Steve Forbes has been around really good college basketball teams for years. As an assistant to Bruce Pearl at Tennessee. As a head coach in the junior college ranks. Now as the boss of the East Tennessee State Buccaneers.
So it means something when he says of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as he did after Monday night’s Southern Conference tournament-final loss to the Mocs, “They’re going to represent our league well in the NCAA tournament. I think they’re going to win a game or two; they’re that good.”
But if they’re that good, yet they’d somehow lost to a pretty fair Bucs team in the SoCon title game, wouldn’t they deserve an NCAA invitation anyway?
And there’s the problem with the selection process. Not only because UTC is No. 52 in the latest RPI, but because with 29 wins and only five defeats, with road wins at Dayton (21) and Georgia (72), the Mocs deserve to compete for a national championship as much as anyone.
But so does Monmouth, which is one spot behind UTC in the latest RPI at No. 53 but lost its guaranteed NCAA bid a few minutes before the Mocs began their game against ETSU. Monmouth fell to Iona in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference final.
Much like UTC, the Hawks were one of the feel-good stories of the year in college hoops, and only partially because of the zany bench antics of their reserves, known as the Bench Mob, which sometimes bordered on annoying but certainly spiced up the highlight reels.
Yet it was on the court that Monmouth really entertained. The Hawks won at UCLA in overtime, split with Southern Cal, knocked off Notre Dame and routed Georgetown by 15 points. If any true mid-major seemed a lock for March Madness, regardless of what happened in its conference tournament, it was Monmouth.
But now the experts aren’t so certain. ESPN’s Seth Greenberg moved the Hawks out of his projected 68-team field Monday night, citing Georgetown’s and UCLA’s mediocrity. And unlike UTC, Monmouth lost to Dayton.
Now 27-7 for the season, the Hawks can only hope major upsets in this week’s conference tournaments are few and far between. Currently slotted by ESPN resident bracketologist Joe Lunardi as a No. 11 seed out West slated for a play-in game in Dayton against Syracuse, Monmouth momentarily remains in Lunardi’s field.
But what if someone such as Arkansas, Florida, Georgia or LSU were to win the SEC tournament? What if Florida State or Georgia Tech won the ACC tournament? What if Michigan won the Big Ten tourney?
If enough of those transpire in a year when almost no one seems great, a Monmouth could be bumped from the field in favor of a mediocre major from a Power Five conference.
And this is the biggest problem with the selection committee. It fixates on which team would beat another in a one-on-one matchup rather than which school had a season richly deserving of an invitation to the Big Dance.
This isn’t to say a UTC or a Monmouth wouldn’t surprise a Syracuse or a Purdue or a South Carolina if given the chance. It is to say that every school hovering around .500 in the Power Five conferences shouldn’t whine and complain if they’re bumped from the 68-team field in favor of the Hawks.
But Oklahoma athletic director and selection committee chair Joe Castiglione pretty much told the Tulsa World earlier this week that the Power Five conferences would appear to have the edge over the mid-majors, however impressive their resumes.
“Our duty is to select the 36 best,” he said. “Sometimes there’s a distinction there. Some people might call teams more deserving, but they may not be considered what we consider the 36 best. If we were to be more subjective on the deserving end, we’d need a bigger field.”
On one level the point is well made. You want the best. But best what? Best talent? Or best heart?
The Mocs don’t have to worry about that, of course. They did what the best team in a one-bid league should do. They won their conference tournament, removing all doubt from their inclusion into the greatest multi-week event in American sports.
But Monmouth, which played the toughest nonconference schedule imaginable, also deserves to hear its name called Sunday evening.
Or as Hawks coach King Rice, the former North Carolina Tar Heel, said late Monday, “I think our kids have earned the right to continue. But I don’t get a vote. A lot of people say we’re going to get in. A lot of people say we won’t. We’re just going to be ready to play if we get called.”
When it comes to deserving mid-major basketball teams on the bubble, “if” can too often morph quite painfully into “off,” as in out. Kudos to Matt McCall and the Mocs for guaranteeing their selection long before Sunday.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.