If you’re Arizona State, Dayton, Syracuse or Virginia Tech this week, you’re just plain March Mad. You rightly believe you had a basketball season worthy of an NCAA bid, and now you’ve been relegated to the Nobody’s Interested Tournament.
On the other hand, if you’re Kentucky, Villanova or Oregon, you’re March Glad. The basketball gods disguised as the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee overlooked your warts to include you in the best three weeks of college sports.
And that, says University of Tennessee at Chattanooga coach John Shulman, is why the NCAA tourney shouldn’t change a thing.
“Just the fact that you and I are arguing about this is why the tournament’s great the way it is,” Shulman said Tuesday.
There was no arguing that Shulman’s Mocs deserved to make the field in 2005, because they won the Southern Conference tournament. Then they led Albuquerque Region second seed Wake Forest at halftime of their NCAA tourney opener in Cleveland.
“We needed to have the lead with 10 minutes left, just to put some pressure on them,” Shulman said. “But we started falling behind with 15 minutes left. We made it interesting, though.”
Thanks to Robert Montgomery Knight’s comments on Selection Sunday, it has been an interesting couple of days for mid-major coaches such as Shulman. Now an ESPN analyst, the retired General proposed expanding the tournament to 128 teams, with the top 64 seeds playing on their home courts for one round. The 64 winners would then keep the current format for the rest of the tournament.
To those of us eager to appease the Arizona States, Daytons, Syracuses and Virginia Techs of college hoops, Knight’s vision seems a perfect plan.
Every major college with a hint of credibility would get one shot to make the tourney. It would add only one day to the schedule. You could even mandate that all conference tournaments end on a Saturday. The 64 play-in games could be scheduled for the following Monday night. ESPN could call it Really Big Monday.
What contests the ESPN family of networks couldn’t handle could be picked up on a pay-per-view package. The selection show would no longer be needed, but the tournament could then proceed on schedule, beginning three days after Really Big Monday.
What could possibly be wrong with that?
“Here’s what,” Shulman said. “If you go to 128 teams, everybody from the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, SEC and so on, all the power comferences, is going to get in, or at least most of them. Under that format, playing on home courts, there’s no question that the best teams will advance. You do it that way, the committee can’t screw it up.
“But the good stuff never happens. The best two days of the tournament are that first Thursday and Friday when a Hampton upsets an Iowa State, a Bucknell stuns a Kansas or a Vermont beats a Syracuse. If you go to 128 teams on home sites, those don’t happen.”
This is not to say Shulman sees nothing wrong with this year’s field. He particularly dislikes several opening-round games that pair competitive mid-majors against each other rather than against vulnerable BCS conference schools.
“By having Butler go against South Alabama (East Regional), Davidson face Gonzaga (Midwest) and Drake-Western Kentucky (West) you’re cutting in half the chances for a big conference school to get upset,” Shulman said. “Everything always seems to favor the big guys.”
Some believe the tournament should be more about big guys, that it should be the best 64 teams, regardless of conference affiliation. Others believe, as Shulman does, that it’s too much about the big guys now.
There is talk of requiring any at-large participant to finish at least .500 in its conference. Moreover, make nonconference road games against mid-majors a requirement for major conference members. If Tennessee was willing to play at UTC, why can’t Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Alabama or Georgia Tech do the same? It would help a mid-major’s budget and toughen up the big boys for conference play.
Still, Shulman believes the committee will never put in writing a long list of criteria.
“Then you’d be locked into it,” he said. “And there would always be exceptions.”
Besides, Shulman said with wisdom too strong to ignore, “The imperfect is what makes the NCAA tournament perfect.”
Unless you’re Arizona State, Dayton, Syracuse or Virginia Tech this week.
Mark Wiedmer started work at the Chattanooga News-Free Press on Valentine’s Day of 1983. At the time, he had to get an advance from his boss to buy a Valentine gift for his wife. Mark was hired as a graphic artist but quickly moved to sports, where he oversaw prep football for a time, won the “Pick’ em” box in 1985 and took over the UTC basketball beat the following year. By 1990, he was ...
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