I wouldn’t be worth much as a basketblogger if I didn’t blog about the proposed expansion of the NCAA tournament.  Frankly, I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said. I think it’s a terrible idea, and just about everyone I’ve heard speak about it thinks it’s a terrible idea, too.   To the extent I have any thoughts about it that haven’t already been raised by other people, these are those thoughts:

1.   The top 8 seeds would get screwed.  Right now, the #1 seeds essentially have a bye in the first round.  And the #2 seeds win their first-round games about 95% of the time.  But, if the field is expanded, and the top 32 teams get byes, then, by the time the #1 and #2 seeds are playing their first game, they aren’t playing the likes of Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Eastern Tennessee State.  Instead, they are playing a team that already won a tournament game.  Thus, they’ll be playing tougher opponents.

In other words, the 64 teams that wind up in the round of 64 will come much closer to representing the 64 best teams in the country than the current field of 64 comes to representing the 64 best teams in the country (because the current field of 64 includes the champions of terrible conferences — teams that will get eliminated before the top 32 seeds take the court in the new format).  To me, this is a pretty big step back for the #1 and #2 seeds, and, therefore, the expansion would make the regular season less important (because it minimizes the award for getting a top seed).

2.   The whole idea of the expansion, as I understand it, is to make more money.  (I know that the NCAA has some half-hearted pitch about it being better for the players, but all of the commentators I have listened to say it’s about the money.)  I’m not going to grapple with whether that’s a legitimate motivation; that’s a different topic for a different day.  For now, I’ll assume that it’s legit.  My question is why the NCAA thinks that this expansion will actually make more money.

Right now, the first two days of the tournament are exciting because they include some close, quality matchups, like 8/9, 7/10, and 6/11 games.  As the tournament is currently constructed, an 8/9 game involves a team ranked between 29 and 32, and a team ranked between 33 and 36, of all the teams in the tournament.  The 7/10 game involves a team ranked between 25 and 28 and a team ranked between 37 and 40.

Well, the first two days of the expanded tournament will have no such matchups.  Any team ranked 1-8 will have a bye.  So the best teams playing on these first two days will be #9 seeds.  And they’ll be playing… wait for it… teams seeded #24 (in other words, teams ranked between 93 and 96 of all the tournament teams).  The “best” matchups will be games played between #16 and #17 seeds.

Ummm… why the hell does the NCAA assume that people will be excited to watch these games?  Under the current system, people take extended lunches, or leave early from work — or even take the whole two days off from work — to watch the games.  Does the NCAA think that people are going to do that to watch a 9 v 24 game?  A 16 v 17 game?

More importantly, why does the NCAA assume that people will buy tickets to go to those games?  When I watch the games now, I’m amazed at how many empty seats there are.  Is there any reason to think that the seats will sell better for the expanded tournament?

3.  If the idea here is simply to have more tournament games, under the thinking that tournament games bring in money and more tournament games will bring in more money, then why not go to a double-elimination tournament?  The logistics would be somewhat difficult, but I don’t see why the NCAA couldn’t do away with conference tournaments, so the NCAA tournament starts a week earlier. That would allow for there to be a loser’s bracket without having the tournament last much longer into April than it already does.

Perhaps it sounds like a wild idea to move away from the single-elimination format, but, once you’re moving away from the current system simply to bring in more money, I think that a double-elimination tournament is no less crazy than expanding the field to 96.

Over the last few days, I’ve been listening plenty to “experts” talking about which teams are on the bubble, and which of those teams should get in.  They talk endlessly about RPI rankings, strength of schedule, wins against the RPI top-50, and the “eye-test,” which is basically their way of saying that nothing else matters if you look at 2 teams and feel strongly that one is better.

For what it’s worth, if I’m ever on the committee, here’s how I’ll decide:

1. The teams’ records.  For whatever reason, this stat seems to get overlooked.  Of course, a team that plays in a lousy conference and puts up, say, 25 wins, has not accomplished as much as a team that plays in an excellent conference and puts up, say, 23 wins.  But, when talking about bubble teams, the record says a lot.  If a team puts up 23 wins in an excellent conference, that team probably isn’t on the bubble; it’s already in.  Thus, if we’re comparing 2 bubble teams, we don’t have to worry about an excellent team from an excellent conference getting bounced.  Once you take those teams out of consideration, the record is the best indicator of who should go.  If I’m choosing between 2 bubble teams, and one of them has 3 or more wins than the other, my analysis is just about over.
2. Wins over RPI top-50.  Assuming that the teams have similar records, wins over the RPI top-50 is, in my opinion, the only other measurement that matters.  The team with more wins over the RPI top-50 should be in, assuming that the records are comparable.  I don’t care how many games they played against the RPI top-50, I care about the win total.  If the teams did not play the same number of games against the RPI top-50, that fact will be reflected in the records, which I would have already made the most important factor.  For example, if 1 team played 10 games against the RPI top-50, and the other only played 5, that fact would be reflected in their records.  In other words, if two teams have similar records, and one team is 3-7 against the RPI top 50 while the other is 1-2, I’m going with the team that is 3-7.
3. The “eye test.”  When all else fails, go to the eye test.

