"VCU obviously deserved to be in the tournament" has quickly gone from cute debating point to common wisdom. Having won five games, the argument seems to be over. If VCU was just as good as the teams they faced, there would only be a 1/32 chance of VCU making it to the Final Four (think of a coin turning up heads five straight times). If VCU was actually worse than those teams they defeated, the odds would be even worse (think of a coin weighted for tails turning up heads five straight times). Chances are that VCU was better than at least some of the teams they’ve faced—that is, they are better than at least some of the non-controversial teams in the tournament.

The question is: how would you possibly have known that on March 13th? People try to turn this into an “old school vs. statheads” story, or a “record vs. eye test” story, but that doesn’t really work here. VCU had a very mediocre resume this season, looking at nothing but wins and losses (no stats necessary). Their OOC boasted two decent wins: a neutral win over UCLA and a road win against Wichita State. The Wichita State win looks more impressive now than it did two weeks ago; the Shockers are in the NIT Final Four, but they were only a four seed (same as Northwestern) and weren’t on the NCAA bubble. VCU lost in a neutral court against Tennessee and at Richmond (OK), lost at UAB (a little less OK), and lost at South Florida (aka, the worst team in the Big East if you don’t count DePaul, which you shouldn’t, because DePaul.) Their next best OOC win was against Wofford; the rest was unexceptional (they did beat Wake Forest, but Wake Forest was terrible this year—probably worse than DePaul).

Their conference record was similarly undistinguished. There were only two other better than decent teams in the Colonial Athletic Association: Old Dominion and George Mason. VCU was 2-3 against those opponents. They also lost conference road conference games against Drexel (acceptable; Drexel was just OK but they did win at Louisville), Northeastern (putrid), and Georgia State (even more putrid). VCU also lost a home game to James Madison. There are no great wins there, no matter what rationale you want to use. None of their wins came over ranked teams. None came over teams that subsequently made it past the Round of 32 in the tournament, and only one—George Mason—made it past the opening round. Every decent win is offset by a worse loss.

The pattern was even worse. VCU went 3-5 over their last eight conference regular season games. Their last conference win was a double overtime game against Delaware. Their final regular season game was the home loss to James Madison. They didn’t “step up under pressure” or “pass the eye test” or any of the other stuff that often gets used to defend otherwise deficient picks.

The high-tech stuff doesn’t disagree. Kenpom had VCU in the 80s before the tournament (by way of comparison, Indiana is 76 right now). Maybe all that stats stuff is just BS. They’ve been an underdog by at least four points in every game in the tournament. Maybe Vegas was just trying to “balance the money,” as we so often here. VCU was only a 34% three point shooting team during the season (they’ve made 43.8% during the tournament against better competition); other CAA teams scored more than a point per possession during the conference season (Kansas scored a season-low .85 points against VCU today).

Maybe this—along with Butler’s success—is proof of how mid-major programs are discriminated against. Perhaps. But in the other “First Four” game, similarly mocked UAB (who beat VCU during the season) was absolutely pounded by Clemson. The rest of the CAA went 1-2, including George Mason’s embarrassment by Ohio State. Some mid-majors did well, some did poorly.

Talking heads are going to spend the next six months trying to draw “lessons” from VCU’s run. But any playoff system imposes scarcity; some teams are going to be excluded. Sometimes, teams right on the edge of that line end up doing quite well. And we don’t know what happens in the alternative universe where, say, Colorado or Alabama makes the tournament (both have looked pretty darn good, albeit against worse competition, in the NIT). Sometimes, this just happens. Either we keep expanding—and it seemed no one wanted to go all the way to 96 teams—or we just admit to ourselves that sometimes crazy shit will happen, no matter what criteria we use. In an infinite number of trials, even DePaul will make the Final Four once. Eventually.

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Fire Phil Emery

Depaul can't even win 2 games in the Big East tourney.

That's a bit dismissive of this VCU run. I might be a little more willing to listen if they had an easy run and were winning close games. They are manhandling good teams right now.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I think much of this is correct, but can't the same kind of argument be used against those dismissive of the Big East based on the results of the tournament? I realize you think that by many measures of merit, Big East teams were overrepresented and overseeded for the tournament, but can we really say the current tournament results actually provide significant support for those beliefs? While I will gladly grant that many analysts will now conflate tournament results with pre-tournament deservingness and that crazy stuff sometimes just happens in single-game elimination playoffs, neither of these facts will dissuade me from laughing at Phelps, Bilas, etc., just as I did at Packer in 2006.

The DePaul line was just meant to be cute. But I'm not dismissing the VCU run; I'm dismissing that there was any way whatsoever that it could have been anticipated, or that there was any evidence before the tournament that suggested they were the best team to admit.

Frankly, if VCU was really as good as they have looked, they shouldn't have had to play their first game in Dayton; they should have been a three seed.


