Day 1 at the Dance: Utter Madness
Danero Thomas
NEW ORLEANS — Five things we learned from Day 1 of the NCAA tournament …
1. Was this the best first day ever in an NCAA tournament? I’ve covered six of them, can remember 22, and this was the craziest. Eight of the 16 games went down to the final possession, the best being the Danero Thomas two-dribble buzzer-beater that lifted Murray State over Vanderbilt. Seven lower seeds won, the most improbable being No. 14 Ohio — the nine-seed in the MAC tournament! — knocking off No. 3 Georgetown in a game that didn’t come close to the final possession, because the Bobcats were dominant. It made for a phenomenal day of television. Keeping tabs on it from New Orleans Arena was its own form of madness.
My Thursday timeline: Shake off the residual effects of a St. Patrick’s evening spent on Bourbon Street, join about 500 total fans and media members in New Orleans Arena (it really was that sleepy) for Notre Dame-Old Dominion. Watch the 11-over-6 upset happen, while keeping online-video tabs on a Villanova-Robert Morris 2-15 game in which Scottie Reynolds didn’t start as a “teaching point,” and the Wildcats were struggling. Check out, in the ODU locker room, Frank Hassell’s giant padlock t-shirt and the Cinderella reference coach Blaine Taylor left on the whiteboard. Talk with assistant coach Jim Corrigan about the Monarchs’ zone, and learn in the course of that conversation that ‘Nova is in overtime. Run back to the press-room TVs to see the Robert Morris team I covered in the NEC final on the verge of pulling off the upset of the dance — until Karon Abraham’s luck ran out and Reynolds started acting like Reynolds, with a little help from the refs. (It was a nice game, but the highlights that followed from BYU-Florida were better: That Jimmer Jam went to double OT. )
By then, third-seeded Baylor is on the floor here in New Orleans, playing a first half that ended with the third-seeded Bears trailing No. 14 Sam Houston State by one. And so the madness duties continue: Monitor that situation courtside. Queue up the online video of Vandy-Murray State just in time for Thomas’ heroics. Put my arms in the air to honor the Murray State Magic. Feel, with some certainty, that the day couldn’t possibly get any wilder. Be wrong on that front. Way wrong.
The Tournament Gods decide that two upsets and one buzzer-beater are not enough, and conspired to keep producing thrillers. Easy decision: Bail on Kentucky’s 1-16 rout to watch TV in a tunnel. Change channels between UNLV-Northern Iowa (ends on Ali Farokhmanesh’s last-second Maurice Newby impression, a killer shot), Marquette-Washington (a huge Huskies comeback ends on Quincy Pondexter’s driving layup) and Georgetown-Ohio (ends with the stunned Hoyas exiting the dance). Walk back out to the court to catch Texas-Wake Forest in an 8-9 game that ends in the only appropriate way it could end: on an Ish Smith game-winner with 1.3 seconds left in overtime.
In the locker room, Smith tells me that he saw the Murray State shot — but nothing else — while hanging out at the team hotel earlier in the day. “I’m a huge Law & Order guy,” he says, “so I was watching that to try to take my mind off the game.” While he was immersed in reruns, the bracket was falling into all kinds of disorder.
Teammate L.D. Williams insists to me that Smith’s shot was the best clutch moment of the day — “because it happened to us.” Either way, he says, “It was a great day for basketball.”
And then he starts singing One Shining Moment. Thursday’s madness had been enough to fill the entire montage.
2. To the powers-that-be at the NCAA who are considering a 96-team bracket: Consider this day a powerful message that the current format must be preserved. You don’t want to be responsible for preventing something like this from happening again, do you? Tacking on an extra round would make matchups like Georgetown-Ohio and Vandy-Murray State less likely to happen. Please, please don’t ruin this.