Well, it’s March. Welcome to the Madness.

Given the state of my finances, it would be extra special to win one of my tournament pools this year. So, I’ve started thinking about how to win even before the brackets are out.

I’m thinking that I’m going to load up on teams from the Big East and Big 12. The Top 10 has seen lots of movement all season, but these two conferences have been well represented throughout; once things kind of sorted themselves out, and people realized that North Carolina did not deserve to be ranked #6 (as it was early in the season), the Big East has been consistently represented by Syracuse, Villanova, West Virginia, and, occasionally, Georgetown, and the Big 12 has been consistently represented by Kansas, Kansas State, and, before its recent tailspin, Texas.

It seems to me that the teams most likely to win games in the tournament are the ones who have faced the most quality opponents during the regular season. This might seem self-evident at first, but it isn’t necessarily true that the teams that win games in the tournament come from the conferences that get the most teams into the tournament. In fact, there’s reason to think the opposite: a conference that gets 7 or 8 teams in probably got a few teams into the tournament that do not have a legitimate shot to win the whole thing, and there’s no reason, in a vacuum, to think that those conferences wind up winning more games than they lose. In other words, no law of nature says that there’s a direct relationship between quantity and quality for the purposes of predicting which conferences will generate winners in the tournament.

So, I did a bit of research, to look into whether the conferences that get the most teams into the tournament generally wind up producing multiple teams that win multiple games. I have 2 conclusions:

1. Thank God for Wikipedia. What a brilliant site. It has each conference’s record in the tournament for the last few years.
2. Generally, it seems to be true that conferences that get the most teams in also perform the best in the tournament. Last year, three conferences got 7 teams in each: the ACC, Big East, and Big Ten. Those conferences were 9-6, 17-7, and 9-7, respectively. Quite good. In 2008, the Big East stood out with 8 bids, and an 11-8 record. The Big 12, Pac-10, and SEC all got 6 bids. The SEC wet the bed, with a 4-6 record, but the Big 12 and Pac-10 supported my theory, going 12-5 and 8-6, respectively. In 2007, the ACC led with 7 bids, and finished a mediocre 7-7. The Pac-10, Big Ten, and Big East each got 6 bids, and supported my theory by going 10-6, 9-6, and 7-6. Wikipedia doesn’t have such detailed breakdowns for 2006, but it says that the Big East got 8 teams, and the SEC and Big Ten both got 6. That was the screwy year when George Mason made the Final Four, so it is not necessarily a model of anything. Nonetheless, UCONN and Villanova both made the Elite 8 out of the Big East, and Florida and LSU both made it out of the SEC.

This year, when the brackets come out, I’m loading up on teams from the Big East and Big 12. There are certainly exceptions to the general rule that teams from the best conferences are the safest teams to pick when the brackets come out, but it seems to be as reliable a predictor of success as any other. If anyone knows of any others, I hope you’ll share them… I need the cash.

I’m heading where the air is warm and the sun is shiny for a couple of days.

So, if you log on and see that I haven’t updated the site, don’t think it’s because I found something better to do with my time than blog about a sport I don’t play particularly well. No, it’s because I’m relaxing on a beach.

I’ll be back with more Hoopservations on Monday, March 8th.

I was able to watch some of the North Carolina – Kentucky game on Saturday. At one point, Clark Kellogg was singing the praises of Larry Drew II, a guard on Carolina. Kellogg said that Drew II has “tremendous DNA.” He’s right; Drew’s father, Larry Drew, was an NBA player.

There is nothing controversial about this. Drew II is a good college player, and Kellogg was saying that he has lots of upside because it is in his genes. When a kid is good at the guitar, it doesn’t surprise people to learn that one of his parents was a musician. When a kid is smart, it doesn’t surprise people to learn that one or both of her parents was also smart. So, when a kid is good at hoops, it isn’t surprising to learn that his father played in the NBA.

