NCAA Basketball: Gonzaga, Texas, and Iowa headline this week’s Sunday Mailbag

1. Should any school that wins 20 games (or the equivalent with fewer games) get in the NCAA tournament regardless of what conference they are in? – Patrick Madden (@TheSportsJD)

I want to start off this question by saying in a normal year it is always about who you beat and who you lose to. When you beat those teams and their records. There have and will continue to be teams who have won 20 games that will be left out of the tournament. Most of them are part of smaller conferences, but there has been their fair share of power conference teams being left out of the tournament winning 20 games.

This year is not a normal year by any circumstances and my answer is still going to be the same. No, while 20 wins is always a good measuring stick and 90% of the time is going to be the magic number to get a team into the tournament it doesn’t always mean that team has beaten anyone good. A team who doesn’t go out and challenge themselves in the non-conference should not be rewarded with the tournament even if they do win the games.

Teams who perform well inside their conference but still have a hollow resume have more of a case to me than those who finish in the middle of the pack of their conference and don’t play anyone in the non-conference. Power conference teams who finish near the top of their conferences are going to have the wins that move the needle.

Of course, there are years where the power conference is not very good and a team has well over 20 wins with zero good wins.  Those teams still deserve to be in the tournament. Winning in your conference and finishing the top half of a power conference is never easy to do even if the conference is down.

Given the way the year has gone the 20 wins is going to be a good measuring stick especially considering that would give teams a record of about 20-7 since 27 games are the max number of games available to teams this year. A lot of teams are going to likely play under that, remember the minimum number of games that is a requirement for the tournament this year is 13.

So given those circumstances if a team goes 10-3 and loses in their conference tournament do they deserve to be in as well especially considering those teams may very well have beaten some good really good teams to boost their resume. This year’s selection is likely going to be more scrutinized than ever before.

How will the committee view a team with fewer games, over a team that played more games, but the wins are comparable?  No one knows, how they will do that, but it is still wrong to put a blanket number on the wins needed to qualify for the tournament. I will continue to fight for that every single year it should go by who you beat and who you lose to, Always!