NCAA Tournament - Tennessee Vols

I may have heard this wrong, but the 10 slowest tempo teams are in Virginia's bracket. That is a big benefit to them. I think that helps Tennessee, too. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that is true, at least somewhat, according to what I heard on ESPN last night.

 

FWIW, just looked a little more at Auburn--they and Virginia Tech were the only teams on the top five seed lines to be below .500 in Q1 games. I don't know if they drop all the way to a six without beating Tennessee the second time, but you could at least make an argument for Villanova over them.

 

I answered this. UK will travel anywhere. We were the best fit in Louisville. The fact that Louisville was the best fit for us doesn't matter much in my conspiracy theory.

I noticed that and fixed it in an edit, but I might have missed some of the fix.

 

Well if it's a conspiracy theory under which the selection committee is secretly ignoring its own rules but in fact doing exactly what it would've done had it followed its rules, I suppose I can't really do anything to dissuade you.

 

It's a conspiracy theory where the selection committee uses one set of criteria while telling you they are using another. And there is nothing in this year's bracket that does dissuade that notion, and a few things that support it.

 

I agree that there's not really much to dissuade the notion, but I get off the boat on the claim that there's a fair bit to support it.

Michigan State? Their tournament win shouldn't have moved them ahead of Tennessee, and it didn't. No way of knowing whether they would've been behind Michigan and Kentucky with a loss, but if the argument is that they should've moved higher, I disagree. And the rules say that a 6th overall Michigan State should go to DC, and they did.

Tennessee? Widely projected as 6th or 7th overall going into the conference tournaments, beat Kentucky and lost to Auburn ended up 5th overall. It's impossible to prove that beating Kentucky is what did the trick, but it seems totally reasonable. And the official rules say that a 5th overall Tennessee should go to Louisville, as they did.

Auburn? Even after winning the SEC, most projections I saw had them as a 5, and then had the 2nd worst Q1 record of any team in the top 20. Hard for me to see them being a five seed as evidence of anything shady going on.

For me, I'm still down to Ockham's Razor. They're probably following their own rules, which explains why Tennessee/Michigan State/Kentucky/Michigan went to the regions they went to. They're probably getting some information from the conference tournament, but probably not enough to move teams up by an entire seed line in the majority of cases, because conference tournaments are a pretty small sample compared to the entire season of work. I imagine the tournaments moved Tennessee over Kentucky and Duke over UNC and Virginia and probably a host of other examples where a team moves one or two places, but none of those changes are big enough to slap you in the face in the final bracket. I guess Duke is probably the clearest one, and even that's ambiguous how much was them winning against UNC and FSU and how much was just the committee looking at their record with Zion healthy.

I will 100% agree that the criteria for teams getting in off the bubble is a moving target, changes every year based on however the committee, and gets justified based on whatever numbers they can throw out ex post facto to best convince people that the committee was right. But that's not enough for me to hit the "they just ignore conference tournaments" bandwagon

 

maybe not "ignore," but the seedings of teams already in the field seem to be relatively fixed.

 

yeah, I think conference tournaments are most likely to move teams around within a seed line rather than moving them up or down, unless they were already on the borderline. If you were one of those people that had Kentucky and Duke as a tossup for the last one seed going into the conference tournaments, then that really crystallized in the tournaments. But if you're 6th or 7th after 30 games it's going to take a lot to get you to 3rd or 4th after only three more (although I really think Tennessee had a chance if we won it all. I don't think Michigan State had a chance)

 

I don't think UK or Tennessee were ever getting a 1

 

I thought this too, but one of the committee members flat out said if we won Sunday, we were the #1 out west with Gonzaga as #2.

 

Yuck. I'm happier where we are.

 

I am saying I don't believe him, and his only purpose in making that statement was to shift the dialogue away from the topic of 3 acc one seeds, gonzaga's minimal resume, etc. Losing to Auburn was a hell of a lot less meaningful than losing to St Mary's and having exactly 1 meaningful win.

 

Had we won, we would have (so they said and I agree)

I like where we ended up anyway.

 

besides, #1 in the west with #2 gonzaga? Might as well be a 2.

 

to be clear, I am not saying we deserve a 1 now or that we didn't deserve one if we won. I'm saying I don't believe it was really on the line. and if it was, and it was to be 1 in the west with 2 Gonzaga, well shit that's worse than being a 2 in the south.

 

Which team "moved around within Its seeding line" and wound up in a place where the tournament wouldn't have liked them to be?

Also, do you know who Matt Jones is? Voice of the big blue nation claiming uk got screwed.

 

I am always concerned when I agree with you, but I do.

 

Feels dirty don’t it

 

to be fair i only came to this position after cottom brought it up and I started thinking about it.