3. While the focus of opening day was on the drama, two mid-majors who didn’t have to sweat out victories — fifth-seeded Butler and 10th-seeded St. Mary’s — should be commended. The Bulldogs put on a second-half clinic against a UTEP team that I had picked to make the Sweet 16. Butler now has a very realistic shot at making the Sweet 16, where it could give Syracuse some trouble in Salt Lake City. The Gaels, meanwhile, steamrolled Las Arañas, whom I’d loved coming into the dance. Omar Samhan went for 29 points and 12 rebounds, and he’s going to be a difficult matchup for Villanova in the second round. If the Wildcats play on Saturday like they did against Robert Morris, they’ll get sent packing.
4. The Big East had an embarrassing day, going 1-3. Georgetown crumbled, Notre Dame fell to Old Dominion, Marquette blew a big lead against Washington, and Villanova barely escaped. Maybe it wasn’t actually the nation’s deepest league. But its rep will ultimately be defined by what Syracuse, West Virginia and Villanova do down the stretch. Will the Orange justify their No. 1 ranking from earlier this season and make the Final Four? Will the Mountaineers give Kentucky a serious battle in the Elite Eight? And will Villanova recover and emerge from the weak South Region? The Big East still has a shot to put two or three teams in Indy, and that, to me, is what matters most.
5. The only sad part of this insanity was that it marked an ugly end to a few decorated players’ college careers. Notre Dame’s Luke Harangody bowed out in dismal fashion, scoring just four points against Old Dominion. Texas’ Damion James and Dexter Pittman, I think, expected to at least get a shot at Kentucky before they moved on to the NBA. And Marquette’s Lazar Hayward, perhaps the Big East’s most underappreciated star this season, couldn’t fend off a furious rally from Washington. When they catch the rest of the dance on TV, I hope it’s as good as Thursday.
i watched the games on the internet at work, just great, also, thanks for the boss button…
BIG EAST IS WAY OVERRATED!
It’s the selection committee’s fault
Everyone agrees, Thursday was the best opening day in decades for the NCAA tournament. But from an efficiency perspective, it was much more predictable. Luke Winn and Ken Pomeroy have been telling us for years that efficiency matters. Thursday reminded us that it does. In Thursday’s games, the higher efficiency team won 12 of 16 games, including all three games where the lower seeded team had a higher efficiency. In a 13th game, the lower seeded Washington beat Marquette, but their efficiency ranking was 29 to Marquette’s 28 going into the game. The real exceptions included losses by Georgetown, Texas, and Vanderbilt. In those games, the better teams choked. It’s going to happen sometimes.
So what does day two look like? Georgia Tech has a higher efficiency than higher seeded Oklahoma State, by a long shot. Florida State has a higher efficiency than higher seeded Gonzaga, by a long shot. Minnesota, despite its 11 seed, is ranked essentially the same as Xavier in efficiency (25 and 22, respectively). Utah State has a higher efficiency than higher seeded Texas A&M. Missouri, despite its 10 seed, is ranked essentially the same in efficiency as Clemson (21 and 16, respectively). It could be another good day for upsets.
Frankly, the problem is that the selection committee continues to ignore reality when it ignores team’s efficiency. Sure, efficiency isn’t the only thing that matters. But it does matter. Consider the 8/9 games in the tournament. On Wednesday afternoon, these teams were ranked in terms of efficiency: 14, 17, 19, 32, 37, 39, 50, 56. Wow. That’s quite a spread. The 11 seeds were 25, 29, 33, and 40. At least there’s some consistency there. The 12 seeds were 20, 34, 66, and 115. The 10 seeds were 20, 27, 43, and 49. The 6 seeds were 22, 28, 35, and 38. It’s no wonder, the 6/11 games were toss-ups on Thursday. Surely, the committee doesn’t think that 6 and 11 seeds are essentially identical teams?
