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My thoughts on rules for inclusion into the NCAA Tournament -

Be above .500 in your conference, including the Conference Tournament. If you are 8-8 going into the Conference Tourney, you need to win two to finish at 10-9 or better.

For your out of conference schedule the strength of schedule should be no worse than #181. With 363 teams, #181, is again in the top half.

NCAA Seeding - The committee sets the top 16 seeds and spreads them into the four respective brackets. Then seeds number 17 through 68 get ranked according to their winning percentage. If Vermont is 27-7 and has the best record of the teams outside the top 16 & Providence is 20-14, Vermont gets the 17 seed and Providence is most likely playing in Dayton in the first four.

(03-24-2023 06:58 AM)ATTALLABLAZE Wrote:  They keep changing the criteria / metrics they are using when more non power teams figure out how to use it. It is clearly intentional. I've been saying it for years.

And then, when good non-power teams make the conference, they are matched against each other in the first round (a la Mempiss/FAU).

(03-24-2023 09:02 AM)FNblazer Wrote:  

(03-24-2023 06:58 AM)ATTALLABLAZE Wrote:  They keep changing the criteria / metrics they are using when more non power teams figure out how to use it. It is clearly intentional. I've been saying it for years.

And then, when good non-power teams make the conference, they are matched against each other in the first round (a la Mempiss/FAU).

SDSU v Charleston and Saint Marys v VCU were matched up but they were a single seed and double seeds. Memphis v FAU as 8/9 is just criminal. Boise State v TCU all over again. I think Memphis could have made it to the Sweet 16 as well.

If they were serious about this topic.... All it would take is to do a regression analysis of the profile of successful NCAA teams (including Cinderellas/mid majors) and tweak the NET to include the factors that are statistically significant.

Would take about 1 hour to achieve.

Right now, the NET formula is a construct of what we "think" makes for a qualified team - why not use the actual data and derive the correct formula.

Wins early in the season and late in the season should not be weighted more or less valuable than other wins. Vandy straight up lost to USM and Grambling on their home floor and got the brakes unmercifully beat off them by Bama. Those things should hurt them as much as beating UK, UT, and Auburn helped them later in the season.

I agree with most of the other points. Teams that are under .500 in their conference shouldn't get in. The tourney needs more teams to be more representative of college basketball as a whole. The NET is good, but needs to be tweaked and other factors should be in play as well. I'm actually against the idea that some have posited of rewarding a conference for their performance in previous tournaments.

It's a good event as is, but has obvious bias and obvious ways to improve it. Which means the blue bloods will ***** and moan and it probably won't get done for another 5-10 years.

The article argues from a false premise: that the NCAA or Warner Bros. Discovery (who holds the TV contract) want more "mid-majors" (I hate that term) in "their" tournament. They don't.

The answer to including UAB more often, and teams like UAB, lies not in NET or KenPom ratings, but in Q Ratings. Warner doesn't care who they are, as long as the teams represented bring eyeballs. And decades of data show that Cinderella wears out her welcome at midnight (the end of the first weekend) and turns into a pumpkin. She'd damn well better collect her slipper and get the hell out of the ballroom by Saturday of the second weekend. Then it's the turn of the pretty girls everyone came out to see: the Dukes and Carolinas and UCLAs.

Go ahead and figure out the NET formula. They'll just change it next year, or replace it with the eye test (as in, "Eye want Duke v. Kansas in the Final Four.").

Programs like UAB have to increase their Q Ratings - their penetration into the consciousness of potential viewers. If I knew how to do that, I'd be footing the airfare for all 18 Golden Girls to hit Vegas. But this is a fight that's going to be won via viral marketing, not on the court.

UAB has always done a piss poor job of marketing it's athletics programs. This basketball program, and the football program recently, have had a ton of success and a very strong history. But to most people UAB is an afterthought.

With the move to the AAC it's time to finally act, schedule, and market like a big time program. I'm tired of the small mindedness regarding UAB. I love the vision that TD and AK have for their programs and how they speak about them. We seem to have finally moved on from the loser mentality and mindset of coaches like Calloway, McGee, Haase, Ehsan, and freaking Mike Davis (the fact FAU still beat UT even with a motivational speech by Mike Davis is a small miracle).

Marketing has to be more than a couple of slick videos a year and some targeted social ads. But it also can’t rely on expensive old-world strategies that don’t have high, measurable ROI. And it needs to include NIL. The best ambassadors in terms of driving awareness, engagement, community and revenue are the athletes who actually play.

The UAB story is unique in college athletics and that needs to be at the heart of campaigns and both short- and long-term strategies.

One of the big challenges toward shifting to more innovative approaches is that the financial models, infrastructure and execution avenues are tied up in old institutions and 1990s era contractual models that move slowly and are risk averse to change without much incentive to change even if their margins are smaller. This isn’t just a UAB problem but happens throughout college sports and academia.

We do a good job of trying to sell me tickets I already have for football and basketball. Not so much trying to gain new fans.

The ACC seems to disagree.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/st...-narrative