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Random Notes - March 26, 2002 
Missouri became the first team seeded #12 or higher to reach a Regional Final since the tournament expanded
to 64 teams in 1985. The previous 12, 13 and 14 seeds were a combined 0-16. Indiana became the third #5 seed
in 17 years to reach the Final Four. The prior two were Mississippi State in 1996 and Florida in 1990.
2002 marked the second time in the history of the 64 team tournament that two double-digit seeds reached the
Elite Eight (Kent State and Missouri). The only previous instance was 1990 when #11 seed Loyola Marymount
and #10 seed Texas accomplished the same feat.
There were three major reasons why I loved watching Indiana beat Duke in the
Regional Semifinals last week
Has St. John's announced a date for Omar Cook's induction into the Bad Decision Hall of Fame?
Gee Omar, I can't imagine why the NBA wasn't impressed with your ability to turn the ball over on
every other possession and miss 15 out of 19 shots every game.
The Texas Rangers are continuing the process of building their team in the mold of the 1990's Dallas
Cowboys by adding Ruben Rivera - who was given the boot by the Yankees for stealing and selling one of Derek
Jeter's gloves - to a roster that already included redneck racist John Rocker and raving lunatic Carl
Everett. The Rangers will be a beat writer's dream and should spawn the sequel to one of the funniest
baseball books of all time, Mike Shropshire's Seasons in Hell, a collection of stories written by
a sportswriter that covered the early 1970's Ranger teams that were among the worst in baseball history.
I noticed in the Spring Training box scores that the Red Sox have a pitcher
named "D. Hasselhoff." I did some research and found out that he loves the beach, has been seen
talking to his car, likes to sing (badly) and has a huge fan following in Germany. Hmmmmm.
According to recent published statistics, three schools in the NCAA Men's
Basketball Tournament had 0% graduation rates among scholarship players that entered their programs
between 1991 and 1994. That's zero-point-zero! The schools on the infamous list were McNeese St,
Hawaii and Oklahoma, or as I like to call it, the 13th grade. Eleven more programs had grad
rates under 25% and more recent reports indicate that these rates are even lower in more recent
years. No one is asking the athletic departments to produce 4.0 students but they should at least
try to get a few players to graduation day. I think it is time for the NCAA to step in
and begin penalizing schools like Oklahoma, Cincinnati and Ohio State by removing scholarships when they fall
below a reasonable graduation rate over a four or five year period. Penalizing the schools that refuse to
stress academics would have the dual impact of rewarding schools that require their
athletes to go to class and acquire degrees. The schools among the tournament field that graduated the
most men's basketball players were Stanford (100%), St. John's, Notre Dame, Holy Cross and Winthrop.
I laugh every time I hear a report about Arkansas Athletic Director B. Allen Sugg. With a name
like that, I can't help but think that he belongs in Hazzard County with Boss Hogg, Roscoe and the
Duke Boys.
The San Diego Padres have decided to wear a patch on their uniform this season honoring
the memory of outfielder Mike Darr who was killed in an automobile accident early in Spring
Training. The patch will display Darr's uniform number 26 within a small circle. Darr's
death is certainly a great tragedy and it is understandable that his teammates
would like to honor his memory. However, I feel that the Padres are wrong to honor Darr
publicly. Police found that Darr was legally drunk at the time of the accident
which resulted in his death and the death of one of his passengers. The
Padres are sending the wrong message by honoring a man whose irresponsibility ended the life of another
and left his two young children without a father. This is yet another example of professional sports
not taking drunk driving seriously. There is no more glaring example than Rams lineman Leonard Little who
killed a woman while driving drunk four years ago. The courts let him off with 90 days in jail and
community service because he was a professional athlete. The NFL and the Rams welcomed him back with open arms.
In fact, Little signed a multi-million dollar contract with the Rams last month. Professional sports leagues
have become fairly strict when it comes to drug use among its players.