The 4 seeds were 3, 10, 13, and 36. Who lost on Thursday? The 36 (Vanderbilt) to a 57 (Murray St). Hardly as big a surprise as you might have thought. Keep in mind, three of the four 11 seeds in the tournament had higher efficiency rankings than Vanderbilt. Surprised ODU took out Notre Dame, despite the latter’s winning streak? ODU had a higher efficiency than Notre Dame going into the game. What about St. Mary’s beating Richmond or Northern Iowa beating UNLV? Same deal. Here’s a question I can’t figure out: Missouri is ranked 21 in efficiency, with a 22-10 record in the Big 12. Oklahoma St. is ranked 44 in efficiency, with a 22-10 record in the Big 12. Why is OSU a 7 seed and Missouri a 10 seed?
The top seeds in the tournament are ranked 1, 2, 5, and 6 in efficiency. The 4th most efficient team is a 2 seed. The 3rd most efficient team is 4 seed. Now, Wisconsin has been inconsistent at times this year. But if they make a deep run in the tournament, including beating huge favorite Kentucky, we’ll know why. The 7th most efficient team is a 7 seed (BYU). If they beat Kansas St., it will be because they have better efficiency (K St. is the 9th most efficient team). The 8th and 9th most efficient teams are 2 seeds. The 10th is a 4 seed. The 3 seeds are ranked 11th, 12th, 30th, and 47th? The remaining 4 seeds are 13th (Purdue) and 36th (Vanderbilt, remember them). New Mexico (47th) struggled against Montana (105th). Don’t be too surprised if they bow out to Washington (29th) on Saturday.
Luke, Point 2 – absolutely agree!!! Yesterday, and probably today show that 65 (you can actually get rid of the extra 1 and go back to 64 – and I’m from Dayton) is the right # for this tournament. Anything more would be just a $ grab and dilute the tourney to irrelevancy. How irrelevant? I probably would not watch until the championship game.
A 96-team tournament has another flaw (which may have also been one of the reasons they moved from 48 (well, 53) to 64 in the first place): those byes can hurt – especially if they hold the first round the week before the round of 64, so all of the 1-8 seeds have at least 10 days off before their first tournament game. (Then again, having 9 days off didn’t seem to hurt St. Mary’s.)
On the other hand, the idea of having four “preliminary round” games (expanding to 68) wouldn’t hurt much – chances are, you would only be eliminating #16 seeds, while giving three (or two, if the newest conference gets an automatic bid) bubble teams a chance – especially if the NCAA makes them actual “play-in” games (choose the weakest eight conferences in advance, and have them play before Selection Sunday).
96 teams would be just combining NIT w/ current…would not watch teams that are 16-16 (North Carolina). As they say, “if its not broke, don’t fix it”!
It is not the selection committee’s fault. The only real upset was Ohio v. Georgetown. Using KenPom, or Sagarin’s Predictor, or Las Vegas odds most of the games were rated within 3-4 points. Then it becomes a coin flip. (If you are into gaussian distributions, a 3 point favorite will have roughly a 60% shot of winning.)
It turns out that there is very little statistical difference between the 16th best team in the country (4/5 seed) and the 48th best (12 seed). We were just fortunate to get a lot of good, rousing games between closely matched teams.
Notwithstanding, the elite few teams that gather the highest seeds are quite a bit better than the typical 4/5 seed and lightyears ahead of some of the automatic bid schools that occupy the lower seeding rungs. This is why the elite eight and the final four is packed full of 1s, 2s and 3s. The odds of a 1-seed losing in the first round is ~1-2%. Every year I toss in a bracket that has 1-seed going down — just so I can tell my friends I predicted it when it finally occurs.
[As an aside, it is much easier to gauge the difference between team be looking at Sagarin's predictor than KenPom's efficiency -- simply because you have to do the math to get the difference. E.g., the difference btw Kansas at .9800 (1 seed)and Butler at .9333 (16th best team) is greater (77.8% chance of winning) than the difference between Butler at .9333 and Murray St (53rd best team) at .8749 (68.2 % chance of winning]
This is why Ohio nailing Georgetown was such an upset. We will have to wait until Saturday to learn if Ohio is a pretty good team that has finally learned to play well together towards the back end of the season (in other words ‘underrated’), or it is a non-repeatable random statistical aberration, i.e., a true upset.