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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 20, 2021 1:09:18 GMT -5
For all of the talk on this forum about the PAC and BIG and how strong they are compared to each other, I think the clearest takeaway is... The ACC, WCC and SEC deserve more respect. Basically, yeah. A lot of "all the talk" was triggered by me a few days ago. My main point was that I *expected* the PAC to lose some matches (although they lost even more than I expected) because the Committee had protected the B1G teams from facing dangerous unseeded opponents in the first couple of rounds -- like Pitt (who took out Utah), WKU (who took out Washington State), and Dayton (who almost took out Washington). If anything, I actually think the results showed that what I was saying had a lot of validity. And that the people who attacked the PAC-12 team strength because they lost to WKU and Pitt just didn't understand that the PAC teams were facing *much tougher* opponents than the B1G teams.
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Post by bbg95 on Apr 20, 2021 1:16:29 GMT -5
Is this the first time the top team from each of the 4 major conferences are in the final four? You have to go all the way back to 2000 or 1998 to find when 4 conference champions are represented in the Final Four. There's almost always an at-large team in the Final Four. In 2000, the Big 12 (Nebraska), Big 10 (Wisconsin), WAC (Hawaii), and PAC-10 (USC) were all represented by their conference champions. But, USC shared the PAC-10 with Arizona, so they may have been an at-large team. In 1998, it was for sure 4 automatic qualifiers and conference champions: Big West (LBSU), Big Ten (Penn State), Big 12 (Nebraska), and SEC (Florida). Interesting. So this is the first time four conference winners have advanced to the Final Four in the rally scoring era.
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Post by oldnewbie on Apr 20, 2021 1:37:29 GMT -5
...and the other one is only out because Pitt lost after being up 2-0 on Washington. There sure was a lot more parity nationally than B1G boosters led us to believe. Even more so because Louisville blew an 11-5 lead to Washington in the 5th. Win that and it is Louisville vs Pitt to go to the final four, and not even the ACC could blow that.
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 20, 2021 2:40:55 GMT -5
...and the other one is only out because Pitt lost after being up 2-0 on Washington. There sure was a lot more parity nationally than B1G boosters led us to believe. Even more so because Louisville blew an 11-5 lead to Washington in the 5th. Win that and it is Louisville vs Pitt to go to the final four, and not even the ACC could blow that. I hadn't realized that the Committee stuck three of the four ACC teams into the same corner of the regional. Why do they do stuff like that? Anyway, Washington took out two of them, Oregon took out another, and except for Georgia Tech beating Utah it could have been a clean sweep for the PAC-12 against the ACC. (Minnesota took out Georgia Tech, but Pitt took out Minnesota.)
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bluepenquin
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Post by bluepenquin on Apr 20, 2021 7:25:20 GMT -5
I don't know if these are the 4 best teams this year - I do believe they should have been the top 4 seeds for the tournament.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2021 7:33:02 GMT -5
I don't know if these are the 4 best teams this year - I do believe they should have been the top 4 seeds for the tournament. Um? It’s clear Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Texas are the 3 best teams in the country. So I guess you’re only talking about Washington?
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Post by fgonzalez on Apr 20, 2021 7:36:02 GMT -5
In the past, I think there have been awards for the best players from each quadrant in the bracket, like an All-Tournament Team. Did that happen this year?
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bluepenquin
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Post by bluepenquin on Apr 20, 2021 7:46:11 GMT -5
I don't know if these are the 4 best teams this year - I do believe they should have been the top 4 seeds for the tournament. Um? It’s clear Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Texas are the 3 best teams in the country. So I guess you’re only talking about Washington? No knock intended towards Washington. The main point - the NCAA Tournament doesn't determine the best team. One and done matches doesn't tell us the 4 best teams.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2021 7:46:59 GMT -5
Um? It’s clear Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Texas are the 3 best teams in the country. So I guess you’re only talking about Washington? No knock intended towards Washington. The main point - the NCAA Tournament doesn't determine the best team. One and done matches doesn't tell us the 4 best teams. who do you think the 4 best teams are then?
