Zillionaire basketball coaches who have been fired for
corruption even by a university not known for scrupulous ethics tend not to be at
the top of Curmie’s heroes list. Rick
Pitino is one such creature. But when he’s
right, he’s right.
Pitino made headlines recently when he savaged the selection
committee for the NCAA basketball tournament for not giving a bid to his St. John’s team. He then refused an invitation to the less
prestigious NIT tournament. Thing is, there
is no conceivable way the Red Storm should have been omitted from the “Big Dance.”
Readers who know Curmie personally are familiar with his “Totally
Objective But Not Necessarily Accurate” rankings. Of course, these rankings have proven to be
rather accurate, indeed. This year, they
predicted outcomes considerably better than did either the AP or Coaches’ polls. Curmie has had a bracket in the top 10%
nationally (on the ESPN site) several years in a row, and was in the top 1/10
of 1% a couple of years ago.
The most respected national ranking system is Ken Pomeroy’s KenPom.com. Other rankings
are the BPI (Basketball
Power Index) and NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool). All of these systems are based on objective
criteria: the location of the game, the outcome, the quality of the opponent.
All told, then, there are five different ranking systems Curmie
is referencing here (his own system has both a “right now” ranking and a “for
the season” ranking). Curmie would have
St. John’s as a 5-seed in the “right now” rankings, as an 8-seed for the season. KenPom would have them as an 8, the BPI as a
6. Even the massively problematic NET,
which Pitino blames for the snub, would have the Red Storm as an 8-seed. In other words, literally every
statistically-based system has St. John’s not merely in the tournament, but comfortably
so: they’re no lower that 32nd in any of these rankings; the top 42
are in.
Indeed, St. John’s ranked higher than no fewer than seven teams
receiving at-large bids—Clemson, Florida Atlantic, Nevada, South Carolina,
Texas A&M, Utah State, and Virginia—in all five categories! There were a couple others that barely edged
out the Red Storm in a single system.
Of course, Florida Atlantic was last year’s Cinderella team,
so they get in; South Carolina was picked to be near the bottom of the SEC and their
great start made them (for a while) a successful underdog (and their women’s team is really
good), and Clemson and Virginia are from the ACC, which always gets
preferential treatment. Usually, it’s
Duke; this year, the Blue Devils’ 4-seed is about right.
It’s apparently North Carolina’s turn to be absurdly
over-rated. Curmie had them as a 3-seed
for the season; KenPom and the BPI agree.
The NET and Curmie’s “right now” ranking have them as the last
2-seed. Who should be the last 1-seed
may be up for discussion—Arizona, Auburn, Iowa State, and Tennessee all have a
reasonable claim—but it sure as hell isn’t the Tarheels. What’s worse, they also get a first-round
play-in game (overall #1 UConn doesn’t), and they have by far the easiest
bracket.
In Curmie’s “right now” ranking, UConn and Iowa State are
the top two teams in the country; they’re in the same quadrant, so only one
can make the Final Four. Meanwhile, UNC
is #8, and can get to Glendale without having to beat anyone better than #12
Arizona. (All four other systems,
including Curmie’s ranking for the season, have Arizona ranked higher than North
Carolina, so there’s that…)
None of this, of course, means that those teams Curmie is
calling over-rated won’t win some games, or even the tournament, but seedings
should reflect the past and the present. There are a lot of teams that don’t
belong at all, and St. John’s has plenty of company in feeling… erm…
screwed. Ken Pomeroy has seven teams
that didn’t make the tournament ranked higher than South Carolina.
There is always, of course, some controversy surrounding Selection
Sunday. This year seems worse than most. Curmie can’t recall a year when a team that all
of those ranking systems agree should be an 8-seed or higher can’t even get a
play-in game as a 10, or one in which a 1-seed wasn’t ranked higher than 8th
in any of those systems, while two other teams from that same conference got bids
(or at least seeds) they didn’t deserve.
Curmie’s old, though… maybe he’s forgetting something.
As for the former: maybe Pitino is being punished for past
transgressions? Or he stole someone’s girlfriend? Or committee members are dumber than the
proverbial sack of hammers?
As for the latter: It is true that once upon a time, the ACC was the best college basketball conference in the country. It is also true that bell-bottom jeans were once considered stylish. Today, the only plausible explanation for the over-ranking of teams from the fifth-best conference is that the ACC Commissioner has compromising photographs of committee members and barnyard animals.
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