If it were just a matter of this current tournament, I'd agree, but Big East teams have underperformed their expected wins for several years running now. This year was particularly egregious but not much different from previous years. Also, there were a lot of people cautioning about this beforehand (ND was a very weak two seed; St. John's barely outscored Big East opponents and was a six seed). But if we were just basing this on the results of one tournament, I'd be more cautious to draw conclusions.

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Fire Phil Emery

I know you said it in jest but I would have no problem with the entire division being in the tournament. It sounds like a big number, but it whittles down very quickly. Top teams would have easy home games and we would most likely end in a similar situation to what the tournment is currently...without the whining of any of the left out teams.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

VCU epitomizes what is great about college sports & why I love NCAA basketball & football so much more than the NBA & NFL. The fact that we are NOT able to anticipate which teams will be good & which teams may make a run in the tournament is what makes it so exciting.
Despite the fact that I have UK in the final four in one of my brackets, I'm rooting for either VCU or Butler to win the whole damn thing.

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

Goofy things always happen in single elimination tournaments. Part of what makes them interesting is their low level of predictability. Consider how much easier it is to predict the NBA playoffs where there are series which help to eliminate the aberrations. If VCU was a 30% shot to beat Georgetown, then there's a 30% chance they will advance. If we played even a three game series, then we reduce the chance of VCU advancing to 9%. Series are better indicators of the respective ranking of a team than a single trial.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

This reminds me of a really interesting conversation I have with my dissertation adviser every year when I bring up my NCAA predictions based on statsitical analysis; he says that no matter what we do we will only capture about 80% of the variance, if we are lucky because things will go to hell twenty percent of the time. However, you should NEVER use that 20 percent of the time as your standard or you will lose. After all, how many double-digit seeded teams have one the whole thing? One. EDIT: I meant to say what's the lowest seeded team to in it all Villanova at #8, from memory I thought they were a 10.

In a discussion with him over Vietnamese (not to got all CHF on you, but Bea's Wok n'Roll in Dekalb is really good) we came up with a rather simple and completely ridiculous way to eliminate these problems of who gets in and who doesn't: Base the number of teams that gets in on a conference on the simple rule of one team plus however many wins they had in the first round of the previous years tournament. On the plus side, there is no bitching. The big east knows it will have X number of teams. The Mountain West will know it will have Y number of teams and so on. The downside is that while there is a modest relationship between a conference's power ranking between two years, it's really hard to justify how many teams get in to this year's tournament to how successful you were last year

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Rather than make another thread, I think this works here as well:

There is a very good chance that some team is going to hilariously overpay for Shaka Smart. I can see it already. Message boards for every team that is out of the tournament have threads titled "Why can't we get Stevens or Smart?" There are then dozens of posts on the importance of coaching and how this tournament proves once and for all that their coach sucks.

Maybe Shaka Smart is a fantastic coach. There's not a lot of evidence for that, though. People think George Mason is the cream of the CAA, Anthony Grant won three straight regular season conference championships at VCU and two tournaments. They beat Duke in the NCAA tournament in 2007, and very nearly beat UCLA in 2009. Those were good teams, and VCU is a solid program in an OK conference.

Smart followed up three straight conference championships (and four in six years with one second place finish) with a fifth place finish last year and a fourth place finish this year. VCU finished two games behind Hofstra in the CAA this season.

I understand the Brad Stevens love. I get it. There's some meat on the bone there. I'm not convinced that's the case with Smart. Win a conference championship--at least come in third in the tenth or so best conference in the country--before we start talking about how fantastic you are.

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Fire Phil Emery

It's the feelgood story of the NCAA Basketball Tournament watching VCU continue to prove the naysayers wrong and advance this far. That being said, executives at CBS Sports can't be too thrilled about Virginia Commonwealth's game vs. Butler to tipoff next Saturday's Final Four in Houston.

CNBC's Darren Rovell explains why here:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/42304303

Since we are to Final 4 weekend, I will say if your a college basketball fan, you better hope this is a 1 year thing and not becoming the normal. 2 things hurt the Final 4 this year, only 2 Big teams, they play each other, and the other is most people's brackets are done and if those people don't watch college basketball except for their bracket's, then there not watching.

On Mike and MIke this morning which is in Chicago, they took a poll of the people that wanted to see win between VCU-Butler, and it was like 5 people for 1 team and 6 for the other, they said the most disinterested poll and defended by saying people were making their orders.

If your happy for it, that's okay, I just say you have to watch the game, there is people that will be watching because it's the Final 4, and don't care for these teams, so if you wanted them you should have to watch it. Here's what would make it worse, if this is an ugly game, like 22-19 at halftime and the winner is closer to 50.

I know this is a crazy thought, but the big winner of all this maybe College Football, it seems most people don't like the BCS, but at least you have the top teams play each other. To some, it may be 1 game, but those teams do have to go through a season undefeated.

The winner of VCU Butler is going to win on Monday

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.