Selection Committee = Garbage

Tomorrow will begin the week where office cubicles will become ground zero for what is known as March Madness. Today, the NCAA Major Conference Committee, I mean, Selection Committee, met and debated for hours as they figured out what teams would make it into the 65-team field for the Division 1 NCAA Basketball Championship. Louisville, Connecticut, North Carolina and Pittsburgh were determined as the four No. 1 seeds for the tournament, which was no big surprise. But I have a huge problem with one of the selections made by the Major Conference Committee and it deals with a school close to where I'm from, which may seem like a bit of bias, but I guarantee you that it is not.

The selection I had the biggest beef with is the committee's selection of Arizona over Creighton. Now let me defend it with a bit of research so it doesn't seem like this rant is coming from a diehard Bluejay fan, which I am. Let's take a look at the records of the two schools:

Arizona: Overall 19-13 (9-9 Pac 10), 6-10 against RPI Top 50, lost 5 of last 6 games, RPI 62

Creighton: Overall 26-7 (14-4 Missouri Valley), 3-2 against RPI Top 50, won 11 of 12, RPI 46

Now for those of you reading who don't know what RPI is, it stands for Ratings Percentage Index and it is a way to determine how teams should stack up against one another. The formula for calculating RPI is 1/4*(Winning Percentage) + 1/2*(Opponents' Average Winning Percentage) + 1/4*(Opponents' Opponents' Winning Percentage).

The NCAA Selection Committee selected Arizona as an at-large team to play in the NCAA Tournament, while Creighton was left out and became a No. 1 seed in the NIT, college basketball's "other" tournament.

It's like a tournament for the Island of Misfit Toys...teams that just didn't belong with the other schools in the bracket.

While watching College Gameday earlier this morning on ESPN, I had the opportunity to listen to analysts Jay Bilas and Digger Phelps attack Creighton as they compared them to Arizona. All that Digger could muster up was that Arizona had a better lineup, so that clearly made them the better team. Which Joe Lunardi, ESPN's Bracketologist, responded, "then why have they only won once in the past 3 weeks?" I got a good chuckle out of that one. On the other hand, Bilas was attacking Creighton, not so much against the Bluejays, but stating that due to the Pac-10 Conference being that much better than the Missouri Valley, that Arizona deserved the bid.

Well let's take a look at the conference's overall records:
Missouri Valley: overall record of 176-143
Pac-10: Overall record of 192-128

So with each conference having 10 teams, that leaves the average record in the Missouri Valley to be 17.6 wins and 14.3 losses, while in the Pac-10, the average season was 19.2 wins and 12.8 losses. A difference of only 2 wins and losses per team does not give enough credibility to say that that conference deserves a bid plainly on the status of their conference. The Pac-10 did have three ranked teams, but none of them ever really reached the top-10, nor did they have a consistant stay within the top-25.

And perhaps an even more telling sign of which team did better AWAY from their home court, Creighton was 9-4 on the road and Arizona was 2-9.

Arizona lost 5 of their last 6 games, including their first game in their conference tournament. Creighton was winners of 11 of their last 12, with their loss coming in the semifinals of their conference tournament. The facts are plain and simple, the selection committee gave only 2 of their at-large bids to "mid-major" conferences (Dayton and Butler), which Creighton defeated one of the two. Yes, Arizona played 16 games against the RPI Top-50, and that is the ultimate reason they were selected for the tournament. It's hard to compete against conferences that feature a couple of ranked teams, because when you play them twice in a season, that's automatically two games against the RPI Top-50.

Is the selection committee rewarding subpar performances over solid play over an entire season? Yes, finishing 9-9 in a "power" conference is somewhat solid, you have to look at the entire conference. So are you telling me that if Creighton had scheduled games against Duke and Kansas and Oklahoma, but lose, that they would have been selected with a worse record but a higher RPI for losing to teams ranked very high?

In the end, it all boils down to the money. The Pac-10 can generate more revenue than the Missouri Valley conference. When it comes to travel and merchandise, teams from a "major" conference will almost always win out over a school from a "mid-major". That is something that bracketologists forget to figure in when determining their projected bracket, and that is the almighty dollar, which team can generate the NCAA the most amount of money.

This is just my general opinion, but I feel it is pretty close to the truth. While both teams are worthy of being selected, when you can look at the overall body of work compiled by the teams, Arizona should have played their way out of the tournament, while Creighton couldn't have done much more other than winning their conference tournament.

I'm sure fans from Penn State, St. Mary's and San Diego State have the same arguments that I do for their respective teams and probably have a valid point, but I do feel Creighton was the biggest snub, based on the strength that they finished the season with and overall resume. Oh well, at least they can take down the NIT.