Welcome to TourneyBubble.com – your one-stop shop for unfiltered, biased coverage of the teams vying for a coveted spot in the 2009 NCAA Basketball Tournament. The ridiculously bad coverage of bubble teams, as well as the embarrassingly bad setup of the past two NCAA Tournaments by the tournament selection committee, has left us with no other resort. Also, we are not entirely sure that the college basketball writers at ESPN actually watch basketball. At Tourney Bubble, we strive to be active contrarians of everything that is wrong with projecting the NCAA Tournament field. At the very least, at Tourney Bubble we will be upfront with our allegiances - we like Virginia Tech, Old Dominion, the ACC and the CAA. Write that down for future reference.
Recently, Tourney Bubble had the opportunity to sit down with Thomas J O’Connor, who last year had the distinction of putting together the worst NCAA Tournament field in the last ten years. The transcript is below:
TB: Dr. O’Connor, thanks for joining us today. What the hell were you thinking last year?
O’Connor: We had one singular mission last year: to put together a mind-numbingly boring tournament field that could draw in casual college basketball fans to watch the first two rounds of the tournament, even if it meant ensuring a number of dreadful matchups from big-name teams that had no business competing for a national championship. On top of that, we hoped that these overrated teams would confirm that they did not belong in the tournament at all. We think Arizona, Saint Joseph’s, Oregon and Kentucky achieved that.
TB: Speaking of Oregon – how did they get a 9th seed last year?
O’Connor: To ensure that Michael Beasley and OJ Mayo would play in a prime-time matchup of super Freshman, we had to move an automatic shoo-in tournament team like Kansas State to an 11th seed in order for them to play USC. Oregon got moved from an 11th seed to a 9 to facilitate this. But we all know the selection committee does not do things like that intentionally.
TB: Let’s move on to the most infuriating trend in recent tournaments – matching up mid-majors to play each other in the first round. What is the goal of this?
O’Connor: Well, for one it eliminates the possibility that multiple good teams from mid major conferences can advance to the Sweet 16. When you match up two mid majors in the first round, you ensure that one team loses and that you give Jay Bilas and Billy Packer an automatic argument against their inclusion in the tournament. It also deprives real fans of what they want to see: excellent mid majors having the opportunity to play and beat teams from the major conferences in the NCAA Tournament. High-major teams are too scared to play these teams in the regular season, so we strive to ensure that the BCS conference teams are not inconvenienced with playing a team that might sully their reputation. That’s why you saw the Butler-South Alabama and Gonzaga-Davidson matchups this year, and the Butler-Old Dominion matchup from ’07. When else can all those mid majors get an opportunity to play each other on a national stage?
TB: It’s called Bracket Busters.
O’Connor: (silence)
TB: Last year Virginia Tech was 9-7 in the ACC, unquestionably the best conference in the country. They also became the first team to record 10 or more ACC wins (tournament included) to ever miss the NCAA’s – why was this?
O’Connor: We have been through this before -Virginia Tech simply did not have enough quality wins, even if they did finish fourth in the best conference in America. What did they do besides excel in an absolute gauntlet of league play, gel at the perfect time, and play Sweet Sixteen-caliber basketball for the last month of the season? Rather than analyzing a team’s body of work in tough conference play, we prefer to focus on the names on the front of the jerseys.
TB: One last question, Dr. O’Connor – why are quality losses an important consideration for selection to the tournament, and in your flawed RPI system? How difficult is to lose to good teams? Along the same lines, can’t you argue that the extremely difficult out of conference schedules for some MEAC and other low-major teams qualify them for the tournament? I suppose I’m just curious as to how an accumulation of “good” losses can be logically compared to a set of actual wins?
O’Connor: Thanks for having me, Tyler.
Coming soon will be our 2008-2009 Season Preview.
