off against team USA this summer and dropped twenty on the Gold Medal winners. Coach K said that he was relieved that his Dukies did not have to face Patty in the college regular season. There have been rumors that he is even faster than CP3 mixed in with the style of Tony Parker. Straight up he is G, like Jabba Walki or Lil Weezy G.
Anyhow last night there were various bubble teams to make it in the tournament. Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Maryland were the biggest ones. I am not going to go over the details on what each of these schools did during their season because we already know. These schools play in major conferences that offer a much more difficult challenge then the mid major schools thus making their strength of schedule that much more difficult. Yet this schedule gives them much more chances to impress the committee.
In order for a mid major school to get a schedule like a major school they have to play many many games on the road. They also have to play their conference games which bring the strength of the schedule down. They do not get as many opportunities against top schools as the major teams do with conference play.
The UofA schedule
Look at how many ranked teams are in there and look at the games they played on the road. They played 8 ranked teams. Of those ranked games three of them were on the road and all three were conference games that had to be played on the road. The only non conference ranked team they played was Gonzaga and it was at home.
Lets look at Saint Marys now..
They played three ranked teams Gonzaga during conference (Patty injured during both of those games) And Utah State for the bracket busters game that was won without Patty. Look at the out of conference road schedule. At Pacific, at Southern Illinois, at Oregon, neutral win over San Diego State, at Kent State, neutral vs Providence, CS Fullerton, UTEP. Now I know none of those teams were ranked but that is a good non conference road schedule. Arizona’s non conference road schedule was at Texas A&M, & UNLV.
Do you see what I am getting at? In order for a team like SMC to get into the tournament they have to play on the road and can only get so many games. They get one or two shots and if an injury occurred like it did this year then they are screwed. Before Patty got injured SMC was ranked 15 in the country. We had a good lead over Gonzaga going into the half. Who knows what would have gone on in the second half but I would have taken my odds. When Patty went down with the injury we lost four games. Prior to that we had one loss during the season.
What I am getting at is I find it pretty weird that out of all the bubble teams, none of the mid major conferences got in with the exception of Dayton if you consider them a mid major. I think that the committee went strictly for ratings. Of course if Michigan, Arizona, Maryland, and Wisconsin make the tournament more people will tune in, they are all bigger schools.
Call me crazy but SMC and Creighton got hosed. Ohh and how is SMC a number two seed in the NIT? What a joke…….
On that note have a great day-
Dicky V agrees with me.....
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=3983294&categoryid=2459792
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