Busting Brackets
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NCAA Basketball: Is the Selection Committee ruining college basketball?

By Shaun Gordon

SAN ANTONIO, TX - MARCH 31: Townes (Photo by Chris Covatta/Getty Images)
SAN ANTONIO, TX - MARCH 31: Townes (Photo by Chris Covatta/Getty Images) /
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SAN ANTONIO, TX – APRIL 02: Confetti sits on the court after the Villanova Wildcats defeated the Michigan Wolverines during the 2018 NCAA Men’s Final Four National Championship game at the Alamodome on April 2, 2018 in San Antonio, Texas. Villanova defeated Michigan 79-62. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
SAN ANTONIO, TX – APRIL 02: Confetti sits on the court after the Villanova Wildcats defeated the Michigan Wolverines during the 2018 NCAA Men’s Final Four National Championship game at the Alamodome on April 2, 2018 in San Antonio, Texas. Villanova defeated Michigan 79-62. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) /

Quantity over Quality

So what’s causing this shift that favors the power conferences?

It’s all about what data the Selection Committee emphasizes. When looking at a team’s resume, the committee will look at win-loss record, good wins and bad losses (based off of RPI), and other outside factors that they deem pertinent.

This year, the NCAA changed the way that the committee looks at RPI, breaking all of a team’s games into four quadrants based on the opponent’s RPI and where the game was located.

Quadrant 1 games are the top-tier games against teams with a high RPI. Quadrant 2 games are considered solid games in which a win would be considered a good win. Games in Quadrants 3 and 4 are ones that a team wants to avoid losing at all costs.

Prior to this year, the committee looked at a team’s record against Top-50 and Top-100 teams, but without a built-in way to factor whether games were at home, neutral, or away. The quadrants do just that.

The quadrants aren’t the problem here. It’s how the committee looks at them.

In recent years, the committee has appeared to adopt a position of quantity over quality.

Let’s look at how the three power-conference teams that were among that last four at-large berths performed in Quadrant 1 and 2 games:

  • UCLA: 8-9
  • Arizona State: 8-9
  • Syracuse: 7-11

None of them broke .500 against high-caliber teams.

Now let’s look at how Loyola-Chicago and the two biggest mid-major snubs did against Quadrants 1 and 2:

  • Loyola-Chicago: 4-3
  • St. Mary’s: 4-3
  • MTSU: 5-5

All of them were .500 or above, but rather than looking at the percentage, the committee fixated on the number of wins, effectively saying: “It’s OK to lose a lot of games against high-caliber teams as long as you win more of them than the little guys do.”

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