[Full NCAA tournament bracket revealed | Printable bracket]
A basketball fan has roughly a 1 in 120.2 billion chance of filling out a perfect NCAA tournament bracket.
Those are about the same odds the NCAA men’s basketball selection committee has to unveil a new bracket without any nitpicking.
This year’s committee got off to a good start, correctly identifying which teams belonged on the No. 1 seed line. From there, it’s safe to say there will be plenty of complaints, some louder than others. Here’s a closer look at what the committee got right and wrong.
What the committee got wrong: Selecting North Carolina over West Virginia
Turns out that North Carolina’s ACC semifinal against Duke last Friday night wasn’t a must-win game. The Tar Heels snared the final at-large spot in the field two days later despite going 1-12 in Quadrant 1 games and only defeating one at-large-caliber NCAA tournament team.
It wasn’t a great look for the selection process that Sunday’s most controversial decision happened to benefit the committee chairman’s school. North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham went to great lengths during the selection show that “all the policies and procedures were followed” and that he “was not in the room” for any discussion of the Tar Heels.
[Yahoo Fantasy Bracket Mayhem is back: Enter for a shot to win up to $50K]
Even if North Carolina’s inclusion in the field probably wasn’t the product of a conspiracy, that doesn’t mean it was the correct choice. Surprise bubble omission West Virginia had the much stronger résumé despite its dreadful loss to last-place Colorado in its opening game of last week’s Big 12 tournament.
West Virginia had six Quadrant 1 wins. North Carolina had one.
West Virginia defeated Gonzaga and Arizona in non-league play, opened the Big 12 season with a win at Allen Fieldhouse and then took down Iowa State a few weeks later. UCLA is the only win of note that North Carolina notched all season. The Tar Heels’ second-best win was … SMU at home? Or maybe Dayton on a neutral court?
If the committee wanted to effectively defend the North Carolina pick, it could have cited the Tar Heels’ top-40ish results-based and predictive metrics. Or the fact that seven of its 12 Quadrant 1 losses came against teams that received top-two seeds in Sunday’s bracket.
Instead, Cunningham inexplicably cited the season-ending injury West Virginia standout guard Tucker DeVries suffered in early December as a reason for excluding the Mountaineers
“Player availability was something we talked about quite a bit,” Cunningham said.
DeVries played in all of eight games this season for West Virginia. The Mountaineers’ ranking after those eight games was 23rd, per college basketball statistician Bart Torvik. The Mountaineers’ ranking over the course of their remaining 24 games was 38th. That’s a gap for sure, but not enough of one to justify snubbing West Virginia.
What the committee got right: The No. 1 and 2 seeds
It was clear by Sunday morning that Auburn, Duke, Houston and Florida had each separated themselves in the race for No. 1 seeds. Credit the committee for not messing that up — and for getting that in the right order.
Even though Auburn (28-5) entered Selection Sunday having dropped three of its past four games, the Tigers’ season-long résumé is still better than anyone else’s. The outright SEC champs boast 16 Quadrant 1 victories, three more than any other team in college basketball. The list of elite teams they’ve defeated this season includes Houston, Alabama, Tennessee, Iowa State, Kentucky and Purdue.
Duke can’t come close to matching Auburn’s list of marquee wins, but the Blue Devils earned their No. 1 seed with their historic dominance of the ACC. The Blue Devils outscored their 20 league opponents this season by an ACC-record 434 points. Then they won the ACC tournament title too even after national player of the year favorite Cooper Flagg went down with a sprained left ankle in their opener.
Houston won the rugged Big 12 by four games and then backed that up by taking the league tournament crown as well. Florida already had the nation’s fourth-best résumé entering SEC tournament play and then erased all doubt with convincing victories over Auburn and Tennessee in the semifinals and title game.
What the committee got wrong: Ignoring weekend conference tournament results again
For years, those in the room with the selection committee have insisted that Sunday’s major conference tournament title games matter, that they have contingency plans in place to alter the bracket based on the results.
That’s undoubtedly true when there’s a bid thief involved who can shrink the spots available to bubble teams by one. It’s a little more difficult to believe, however, when there is just a potential seed line bump or two at stake.
The latest example was Michigan taking down Purdue, Maryland and Wisconsin during the Big Ten tournament, only to be seeded behind all three of those teams. The Wolverines received a No. 5 seed in the South region and will face a dangerous UC San Diego team.
The committee seeds teams based on their season-long bodies of work, but Michigan’s was comparable or better than some of its Big Ten rivals if its conference tournament victories are taken into account.
Michigan (25-9) finished third in the Big Ten. Wisconsin (26-9) took fourth place.
Michigan was 12-7 in Quadrant 1. Wisconsin went 8-8.
Michigan and Wisconsin met head-to-head twice. The Wolverines won both, once in Madison and once in Sunday’s Big Ten tournament title game.
Anyone care to explain how the Badgers nabbed a No. 3 seed and the Wolverines settled for the No. 5?
What the committee got right: Giving the SEC its due
You’ll probably hear some complaints about the SEC getting 14 of its 16 teams into the NCAA tournament or putting six teams in the top four seed lines. The truth is the SEC earned that respect.
The SEC dominated November and December in a way few, if any, conferences ever have before. The league won 88.9% of its games against other conferences, amassed a 58-19 record against the other four power conferences and notched victories over the likes of Duke, Houston, Texas Tech and St. John’s.
Nine SEC teams had been NCAA tournament locks for weeks. Georgia, Vanderbilt, Oklahoma and Arkansas all closed strong enough to sneak in. The only true bubble team was Texas (19-15), which had more Quadrant 1 wins than other bubble teams but also needed a ridiculous number of opportunities to attain them.
The Longhorns defeated the likes of Kentucky, Texas A&M, Missouri and Mississippi State during the regular season and added a second victory over the Aggies during SEC tournament play. That was enough, in the eyes of the committee, to outweigh a 10-15 record against the top two quadrants.
What the committee got wrong: Too many potential early SEC-versus-SEC matchups
SEC teams may not be done beating up on one-another.
There’s likely to be some early round SEC-on-SEC crime because of the record number of bids the league received and the way the committee bracketed the field.
Three potential all-SEC matchups could occur as early as the second round: Florida (1) vs. Oklahoma (9); Alabama (2) vs. Vanderbilt (10); and Kentucky (3) vs. Texas (11). Auburn (1) could draw Texas A&M (4) in a South Regional semifinal. Tennessee (2) and Kentucky (3) will be favored to square off for a third time in the Midwest regional semifinals.
As recently as last year, NCAA bracketing principles mandated that conference foes who played each other twice or more before Selection Sunday could not meet before the Sweet 16 and conference foes who faced each other three times could not meet before the Elite Eight. Teams from the same conference could only play each other as early as the round of 32 if they met no more than once during the regular season and conference tournament.
With the other power conferences absorbing former Pac-12 schools and ballooning to as many as 18 teams this year, selection committee members recognized that those bracketing principles would become more difficult to uphold. They got out ahead of the issue last July by relaxing the rules governing when conference foes can meet if one league puts nine or more teams into the NCAA tournament.
In other words, the committee would still prefer to avoid these sorts of intraconference NCAA tournament matchups. But if that’s the only option, the committee would rather live with that than move teams from their true seed lines.
