Another Selection Sunday, another year of NCAA tournament work pools and bracket filling – only to be followed by the eventual bracket busting and torching of said brackets.
And as always, there are teams who got snubbed and others who have no damn business in the tournament. Let’s go…
Who Got Snubbed
St. Bonaventure. The Bonnies were ranked 29th in the all important RPI, along with seven wins against top-70 teams. That should have been good enough, right? Well, NCAA tournament selection committee chair Joe Castiglione said St. Bonaventure didn’t make it because of its overall strength of schedule, which didn’t sit well with Atlantic 10 commissioner Bernadette McGlade.
Monmouth. Monmouth played a difficult schedule, which included non-conference wins over Notre Dame, USC, and road wins over UCLA and Georgetown. Despite all of that, Castiglione said Monmouth had three losses below the 200 line, which included Canisius.
WTF (as in “WHY the F#$%”) Are They in the Field?
Vanderbilt. Ranked 60th in the RPI. The Commodores went 2-7 against the RPI’s top 50. Finished tied for third in the sorry-ass SEC. I’ve got one thing to say: REALLY???
Tulsa. This one REALLY had me scratching my head. Castiglione said Tulsa got in the tournament because of its four top-50 wins. Did he not pay attention to how Tulsa fared in-conference? The Golden Hurricane lost twice in 12 days (by a combined 32 points) to a Memphis team that was an absolute train wreck all season long. Plus it finished 60th in the RPI poll (tied with Vanderbilt), to go along with its 62nd-ranked strength of schedule.
Categories: college basketball, sports story
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