They opened with mentioning that this year 112 teams had 20 wins or more, and that with 37 at large bids it was “tough”.  It leads me to ask why they’d even consider teams like UConn, Northwestern, and Colorado State?

Charles Barkley and Greg Anthony talked on small conferences and SOS – how do small schools get a fair shake when power schools won’t play at Drexel, or at Iona?  Anthony stands up for how do you handle an unexpected down year in your conference?  Response is “pre-season events” are a way for schools that aren’t in power conferences to get those bigger games out of conference.  The trouble is, there are only so many openings in those November and December holiday tournaments to get games against the supposed power conference schools.  What I’d like to hear the selection committee answer is how they think the scheduling is fair between “power” and “non-power” conferences.   

Then they talk about “scheduling more aggressively” when your conference is a smaller conference.  I’d love to know how they propose that smaller schools do this without playing tons of road games out of conference.   I’d also like to know why some of the larger schools can’t be “required” to play, say 2 games a year on the road at places like Ohio, Akron, Drexel, Iona, Wichita, Saint Marys, Long Beach St, VCU, etc.  It would be simple, for example, to require a few games a year on the schedule to be games that are 1 for 1 games where for every time UNC Asheville goes to Chapel Hill, UNC comes to play a game in Asheville.  How, otherwise is it fair to look at the big “top 50 wins” category, and impressive wins?  If you go on Ken Pom’s website and evaluate non-conference SOS, lots of the teams in the top of the list aren’t in the tournament.  And here’s another thing:  Butler has a similar record, and a stronger Non-Conf SOS.  Why aren’t they in there instead of UConn or Colorado State?

Seth Davis thinks the “non-power” conferences are getting a fair shake.  What I want to know is how UConn being in, and Northwestern being considered, are a fair shake for non-power conferences?  I just don’t understand why we have to constantly hear about Top 50 or Top 25 wins when half of these power conference schools won’t purposely schedule the teams in the 50 to 125 range, and they’ll never play them on the road.  Another measure I’d like to see them put into place is not allowing at-large teams in that have losing records in their own conference.  How is a school that can’t win within its own conference truly a quality NCAA tournament team?  Kenny Smith brought up that every year there still isn’t some kind of clear cut suggestions about how many games against top 50, top 100, etc teams constitutes a supposed strong schedule.  Again, until they have some kind of scheduling requirements forced upon the power conferences that make the scheduling process fairer, the means that are used to evaluate those teams is not as accurate as it could be. 

I'm nearly certain Akron or Kent could have given a better game too.