The Misses

Usually, the shtick for established columnists and up-and-coming bloggers in the sports realm is to highlight their good predictions and ignore the bad misses. Today, I'm going to focus on the misses this season. Let's focus on three misses.

The most obvious miss was Texas A&M. Don't get me wrong, I expected them to make the tournament with a relatively weaker Big XII compared to previous years and a multitude of returning players. I even thought that they had a chance at a 'protected seed' (4 or better). I just wasn't convinced on December 10 when I criticized the embellishing of A&M by one Gary Parrish of CBS Sportsline lore. At the time, I didn't expect Acie Law IV to have 25 great games in a 30+ game season.

Another miss was the Pac-10 conference. At season's start, I viewed it as a 3-4 bid conference with UCLA, Arizona, and Washington being the locks. USC was my 4th team. No Oregon. No Washington State. I knew of Aaron Brooks, but what about Tajuan Porter and Maarty Leunen? Not so much. As for Wazzou, I had no clue. (Yes, I rhymed).

Another Texas A&M-associated miss was the non-inclusion of Acie Law IV in my top three preseason All-America teams. Instead, I included the likes of Ronald Steele, Dominic James, Richard Roby (who?), Sean Singletary, and Brandon Heath at the guard positions ahead of Law. What on earth was I thinking?

While there are other misses that can be harped on (namely, Butler during the NCAA Tournament), those are the ones of the highest magnitude. With that said, some of these misses pale in comparison to those of the real media and higher-profile bloggers.

Tomorrow, we'll have our predictions for the Sweet 16 games as well as other observations pertinent to the NCAA tournament and beyond.

NCAA Tournament Performance (by conference)

The first weekend of the NCAA Tournament has come and gone, and unless you had Wisconsin or a dark horse going far, your bracket is still in decent shape. The preservation of the top seeds only amplifies the quality of matchups that will take place this upcoming weekend starting with Thursday night.

The only major upset of the weekend was UNLV eliminating Wisconsin in Chicago. I was surprised when Washington State forgot how to play perimeter defense against Vanderbilt in what turned out to be a double overtime defeat.

There is no perfect way to gauge conference performance, but what we can do is look at expected and actual numbers from the multi-bid conferences. For the record, it’s not completely scientific, but it does work with the seeds designated by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee.

Conference	Actual Record	Expected Record	Actual vs. Expected Difference	Actual Sweet 16 teams	Expected Sweet 16 teams	Sweet 16 Difference
ACC	6-6	9-4	-2.5	1	3	-2
SEC	7-2	5-4	+2.0	3	1	+2
Pac-10	7-3	8-3	-0.5	3	3	0
Big Ten	6-5	5-4	0*	1	2	-1
Big East	5-4	7-4	-1.0	2	2	0
Missouri Valley	2-1	2-1	0	1	1	0
Big XII	5-2	6-1	-1.0	2	3	-1
Mountain West	2-1	2-2	+0.5	1	0	+1
Western Athletic	1-2	1-2	0	0	0	0
Atlantic-10	1-2	0-2	+0.5	0	0	0
Horizon	2-1	1-2	+1.0	1	0	+1
Colonial	1-2	0-2	+0.5	0	0	0

* lower winning percentage for actual record

When staring at these statistics, a few things jump out.

• First, the ACC has done the worst job of “holding” seeds in this tournament. In three games, a member school has lost to a lower seed. In Virginia’s case, many feel that they were generously seeded.

• Second, the SEC (the SEC East, in particular) has been stellar. In my opinion, Tennessee had the good fortune of being in a pod with three overseeded teams. I will never understand an objective argument describing how either Virginia or Long Beach State deserved within one seed line of their given seed. Had Wazzou held onto their double-digit lead against Vanderbilt, we’d be discussing the Pac-10 in this spot.

• Third, … so the Big Ten wasn’t as bad as I thought they were. I stand by my somewhat inflammatory (yet factually based) comments about Illinois. I watched a fair amount during the regular season and preferred to watch the good defensive teams of the Valley instead of the Big Ten save Ohio State and Wisconsin. Like last year, the Big Ten had a lazy Sunday this year.

• Fourth, the end game for the Big East is what we expected after the first weekend – Georgetown and Pittsburgh move on and everyone else going home. What we didn’t expect were all of the close games. While the nation expected VCU to keel over and die after being down 19 in the second half, I was more surprised by the sustained effort of Boston College against Georgetown. The Big East record might have been better had Jerel McNeal and Mike Nardi been healthier, but I don’t believe that a healthy McNeal or Nardi would have altered the number of Big East teams in the Sweet 16.

• Lastly, I, for one, thought a few of the seedings were shrouded in subjectivity. Of course, I can talk for hours about Virginia, who actually played some quality basketball in the tournament - unlike the two weeks leading up to the NCAAs. There’s also UNLV, who we projected as a 4-seed (actual: 7-seed), and then *stunned* Wisconsin. The two that have the committee smiling are Butler and Vanderbilt. Following the method of previous selection committees, many bracketologists placed less value on November victories; however, Butler received a 5-seed, compared to an 8-seed, which was projected by a group of 30 bracketologists. To their defense, they validated the seed and overachieved by defeating a good Old Dominion team (who played a bad game, trust me) and a favored Maryland squad. As for the Commodores, their 5-5 close to the season capped by two non-road defeats to Arkansas had people thinking that they were destined for the doomed 8-seed. As it was, Vanderbilt got a 6-seed, trounced a GW team that was happy to be in the dance and gutted out a thriller against the Cougars.

One thing we do know is that, despite the chatter – mainly by ESPN guys who have more airtime than substantive material to fill it with - there was no George Mason this year. USC (5), Butler (5), Vanderbilt (6), and UNLV (7) are the only non-protected seeds that advanced the round of 16. All in all, this is just one weekend, and much of this story has yet to unfold. That is the beauty of this madness that takes place annually in March and grips us to our sofas for hours on end. By next weekend, 16 will have become 4 and more stories will be etched into our permanent memory. Until the games return in 89 hours, savor the quality of basketball we’ve enjoyed over this past weekend and do your best to resist watching the NIT (that is, unless you have a rooting interest).

Hopes Dashed and Revived - Clemson and Oregon

On Thursday night, two fading squads who badly needed victories on their home court against Power 16 teams had a dissimilar fate. By the end of the night, hopes were shot in Clemson while they were revitalized in Eugene.

Clemson continued their sharp ACC descent as they lost at home to Duke. While the Tigers and their fans may lament three missed Duke travel calls, one mistaken travel call against them, and a mistaken basket interference call; however, how do you get down by 23 to a team that does not know how to score consistently? Credit the fans at Littlejohn Coliseum for never giving up in the pursuit of a comeback. Also, credit Duke for buckling down on defense whenever the lead got to within two baskets.

Just minutes from halftime, Oregon trailed Washington State by double digits. When losing 6 of 8 games in a cut-throat conference, character is needed to overcome such deficits against quality opponents. Not giving in, the Ducks rallied behind Tajuan Porter to defeat the surging Cougars. Putting things in perspective, Oregon avoided being 8-8 in conference and should be in the tournament given their resume.

Additionally, following up on the Wednesday post, the 3rd best resume belonged to West Virginia, who averages a 9-seed according to a collection of bracket projections at the Comparing the Seeds page (link on the right). The first was Old Dominion and the second was Illinois. Something to think about as we move closer to the final stretch of the regular season.