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Sports
& Recreation . March
Madness Returns: It's been a while since I got to see Villanova get to the Final Four. But that doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for the NCAAA Basketball Tournament. It's not that I don't like the NBA, or the WNBA. But there's something about college-level play, especially at Tournament time, when it's single elimination, that even the NBA play-off's can't hold a candle to. The best of teams have reason to worry. They might face a team like Gonzaga or Princeton in the 1st round, teams that are highly unlikely to go all the way, but teams which, nonetheless, on any given afternoon or night, can knock even the most serious contender out of the picture if they're not careful. The Men's Tournament has been bumped up to 65 teams, a curiosity in an event with 16 teams in 4 brackets trying to make their respective ways to the Final Four. The reason? The Selection Committee will have their work cut out for them, as usual, choosing the 34 at-large teams to be invited, a number set by both rules and tradition. But the pool of automatic qualifiers -- the teams that get to go based on tournament wins, except in two cases, the Ivy League & Pacific10, whose winners are determined by regular season play -- has expanded to 31, with the addition of the Mountain West and Western Athletic winners. So ... 65 teams. Go figure. How they'll handle the odd-team-out is ... Well, I won't even dizzy you with the details. If you're curious, you can go to the official NCAA site {link below}. What's more curious is that he same number of automatic qualifiers is set for the women's side of the card; but instead of choosing 34 at-large teams for the women, they're limiting it to 33. Why they didn't do the same for the men's brackets is beyond me. But the NCAA is noted for arcane rules. In any case, it's not likely to diminish my interest, or anyone else's. ... Follow the Action ... The Arcane RPI Ratings ... Who makes the cut and who doesn't has always been a subject of controversy, particularly since the NCAA Selection Committee started using the infamous RPI -- Rating Percentage Index. In brief, the RPI supposedly serves as a measure of a team's strength and is based upon three major criteria:
That makes for a lot of math, especially since, of the 65 teams selected, less than half get automatic berths because of conference tournament wins or best records. [See above.] Of course, to make matters worse, the NCAA never releases its stats to the public, probably as much to avoid an onslaught of law suits as anything else. But the AP released an independent version of the RPI the day of the selections. On separate pages, we've listed the top 200 teams for both the Men's & Women's Division I. {Be patient. A list that long takes about a half-minute to download at 56k.} Why so many? ... Well, mostly because some of the teams that made the final cut were close to the 200 mark. One of the Men's teams that made the cut -- Winthrop -- was ranked 188th, and it didn't seem like much of a stretch from there to provide a nice round 200 for you. Winthrop, by the way, which won the Big South Tournament for an automatic berth, will face 169th ranked Northwestern State in the new pre-Round 1 game. Poor 177th ranked UNC-Greensboro has the unenviable task of facing the No. 1 seed in the West, Stanford, which placed 2nd in the RPI behind Duke. On the Women's side, 191st ranked Long Island U. took the Northeast Conference for their NCAA berth. They face the No. 1 seed UConn in the East for the opening round. The 176th ranked Austin Peay team took the Ohio Valley tournament to face No. 1 seed Tennessee in the Mideast. Who
Got the Automatic Berths?
If you don't find your team there, then check out the rest of the Selection Committee's choices. If you don't find your team in either place, and still can't find someone to root for, better luck next year. ... . ******* ******* If you would like to submit something for our Good Sport feature, or if you simply would like to suggest something you think we ought to cover, e-mail us at ... sports@downstreetmagazine.com. ******* ******* If you would like to advertise in this section, or throughout the magazine, please visit our Advertising Info Pages ... or call, write, or e-mail ads@downstreetmagazine.com. ******* ******* | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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