It's time that the same tough policies of suspensions are handed out for drunk driving convictions as well.March Madness Notes - March 19, 2002
I heard many commentators foolishly say that the tournament selection committee's seeding of Gonzaga (#6 in the West)
was justified given the Zags first round exit from the tournament. That is foolish thinking. Anyone
can play poorly for one game (just ask USC). Gonzaga played terribly against Wyoming and deserved to
lose, but had they been a #3 or #4 seed and thus played that game against a #13 or #14 seed, they could have survived despite their
surprisingly poor shooting. The committee claimed that the Zags RPI ranking of 21 warranted a 6-seed (which is true
if you do the math). However, how can the committee then justify Oregon's #2 seed given the Ducks' RPI ranking
of 34. I think the committee does a decent job of selecting the 65. They have explained the
guidelines (RPI, record in the last ten games, conference record) and, for the most part, they adhere
to them. It is the guidelines for the seedings that should require further explanation.
There was a great deal of controversy - most of it originating from Dick Vitale - about the Butlers
and Ball States of the world not receiving at-large bids to this year's tournament. Based on the
committee's list of criteria, neither school even came close to qualifying. Normally, an RPI less than
60 is required to even be considered. Ball State and Butler had RPI's close to 80. Moreover, those
schools lost four or five games to schools that most church leagues could beat. Vitale, in the asinine
way only he could, suggested that no conference should be allowed more than five bids to the NCAA
tournament. I'm not surprised that this inane chatter would come out of Vitale's ACC-butt-kissing
mouth. Five teams from the ACC would constitute 56% of the teams in the nine-team conference as compared
to 36% of the 14-team Big East. I could, however, live with Joe Lunardi's suggestion that at-large teams
are required to be .500 or better in conference play (in a sense "tournament-eligible" much like football
teams become bowl-eligible by winning 6 games).My recommendation would be to expand the tournament to 68 teams with four "play-in" games. I would add a stipulation that the committee select a minimum number of mid-major conference teams. This way the additional three slots don't simply go to three mediocre major conference schools. The other benefit is that the 1-seed vs 16-seed first round games become more interesting. History has shown that the 1/16 games are not worth watching. #1 seeds are now 72-0 and few games have been closer than 20 points. By adding three teams, all of the seeds shift, thus making the first round games featuring 1-4 seeds more competitive. The teams that were previously #14 seeds (and capable of upsets once every couple of years) are now #15 seeds. The prior #15 seeds will be shifted to play-in games with the winners moving on to play the number one seeds. These teams would have played and won two days earlier, giving them at least a shot to upset the #1 seed.
Best of the Best: The following is a list of the school's with the most NCAA tournament wins since 1995.
Reversal of Fortune: The following table shows the major conference teams with the worst NCAA
tournament winning percentages between 1995 and 2001 along with their 2002 records (minimum four appearances).
Reversal of Fortune - Part 2: The following table shows the teams that have the most tournament losses
to teams seeded six seeds or lower (upset losses) between 1995 and 2001 along with their 2002 records.
Is doing well in your conference tournament really that important? If you are in a one-bid conference or are
a team on the bubble, absolutely. But, what if you are already a proverbial lock for field of 65? It has always
been my theory that playing three games in three days in a conference tournament is severely detrimental to a team's
hopes for success the following weekend in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. This is contrary to
the conventional thinking that says that a team that reaches their conference tournament final is on a roll and is
a good bet to continue that roll in the NCAA tourney. After doing some research on conference tournaments played
over the past 10-12 years, I found that teams
who play three or more games in their conference tournament do in fact perform quite poorly in the second
round of the NCAA tournament as the fatigue of the previous week sets in (for a more detailed explanation, check
out my tournament trends page). Based on this year's results, I have to say that these
trends continued. Teams from the 10 major conferences that played three games in their conference tournaments
were 11-2 in the first round but only 4-5 in the second round (games where BOTH
teams played three games the
week before were excluded). Four of those games were upsets, including three major upsets.
More Stats: Here are a few more statistical tidbits from the first two rounds:
Three or more double-digit seeds reached the Sweet Sixteen this year for the fifth
time in six years. Over the past five years, 16 double-digit seeds have reached the third round as compared to
only five between 1992 and 1996. Missouri became the 17th team seeded #12 or higher to reach the Sweet Sixteen
since 1985. The previous sixteen teams were a combined 0-16 in Round 3.
March Madness Notes - March 12, 2002 A. If #16 Boston University beat #1 Cincinnati or B. If a Cincinnati basketball player actually graduated
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NOTES ARCHIVE
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