Saint Mary's the real injustice
Colorado needs to pipe down: Buffaloes and Alabama deserved NCAA Tournament snub
Saint Mary's guard Mickey McConnell and his teammates are the one with a realNCAA Tournament snub gripe.
Even if Colorado coach Tad Boyle is getting all the pity party attention.
Both Colorado and Alabama earned their way off of the bracket.
The NCAA Tournament, which will conclude in Houston next month with the Final Four, expanded to 68 teams this year. If you thought for the second that the extra teams would make the jobs of the selection committee any easier, you’re sadly mistaken.
If anything, it’s likely that the griping from those on the outside will be pretty loud for the next few days or so.
There were more than a few head scratchers when the field was unveiled Sunday night. But that may be because we’ve been so inundated these past few years with premature guessing about who’s in and who’s out that we tend to forget that the committee can probably care less about Joe Lunardi and his kin. So what seems like a stunning surprise to us, like, for example, Colorado getting snubbed, might be the most obvious thing in the world to the people sitting in that room in Indianapolis.
Still, it’s only natural to analyze the committee’s choices and see what they did right and where they messed up. As a guy who appreciates mid-major conferences, I was glad to see Virginia Commonwealth sneak in. The Colonial was just as good as some more well-known conferences like the Atlantic 10 or Conference USA, so it makes sense that three teams from that league should make it.
Speaking of Conference USA, it’s nice to see that the committee didn’t overreact to UAB’s first-round conference tourney loss. Instead they rewarded the Blazers for their regular season title.
But not all small schools were getting the committee’s love. Saint Mary’s split with Gonzaga before losing the rubber match in the West Coast Conference championship. The Gaels played an excellent non-conference slate, knocked off St. John’s, and had very few bad losses. Yet they were passed over in what I thought was the biggest oversight.
Yes, that’s right, a bigger oversight than either Colorado or Alabama. The committee has been pretty consistent about punishing teams that play poor nonconference schedules, so the Buffs and Crimson Tide both reduced their margin for error by taking on a sea of patsies before conference play. Alabama also suffered from playing in the weak SEC West, but there’s nothing that can be done about that.
On the other hand, Seth Greenberg has to be wondering what he has to do to make the Big Dance. The Hokies did test themselves before ACC play, came up with a gut-check win over Duke when the Blue Devils were ranked No. 1, and gritted out a victory over Florida State in the ACC tourney. They were left out though, and that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Of course, if you put Saint Mary’s and Virginia Tech in, you’ve got to take two teams out, right? Well, start with Georgia, which not only got in, but inexplicably ended up with a No. 10 seed. Here’s all you need to know about the Bulldogs: 5-11 against teams in the Top 100 of the RPI, 16-0 against everybody else. I’d also kick USC to the curb. While the Trojans might have had some nice wins, they also went just 10-8 in a soft Pac 10.
It’s likely none of us besides the alumni of the particular schools I’ve mentioned in this article will remember any of this in a week or so once all of the action gets underway. But it means a heckuva lot to the athletes on some of the teams who were robbed, so we should take a good look at the selection process, as difficult as it might be, to make certain that, in the future, the griping never overwhelms the celebration.
