NCAA Tournament Selections May Not Include the Best Teams

PHILADELPHIA— The biggest surprises on NCAA Selection Sunday were the fact that Arizona State, Oklahoma and Syracuse all received bids and Oklahoma State, USC, Notre Dame, Louisville, and Middle Tennessee did not.

If the object of the selection committee process was to select the top 36 teams, the selection committee needs to judge teams on the way they are playing in conference season heading into March, not in December. Teams evolve. Some get better. Others regress.

Arizona State (20-11) beat No. 1 seeds Xavier and Kansas in November and December and was ranked as high as 3 in the polls, lost five of its last six games and finished eighth in the Pac-10, losing to Colorado in the first round of the conference tournament. Oklahoma (18-13) started the season 11-1 in the non-league but lost eight of its last 10 in the Big 12 before being eliminated by Oklahoma State in the first round of the conference tournament. Syracuse (20-13) did play a challenging non- conference with games against NCAA teams Kansas, St. Bonaventure’s and Buffalo but finished 10^th in the ACC with an 8-10 record, beat only one ranked team, Clemson, all season and lost to North Carolina in the second round of the tournament.

Arizona State will play Syracuse each other in a battle of 11s in a First Four game Wednesday at Dayton. Oklahoma, a 10^th seed, will play Rhode Island in a first round game Thursday in Pittsburgh.

Conversely, USC finished 23-11 and was second to Arizona in the Pac-`12, losing to the Wildcats in the final of the conference tournament. Oklahoma State was 19-14 and had two wins over No. 1 seed Kansas, a win over 3 seed Texas Tech, a win over 5 seed West Virginia and two wins over in-state Bedlam rival Oklahoma. USC finished 23-11 and was second to Arizona in the Pac-`12, losing to the Wildcats in the final of the conference tournament. Notre Dame (20-14) played without its star forward Bonzie Colson—the ACC’s pre-season Player of the Year, for close to two months with a broken foot. The Irish beat Syracuse without Colson and were originally on the board but were knocked out when Davidson defeated Rhode Island to win the Atlantic 10 tournament championship. Louisville was 20-13 and finished 9-9 in the saturated ACC, beating Florida State in the ACC second round before losing to top-ranked, top seeded eventual champion Virginia.

USC coach Andy Enfield said he was shocked when the Trojans were left out of the field. “If all that matters is the quality of your best win or two on your schedule, then we shouldn’t even play the and just set the field in December after the non-conference was complete. It basically discredited our entire league schedule and no matter what we or some of the other teams in our league did during the Pac-12 season or conference tournament did not obviously matter.’’

“I don’t know what it was that necessarily kept us out at the end,’’ Oklahoma State coach Mike Boykins said. “I don’t think anybody that was on that line, that got in or didn’t get it has a better collection of wins than we do.’’

Interestingly, three of the teams left out —Oklahoma State, USC and Louisville– were involved in the federal investigation into corruption and bribery into college basketball. Louisville fired Hall of Fame head coach Rick Pitino and Oklahoma State and USC fired assistant coaches who were indicted in the case. USC was listed in the first four out, along with Baylor, St. Mary’s and Notre Dame. Louisville didn’t even make it that far.

Maybe it was just coincidence.  Selection committee chairman Bruce Rasmussen claimed the investigation had nothing to do with final evaluations. “It never came up in the room,’’ he said.

Don’t even get me started on Middle Tennessee (24-7) from Conference USA, a mid-major that won 11 of 12 games at the end of the regular season, but was eliminated from consideration after a loss to Southern Miss in its conference tournament.

The Blue Raiders knocked off Minnesota in the first round of the NCAA tournament and the 2016 pulled off a major bracket buster when they upset Michigan State as a 15 seed.  “I think we have a Sweet 16 team,’’ Middle coach Kermit Davis said. “That’s the frustrating part, you know you have a team that’s built for the second weekend, but you’re got to get that opportunity.

The Blue Raiders may have lacked marquee wins but had the most true road wins of any team in the country, a Top-10 non-conference strength of schedule and a 33 RPI. “We did exactly what the selection committee wanted us to do,’’ Davis said. “At our level, it’s trying to be literally perfect. It’s a grind for us because you can’t slip up one bit. You lose just one game to a C-USA and then all the pundits put us out.’’