NCAA needs fresh seeding approach

PRINT THIS COMMENTS (0) SEND TO A FRIEND RELATED STORIES

By Matt Muncy, March 19, 2010

Recently, there has been a lot of talk from the NCAA about expanding the basketball tournament to 96 teams. But it is irresponsible of the NCAA to add more teams, rather than just fixing which teams make up the field of 65 to begin with.

 

There are 31 conferences in Division I basketball. In 2008, twenty-one of those conferences only sent one team. In 2009, twenty-two conferences earned one bid.

As it stands now, only one team from each conference earns an automatic bid into the tournament and those bids are given to the winners of each respective conference tourney. I think each conference should get two automatic bids — one from the conference tourney and one for the regular season conference winner.

 

Giving an automatic bid to the regular season winner would make sure the teams that play the best basketball during the season are not forced out because they do not win their respective conference tourney, which happens to teams in the smaller conferences. If a tie was to occur in the regular season, then the team that would be the number one seed in the conference tournament would earn the bid.

 

This fixes the problem of a team winning the regular season only to lose the conference tournament and then being sent home empty, despite having 20-plus wins.

 

The one clause would be if the team that won the regular season also won the conference tournament. In that case, only one automatic bid would be given to that conference.

After the automatic bids are given, teams must be seeded properly.

 

The NCAA put in a play-in game in 2001, which is played by two smaller conference tournament winners. This needs to change because while the teams have technically earned an automatic bid, in reality one team never makes the tournament because many consider only the 64 teams to be in the field.

 

My fix for this is a two-part process.

 

 First, the NCAA adds three additional schools into the tournament, thus creating four play-in games.

 

Secondly, the play-in games no longer have teams who have earned an automatic bid, but teams who received the at-large bids. The only way this would not work is if every conference gets two automatic bids which would allow only six at-large bids.

 

The tournament selection committee would then decide which automatic bid-team or teams get moved to the play-in games, despite having an automatic bid.

 

Finally, there must be a legitimate 1-vs-16 game. Since the tournament was expanded to 64 teams in 1985, no 16 seed has ever beaten a one seed and the games are rarely competitive.

 

If the NCAA wants any kind of competition in those games, they need to have teams like Wisconsin, Georgetown, Duke, or USC in the play-in games. Those teams – as No. 16 seeds – would then add extra excitement to the tournament and more competition to the 1-vs-16 game. Plus, if a Montana was to beat a Georgetown in the play-in game, it might make the 1-vs-16 game even more eventful.

 

This may not be a perfect way to fix the tournament, but adding 31 more teams will only be a temporary fix. The underlying problems need to be addressed first.