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Double trouble Conference tournament champs earn mixed NCAA reviews
Posted: Thursday March 09, 2000 04:33 PM
By Ryan Hunt, CNNSI.com For the Samfords, Winthrops and Butlers of the NCAA world, the conference tournament means everything. But what about the big boys? How much is the momentum of a conference tournament title really worth? Is it asking too much to win as many as 10 straight games in March? The answer: A little of both. Four major conferences have held conference tournaments since 1980: the ACC, Big East, Big 12 (formerly the Big Eight) and SEC. The Pac-10 doesn't have a conference tournament and the Big Ten's started in 1998.
In that 20-year span, those conference tournament winners have been just as likely to lose in the first or second rounds than advance to the Final Four -- 24 lost on the first weekend, while 24 made it at least to the final weekend.
And of the last 13 NCAA champions, only four won their conference tournaments (four came from conference without tournaments). Looking for trends before you fill out your brackets? The ACC tournament champion historically has had solid runs in the NCAA tournament. Granted, the dominance of Duke and North Carolina has a lot to do with that, but 11 of the past 20 ACC champs have advanced to the Final Four. Three of them have won it all -- 1982 North Carolina, '83 N.C. State (who needed to win the ACC tournament just to get into the NCAAs) and '92 Duke. And only three have lost in the first or second rounds.
Compare that to the Big 12/Eight, where only four of the 19 tournament champions since 1980 ('91 winner Missouri was ineligible for postseason play) have advanced past the Sweet 16. None has won a national championship. But an alarming 11 of 19 were eliminated from the NCAA tournament before the first weekend ended, the highest number of any major conference. A good deal of that has to do with seeding. The Big 12/Eight conference tournament winner has received a No. 1 seed only seven times, and its average seeding of 3.66 is the highest of the four. Missouri, the 1993 Big Eight champ, was seeded 10th, one of three times a conference champion received a double-digit seed. The other two were SEC teams: Mississippi (No. 10 in 1981) and Auburn (No. 11 in 1985).
The conference with the most tournament-winning top seeds since 1980 is the Big East, buoyed by its success in the 80s. The Big East tournament winner earned a top seed every year from 1982-90 except for '88, when Syracuse won the tournament and earned a No. 3 seed.
But the high seeding of the Big East champions has not translated into more NCAA success. Only four of the 19 champions (the Big East did not have an automatic bid in 1981, and Syracuse was not selected as an at-large team) advanced to the Final Four. In the SEC, the only tournament champion other than Kentucky to earn a No. 1 seed was LSU in 1980. The Wildcats have won nine tournament titles since 1980, including seven of the last eight. Alabama (five times) is the only other school to win more than one in the past 20 years.
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