TourneyBubble has been hearing a lot about "close losses" and "near upsets" these days in tournament prognostication. Most of this applies to Miami, who is still lingering on many bracket's Last Four Out club, presumably right on the cusp of an at-large berth. My problem with the whole "they could have beaten (fill in elite team)! They lost in overtime!" argument is that you must apply it to everybody, and pretty soon you will have a mess of supposedly good teams in the at-large mix. Ask yourself this, ESPN, CNNSI, etc. - if Miami had not been picked fourth in the preseason ACC poll, would they still be on your list? Are they on it - and excused from some losses - because they are "supposed to be good"?
If we are going to play the good team as victim card, why not include Virginia Tech, who is one half-court prayer heave (Xavier), tremendous put-back (at BC) and an impossible on-the-way-down floater (vs. Wisconsin) from being 19-6 and ranked in every poll? As George Costanza would say "I can go bummer-to-bummer with anyone!" Virginia Tech gets a second, closer look at selection time because they are relatively new on the scene of big time basketball. Do you think there is any way on earth a 10-8 in the ACC Maryland, Duke or Wake Forest gets left out of last year's field? No chance. Unfortunately, snobbery and elitism exists in college hoops, but not nearly to the extent as in college football. Going forward, we just wish the major sports news outlets would at least acknowledge it exists.