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 20, 2021 8:04:20 GMT -5
One can argue that a single-elimination tournament does not guarantee the best teams are always in the Final Four and yet still think that any individual set of teams in the Final Four are at least close enough to "best".
Anyway, the four teams are all conference champs who mostly got to the Final Four by beating other conference champs, so I think we ended up with a pretty good selection of four.
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Post by horns1 on Apr 20, 2021 8:12:43 GMT -5
Um? It’s clear Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Texas are the 3 best teams in the country. So I guess you’re only talking about Washington? No knock intended towards Washington. The main point - the NCAA Tournament doesn't determine the best team. One and done matches doesn't tell us the 4 best teams. In every single-elimination game tournament (hoops, soccer, volleyball, etc.), that's pretty much what it tells us based on how teams play in the post-season. Sometimes it tells us that the committee made mistakes in their seedings. Only in baseball and softball do you get to play more than one game (sometimes a 2 out of 3 format) in the tournament before being eliminated.
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 20, 2021 8:21:47 GMT -5
Single-elim tournaments are a great way to efficiently establish an unambiguous champion. They are not a great way to make sure that the "best team" is that champion.
But we've dealt with that for a really long time now.
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Post by jayj79 on Apr 20, 2021 8:33:46 GMT -5
For all of the talk on this forum about the PAC and BIG and how strong they are compared to each other, I think the clearest takeaway is... The ACC, WCC and SEC deserve more respect. I'd say that the difference is in depth. Sure, all conferences mentioned have 1 or 2 good teams at the top. But the #3 through #5 teams in some of these conferences are also pretty good, while in the other conferences, the dropoff after those top 1-2 is more severe.
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Post by n00b on Apr 20, 2021 8:36:48 GMT -5
For all of the talk on this forum about the PAC and BIG and how strong they are compared to each other, I think the clearest takeaway is... The ACC, WCC and SEC deserve more respect. Basically, yeah. A lot of "all the talk" was triggered by me a few days ago. My main point was that I *expected* the PAC to lose some matches (although they lost even more than I expected) because the Committee had protected the B1G teams from facing dangerous unseeded opponents in the first couple of rounds -- like Pitt (who took out Utah), WKU (who took out Washington State), and Dayton (who almost took out Washington). If anything, I actually think the results showed that what I was saying had a lot of validity. And that the people who attacked the PAC-12 team strength because they lost to WKU and Pitt just didn't understand that the PAC teams were facing *much tougher* opponents than the B1G teams. Correct. Pac-12 teams had to face Pitt and WKU and proved they were worse than them. Utah at least. WKU/WSU could go either way. It's just a weird way to argue that Pac-12 teams were under-seeded. Maybe it was a round later, but Nebraska still stomped Baylor (without Stivrins). With similar seeds (7/10), Purdue beat Oregon by a pretty wide overall margin. Those were the 'over-seeded' Big Ten teams, right? I guess Penn State, but their results didn't really make an argument either way. It's weird to keep harping on Pac-12 disrespect after the results we've seen. The league went 1-2 against seeded teams (losses to #7 and #16) and had two losses to unseeded teams. GOOD unseeded teams, but unseeded nonetheless.
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Post by mikegarrison on Apr 20, 2021 8:45:41 GMT -5
For all of the talk on this forum about the PAC and BIG and how strong they are compared to each other, I think the clearest takeaway is... The ACC, WCC and SEC deserve more respect. I'd say that the difference is in depth. Sure, all conferences mentioned have 1 or 2 good teams at the top. But the #3 through #5 teams in some of these conferences are also pretty good, while in the other conferences, the dropoff after those top 1-2 is more severe. My intended point was a lot more simple. I just thought that in a year with almost no cross-conference play, the Committee had no factual basis for deciding to give the B1G such favorable seeding. 3 B1G teams seeded before the first PAC team or ACC team. 5 B1G teams seeded before the second PAC team or Big-12 team or ACC team. 6 B1G teams (and 4 PAC teams) seeded before the first WCC team or the second ACC team or the third SEC team, etc. All with absolutely no cross-conference play. No valid pablo or RPI or Massey or any sort of objective measure at all.
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