It begs an interesting question, though: Why doesn’t this happen more often? The last time I remember the kids of pro basketball players playing for a good college team was when Doc Rivers’s son played with Patrick Ewing’s son for Georgetown a few years ago. That was an excellent team, but not necessarily because of Rivers and Ewing — the team was led by two guys whose surnames were Hibbert and Green.

On the pro level, there are a few guys who have a parent that was a professional athlete. Grant Hill’s dad played football for the Cowboys. Kobe Bryant’s dad played pro ball, overseas for a number of years. Joakim Noah’s dad played professional tennis. I’m sure there are a few other guys in the league who have a pro athlete for a parent, but I’m having trouble thinking of them.

In other sports, the list is longer, but it’s still not very long. The Manning brothers have a father who was an NFL QB. Ken Griffey, Jr. and Barry Bonds have fathers who played Major League Baseball. Again, I’m sure there are others, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

I, for one, have no idea why that is.

Today, two weeks since the site launched, the number of hits passed 300. I know for sure that I’ve visited the site no more than 150 times in the last two weeks, which means that there have been at least 150 other hits.

Thanks for reading, I hope you’ll continue to visit.

If you are reading this, you are either a friend of mine, a person who read about this blog in one of my postings somewhere else, or someone who simply got lost while navigating your way around the internet. Whatever it is that brings you, welcome.

I have been watching hoops for as long as I can remember, and I used to play hoops for my high school team (read: I sat on the bench for my high school team). I was a ‘tweener – I couldn’t dribble well enough to play point guard, and I didn’t score enough to play shooting guard. Some folks label players like that “scrubs,” but I prefer to think of myself as a ‘tweener (I’ll have a posting soon about the distinction between “scrubs” and ‘tweeners). Anyway, during all of the time I spent watching hoops – whether from my couch watching it on tv, or from my seat on the bench watching my teammates live – I learned lots about the game. And I have lots of opinions. I have spent many hours during my life talking hoops with my friends. Recently, a bunch of them started telling me that I should start a blog. I’m not sure whether they were giving me genuine advice or just trying to help me find a new audience so they don’t have to listen to me anymore. Regardless, they got me thinking about starting a blog, and, well, here it is.

Before I get started, I just want to set a few ground rules. First, don’t be offensive. I’m not here to censor people, and I don’t care about little things like cursing. Let’s all just try to keep the conversation respectful and relatively clean. If you think that someone’s comment is stupid, either ignore it or refute it, but don’t tell him that he’s a #!@’ing bag of #%$ whose mother is a *^%.

Second, respect the anonymity of people who post on the site. There are a few reasons for this:

ONE:  The purpose of this site is to share opinions about basketball players, primarily professional basketball players. Every single player on an NBA roster could crumple me up into the shape of a basketball, and, using that basketball-shaped-human-that-used-to-be-me, shoot more than 70% from the foul line (except Shaq, but his problem would not be during the “crumpling me up into the shape of a basketball” phase of that activity). I’ll sleep a bit better at night if those players don’t know my name.

TWO:  I have millions of female fans around the world. Millions. I have to go to great lengths to keep my contact information secretive; otherwise I would get hundreds of e-mails, phone calls, and personal visits every day. If those millions of females knew that they could find me here, they would crash the site. I don’t feel like paying for more bandwidth, so please just refer to me by my screen-name.

THREE:  I feel quite strongly that people should not be judged based on a google search for their name. It’s one of those many opinions I have. If a stranger ever google searches for my name, I don’t want him to think he knows me because he spent five minutes reading what comes up. I certainly don’t want him to think he knows me because he read some postings I made on my blog.

Other rules may need to be implemented over time, but, for now, the only rules are not to be offensive, and to respect the anonymity of people who post. Basically, this is designed to be a site where hoops fans can go to stay current on current hoopenings (hoop happenings, for those who didn’t catch on), and to jump into a conversation having something to do with hoops. The site has links to sites that cover hoops news, links to sites that sell hoops gear, and links to other blogs about hoops. I’ll try to inject some humor into the posts on the site, but, at bottom, the posts will be designed to start conversations about hoops. (If you’re looking for a more even balance between hoops and comedy, I suggest that you watch the Knicks.  Oh… speaking of the Knicks and comedy… If you want to laugh, watch this video and remember that the Knicks drafted the guy “guarding” Vince Carter.)

Welcome to my site. I hope you visit often, and jump into the conversation.