Couch: 6 ways to boost accuracy, fairness in NCAA tournament seeding
The mediocre Big Ten is 8-4 so far in this NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The mighty ACC turned out to be soft and lousy, with only one of nine teams reaching the Sweet 16. Three No. 1 or 2 seeds have already been sent home. One 10-seed was a 6.5-point favorite in its first-round matchup and a 12-seed was favored over a 5.
What we have here is a failure to properly evaluate.
If we’re to blame someone for these errors of seeding, perception and analysis, it shouldn’t be the NCAA tournament selection committee. The fault lies with the criteria they use, how the committee’s constructed and how we judge college basketball teams.
There is nothing wrong with upsets. Upsets are what make the early rounds of the tournament. We’re not talking about upsets here. Most of what were dubbed upsets last weekend weren’t upsets at all. They were poorly seeded matchups. And if we’re going to play an entire college basketball season with the NCAA tournament in mind, we might as well get it right.
So here goes — six steps that would help a revamped selection committee better seed the tournament.
1. Bring back the emphasis on the last 10 games
Based on their bodies of work for an entire season and the criteria the selection committee uses, Michigan and Wichita State belonged right where they landed, as 7 and 10 seeds, respectively. We know that’s not really where they belonged.
These seeding mishaps could have been avoided if a premium was placed on a team’s final 10 games. After all, those are the games that best represent who a team is entering the tournament. This wouldn’t be anything new. The committee used to consider a team’s 10-game finish, but went away from it several years ago to make sure the entire season had value and because not all late-season schedules are equal, even within the same league.
Imbalanced schedules have to be considered. But those final 10 games are a snapshot worth factoring in. Michigan went 8-2 — with wins over Wisconsin and Purdue twice each, as well as Minnesota — and 10-2 in its last 12 games. Wichita State won its final 15 games before the NCAA tournament. Those came against a Missouri Valley Conference mired in a down year. But they won those games by an average of 22.5 points. Included in that stretch were six true road games won by an average nearly 16 points and two wins over the league’s second-best team, Illinois State, by a combined 61 points. All you had to do was watch the Shockers in February and you’d know they weren't a 10 seed or even an 8 seed, that this was every bit the team that took 2-seed Kentucky to the wire last weekend, and a team that probably beats every 5 seed in this tournament.
Middle Tennessee State also won its final 10 games. The Blue Raiders were better than a 15 seed last year and better than 12 this year. Vegas knew it. Middle Tennessee State was favored against 5-seed Minnesota in the first round.
Putting greater emphasis on the final 10 or 12 games doesn’t mean negating the rest of the season or the metrics (RPI, etc.). But if doing so pushed a team up a couple seed lines, it would help the committee get it right.
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2. Judge intent of early schedules more than results
Teams evolve within a college basketball season. But almost all of the non-conference games — a time when perceptions about teams and leagues are formed, and opportunities for impact out-of-league wins are had — happen before most teams are what they’ll become.
Case in point this season is the aforementioned Wichita State Shockers — a young team that didn’t shy away from anyone with its nonleague slate, playing Louisville, Michigan State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and LSU before Christmas. Of those games, the Shockers only beat LSU and Oklahoma. They lost by double digits to the other three, the three that made the NCAA tournament, including Oklahoma State by 17 in December in Wichita. That wouldn’t happen today.
The Shockers don’t have single scholarship senior on their roster. They were beginning their first season without their legendary three-year starting backcourt of Ron Baker and Fred VanVleet, both now rookies in the NBA. It’s the equivalent of Michigan State losing Shawn Respert and Eric Snow. Not an easy transition. But Wichita State, this season, developed into a dynamic team as the winter went along. The problem was, all their showcase games were played before then. Not their fault. They scheduled tough. They just weren’t ready — in November and December. Wichita State’s struggles in the first two months of the season nearly sent Kentucky home in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
The last 10 games of a season should have more weight to them. The first 10, less — other than intent. If you try to cheat the system, playing teams well beneath your budget while skipping out on road games, your cowardice should bite you (Hello, Syracuse.). Perhaps if you don’t play at least two true non-conference road games and four away from home, you’re ineligible for the postseason. Otherwise, nothing in November and December should be so determining.
This change in evaluation alone might not have helped Kentucky avoid Wichita so early in the tournament — and Kentucky probably deserved a scare from Wichita State given what transpired three years ago in the same round. But 7-seed Dayton deserved better than a first-round matchup with the Shockers.
This idea would also protect all of us from anointing leagues too early. Once reputations are formed, it’s over, because of the incestuous nature of conference play. The ACC’s Virginia Tech, for example, wound up a 9-seed. I’d bet you that if Ohio State, which didn’t even make the NIT, played in the ACC this season, the Buckeyes would have been that 9 seed. The ACC’s reputation was bloated by a few teams, and the weaklings behind them rode their coattails. Keep in mind, Ohio State nearly beat Virginia on the road early this season, outplaying the Cavs most of the game. But in a deep year for the Big Ten, the Buckeyes got off to a rocky start didn’t quite have enough.
