Mid-Major Conference Tournaments: The Problem

This is Part I of a two-part post on mid-major college basketball conference tournaments. Check back tomorrow for Part II.

As University of Albany standout Mike Black drove down the lane in a 59-59 game with under 5 seconds to play in the semi-finals of the America East Men’s Basketball Tournament, with a chance to play in the all hallowed NCAA Tournament on the line, I knew exactly what was about to happen. The #4 seeded Great Danes of Albany were about to upset my #1 seeded Stony Brook University Seawolves and move on to the conference finals for a shot at the bright lights of the big dance.

Black scored with 2.4 seconds to play to put the Danes up 61-59, which would end up being the final score.  I wondered how the conference leadership could possibility allow this to come to fruition; it seemed unreal to me that a team with a 9-7 conference record at the time (Albany, who held a 22-10 record overall) could possibly be in a position to host and beat a team that only lost 6 games the entire season (Stony Brook held a 14-2 conference record and a 24-6 record overall).

What good reason, I said to myself (and anyone that would listen to me for that matter), would the conference have to select a tournament format where one team, regardless of seed determined by season performance, gets to play in front of their home fans in every game up until the final? The answer I came up with?

There aren’t any.

The plight of the 2012-2013 Seawolves is a familiar one in the world mid-major college hoops. In any given year, there are two or three teams from lower ranked conferences (think the America East, the Summit League, or the Patriot League) who fall prey to a system that, simply put, does not reward excellence. The sad reality for teams in conferences sitting near the bottom of Division 1 college basketball is that regular season performance just does not matter. Save a near undefeated campaign or a top 50 RPI (which may or may not get you an at-large bid for teams at this level) the only way into the NCAA Tournament for teams in the bottom 10 or 15 conferences is through one’s conference tournament.

While clearly not the most “fair” system, it is the standard and it needs to be embraced (because it’s just not going away anytime soon). The truth of the matter is that 8 out of the 10 members of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee are athletic directors or commissioners from high major conferences (perhaps one could make the argument that the West Coast Conference Commissioner should be considered a mid-major representative and that number is really 7, but I would argue that the perennial success of WCC teams like Gonzaga, BYU, and St.Mary’s in the sport of men’s basketball dictates otherwise).

Until the ratio of high-major to mid-major representatives on the committee draws closer to 1:1, there is going to be a natural tendency for these committee members representing conferences like the ACC, BIG TEN, and the PAC 12 to give at-large bids to mediocre, high major bubble teams (i.e. Minnesota in 2012-2013, with an 8-10 conference record) over successful mid-majors like Stony Brook.

I’m not saying that a team like Stony Brook would have necessarily performed equal to or better than Minnesota if given a shot in the NCAA Tournament (because Minnesota did end up beating a very good UCLA team in the 2013 tournament), I’m merely saying that it’s impossible to know how they would have performed because mid-major teams aren’t given proportional opportunity relative to high major teams.

This profound disparity of opportunity does not mean that mid-major conferences aren’t given a chance to shine under the bright lights of the big dance. This places a substantial burden on conferences to make absolutely certain that they are doing everything in their power to get their best team through their conference tournaments.

This is Part I of a two-part post on mid-major college basketball conference tournaments. Check back tomorrow for Part II.