ANTHONY DASILVA, STAFF WRITER
Photo Courtesy of Wikimeida Commons
March Madness is here, which means a few teams with tournament-worthy resumes weren’t selected for the big dance. Some of these teams were snubbed, but others believed they were snubbed only due to the NCAA Evaluation Tool rankings system and how the tournament team was selected.
The NCAA tournament field of 68 comprises 32 teams securing automatic bids, and the selection committee determines the remaining 36 teams. The committee members go through a long, elaborate, multi-step process of picking teams they believe should be in the tournament.
The Evaluation Tool is a system used by the tournament selection committee to help determine who gets in, but it isn’t the deciding factor.
A prime example of this is Indiana St., which was ranked 29th in the NET on selection Sunday but missed the tournament. Indiana St. plays in the Missouri Valley Conference, which is typically a one-bid conference, and since they didn’t get the automatic bid by winning their conference tournament, they missed the NCAA tournament.
Even though Indiana St. finished the season with a record of 27-6, they lacked high-quality wins, their best win being a road game against Bradley. This caused their NET rankings to be misleading, and the selection committee ultimately decided against them as an at-large team.
Another example of misleading NET rankings is the comparison of St. John’s and Providence. Both teams felt they were snubbed of a tournament bid and had similar seasons. The most significant difference between the teams is where they fall in the NET. St. John’s ranked 32nd in the NET, while Providence ranked 57th.
Both teams finish with an almost identical regular season and conference record. Providence had six “good” wins, while St. John’s had four. St. John’s did beat the number-one-ranked UConn, but that shouldn’t be a reason to have them way higher than Providence in the rankings.
The NET rankings are inconsistent, but several important factors are considered. Game results, strength of schedule, game location, scoring margin, quality of wins and losses as well as net offensive and defensive efficiency.
One problem is that efficiency and scoring margin could be skewed by a team winning by a large margin against many bad teams and then losing to a few good ones. This puts everything in a team’s favor, but they still can’t beat good teams.
Another problem with NET is that all games are treated equally, and that just isn’t true. A late-season rivalry conference game should count more than an early-season matchup against a weak opponent.
NET rankings do not justify teams being snubbed from the NCAA tournament, as the committee uses the ranking tool to help make their decisions. In their opinion, the committee picks the best teams for the tournament, and only some teams with a worthy resume get in. The selection committee isn’t perfect, so some teams might get overlooked. Going forward, the NCAA needs to do a better job about picking the worthy teams for March Madness.
dasilvaf21@bonaventure.edu