3. Protect 1 and 2 seeds from hot teams
Everyone with half a basketball mind knew Michigan was talented beyond its record and red hot entering the NCAA tournament. But a flawed December and January resume left the Wolverines still as only a No. 7 seed, meaning they’d play a 2 in Round 2. Lucky Louisville. The Cardinals played all year to earn a 2 seed. They deserved a more favorable second-round matchup — a competitive foe, but not one that so clearly appeared to be an equal.
There ought to be a way to protect teams that earn a bid on the top two seed lines from facing such teams before the second weekend. Here’s an idea: Flex-seeding. If a team is obviously hot or dangerous, even if it underachieved for part of the season, allow the committee the flexibility to move them up to a 6 seed or down to an 11 for the sake of the integrity of the bracket. It might not be an accurate seed, but it’s a fair seed — fair to the teams who worked all year to be at the top.
This idea also would have worked well in in 2014 when 8-seed Kentucky faced unbeaten 1-seed Wichita State in the second round, one of the more unjust pairings in NCAA tournament history. Kentucky could have gone either way, 6 or 11. Everyone understood the ’Cats were talented and dangerous and that they had underachieved most of season. If anyone was to be punished for Kentucky underachieving, it should have been the ’Cats, not the Shockers.
4. Major conference tournament champions get top-four seeds
If you win the league tournament of any of the six major conferences in college basketball — the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 or SEC — you’ve won three or four games in a row, at least two of them against quality upper-tier NCAA tournament competition. Have the title come with a guarantee of a top-four seed.
This year, that would mean Duke, Villanova, Michigan, Iowa State, Arizona and Kentucky would be assured one of the top 16 spots. Only Michigan, a 7 seed, and Iowa State, a 5, would have moved up. Perhaps neither deserved a 4 seed, but both were playing well enough to be a 4.
Michigan this season was only the third Big Ten tournament champion in 20 years to be slotted lower than 4 seed in the NCAA tournament. If you win the Big Ten tournament, you’re among the best 16 teams in the country at that moment. Guaranteeing a top-four NCAA tournament seed would add oomph to these conference tournaments, while, most of the time, improving the bracket. Louisville, at least, would agree with me.
5. Bring coaches and Vegas into the room
The selection committee is made up entirely of athletic directors. ADs know athletic administration. Some of them know a bit about basketball, too. But knowing how to evaluate a basketball team within a season, beyond the metrics at hand, isn’t their craft. Coaches know better. So bring a handful of former college coaches on to the committee, as they do with the College Football Playoff selection committee, which has four former coaches in the room.
Oddsmakers also know better — better than anyone actually. The NCAA might get squeamish here. But their entire tournament is built on turning workplaces into gambling halls. Nate in the mailroom becomes a bookie for three weeks. Jerry in IT dropped $300 turning in 30 brackets. So, NCAA, pipe down and swallow your hypocrisy. Oddsmakers don’t need to be in the initial discussions, but they can help correct mistakes on the back end before the bracket is revealed.
Middle Tennessee State, a 12 seed, was favored against 5-seed Minnesota. Wichita State, a 10, was a 6.5-point favorite over 7-seed Dayton. Those are red flags for misseedings. Sure enough, Middle Tennessee State beat the Gophers — which, by definition, wasn’t an upset — and Wichita State took down Dayton.
6. Take a deeper dive.
The NCAA tournament committee says it considers injuries. But injuries don’t always include missed games. An example: Wisconsin and senior guard Bronson Koenig, who mostly played through a calf injury late in the season. The Badgers slumped, losing five of six at one point. It’s clear now that Koenig’s injury was almost entirely responsible for the slide.
Those five losses still happened. They should’ve dinged Wisconsin’s seed. But an 8-seed? Not if we knew what we know now about the Badgers with a healthy Koenig. The committee should know this before the rest of us. There should be a deeper dive done on these sort of teams and situations. In the opening minutes of Wisconsin’s win over top-seeded Villanova, you could tell they were essentially two equally matched teams — with similar athletic limitations, but skilled and poised veterans. That was a Sweet 16 matchup that never should have happened in the second round. Someone got lazy evaluating the Badgers. ’Nova paid for it.
None of these suggestions, on their own, fix everything — and the NCAA tournament doesn’t need a lot fixing. Some of these arguments have valid counterarguments. But if these six ideas were implemented along with the other metrics and criteria, you’d have had a more accurately seeded tournament and a more fair tournament, for both the teams that were better than their seeds and the teams that deserved better than to play them right out of the gate.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.