ACC 3, City of Richmond 2, Big East 2

[kTXe]

lol @ anyone citing their bracket as evidence of their sports knowledge.

 

[Cythim]

Not when you are a #1 seed, .. in the tournament they underperformed.

You are judging the Big East by one measure and everyone else by another.

I don't know what to tell you, you are just going to have to live with the Big East being the deepest conference, with one of the top two teams in the NCAA's.

Maybe the top, we'll see tonight.

The teams I pointed out lost to seeds that were separated by at least 5 positions, with Georgetown and St John's being the closest. Duke (1) losing to Arizona (5) is not as bad as Syracuse (3) losing to Marquette (11), Notre Dame (2) losing to Florida State (10), or Pittsburgh (1) losing to Butler (8).

As far as the Big East being the deepest conference, I have never argued otherwise. They are a conference built around basketball first and they have a lot of good teams because of that. They are not, however, the best conference in basketball. And to call UConn the best team in basketball is a joke. The tournament crowns a champion but that champion is rarely the best team in basketball. By that logic VCU is a top 4 team and that is laughable.

 

[Cythim]

I don't understand what makes an analyst biased. If simply being wrong makes you biased, then we're all biased because no one is ever always correct in predicting the outcomes of athletic competitions. The vast majority of people, including analysts, cannot beat Vegas odds when predicting athletic events.

This applies to all experts predicting outcomes in all sorts of sports, from high school to professional to Olympic. If you do find someone who can outperform Vegas odds, I suggest you make friends and ride his or her coattails to wealth.

I congratulate you on being "correctly" pessimistic on the Big East, but it's dubious that this establishes you as unbiased and everyone else as biased.

When analysts are picking Syracuse to beat UNC and Ohio State, Notre Dame to beat Kansas, and Pittsburg to beat Florida all in the same post season tournament there is hands down bias involved. This isn't about beating Vegas odds, I don't know why you even brought that up.

 

[Cythim]

lol @ anyone citing their bracket as evidence of their sports knowledge.

Did I say my bracket proves my sports knowledge? I said I can beat the experts at picking because I leave the bias at home.

 

[Cythim]

Maybe you should review your NCAA tourney history.
Far and away we most often see teams seeded either 1,2 or 3 making up the entire Final Four. This year was rare..in fact a first...that there were no number 1 seeds.

The tourney is awesome and the vast majority (my guess is 95%) of basketball fans love it!

But now I just remembered something.......
Aren't you are a BCS apologist? If so, your view of what competition should look like is a bit different than most sports fans.

A story like Butler is the exact reason why you can't allow polls to decide who would be in a Final. They have now run the guantlet two straight years to make it to the finals. That cannot be a fluke. Has it maybe crossed your mind but they were underrated afterall? I would not bet for them in a 7 game series vs Ohio State, but at least they earned their way to the finals vs being voted there like in athe BCS.

It wasn't a first for no 1 seeds but it was a first for no 1s or 2s. But 26 times since 1985 we have seen seeds below 3 in the final four, nearly once every year. My point is seeds 9-16 do not belong in the tournament because their job is to spoil the tournaments hopes of a higher seed. They have no shot at winning it all and a very slim shot of making the Final Four (only happened three times). I would love to see the bracket cut back down to 32 teams and maybe make each upper and lower half of the regions a two loss elimination round or round robin with the best advancing. Why? Single loss elimination, especially in basketball, is a joke.

Am I a BCS apologist? No. I have never once supported the current system for the NCAA football. I also do not support a tournament because that will not fix the problem either. College football needs broad changes, starting with a culling of the field so we aren't picking a handful out of 120+ teams.

And I called Butler underrated somewhere in this thread, I had them advancing to the Elite Eight to play Florida.

 

[WV Cowboy]

and that is laughable.

In this thread alone you have stated, ...

1) that the regular season is meaningless
2) that the tournament is a joke

And that was after you said that the tournament was what counts, and what really matters.

Now, talk about laughable.

 

[DFWJC]

Just a side point--it is hard to use low seeds advancing in the tourney as evidence that they should not be in the tourney at all.

Every season there are teams that are vastly over and under-rated. You don't know until you play the games. Just because someone is a higher seed does in no way mean they are for sure the better team.

This year was unusal in that a seed lower than #4 made it to the final game. But normally the final four is made up of top 4 seeds--and those teams are interchangable for the most part.

You see upsets in every sport. A team get hot and wins a title. It happens in the Super Bowl "tourney" and even in a sport that has a series like baseball.

Unlike college football, at least these sports actually give more than two teams a fair shot at winning the title. The outcome is actually determined by playing the game....imagine that!