UNC beat San Diego State last night, and UNC beat San Diego State badly. It was a throttling. A demolition. It validated that UNC belonged in the NCAA Tournament. It renewed doubts about the Mountain West’s postseason worth.
Or, you know, so it could be spun.
The problem with North Carolina, when it came time for the committee to choose NCAA Tournament teams, was not that they weren’t good enough. Good teams miss the NCAA Tournament. It happens. It happened to Indiana State last year, to North Texas in 2023, to Texas A&M in 2022. The problem for North Carolina—and the problem for those other three schools—was that they hadn’t met the established but unofficial criteria for tournament inclusion. People said they weren’t good, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was whether they’d accomplished enough, specifically when it came to beating other good teams.
Ironically, the jury’s still out on that last piece. North Carolina beat the Aztecs so badly that they’re now behind Santa Clara in the kenpom ratings, having opened the day eleven spots apart. But the debate over UNC was not whether they were “good” enough. It was whether they deserved inclusion. Unless…
Unless people want the best teams to make the NCAA Tournament.
My perception is that people want accomplished teams in the NCAA Tournament field. They want teams who’ve pulled off a hard thing, as measured by wins and losses and who the opponents were. They don’t want to worry about point differential or encourage teams to blow others out. They want wins to be wins and good wins to be good wins, regardless of whether they come by one point or fifty. They don’t care if a team’s got a 12–2 record in one-possession games and is set to be an underdog in the first round. They want their teams to be deserving. That’s my understanding of what the median college basketball fan wants.
The issue here is that people don’t say “deserving.” They still say “best.” And this is fine, because almost all of these are relatively low-stakes, casual conversations. But for those who actually do hold some sway—talking heads, mainly: If they actually want to argue the points, if they actually felt so strongly yesterday morning that UNC should not have been in the NCAA Tournament field, why not make clear that they don’t care how good teams are? It’s ok to not care about that. Conferences don’t worry about how good teams are when they name their champions. Major League Baseball doesn’t go back to PECOTA after Game 162 and ask who won each division. There’s this block some people won’t touch when it’s time to acknowledge that a good team might not be all that accomplished, and that an accomplished team might not be very good.
It’s also possible, though, that the people really do want good teams, that if they sat down and combed through team sheets they would reach a point of wanting to admit teams based on predictive ratings and little else. That’s what the response to UNC’s win implies, taken at face value.
The broader point is this: Debates over who gets into the field and who’s left out are usually dumb. And they can be dumb, and that can be fine. But they don’t have to be. Because at their core, most of the debates are just disagreements over how much to weight how good a team and how much to weight how good their résumé is. That’s all that’s happening. Everybody has a number, even if they don’t know it. Everyone has a balance they think is correct.
So yes, we’re talking about good vs. deserving again. We can’t quit it. It is the source of every genuine disagreement surrounding college sports postseason selection. For some reason, people are reluctant to acknowledge that.
Last Night
Some scattered thoughts on last night’s other NCAA Tournament and NIT action, with each game at least indirectly mentioned:
- Credit to Alabama State for fighting back the way they did. The finish got the attention, but they did a lot to get there.
- Santa Clara dominated that NIT game in a way you usually don’t see NIT games dominated. With this current format, most NIT lines are in the single digits. There just aren’t many pushover games. Santa Clara created one of its own.
- I was nervous MTSU/Chattanooga would involve a flat atmosphere when the game tipped off. The Murphy Center is big, but there were so many empty seats. Instead, it turned into a great postseason basketball game. Punches and counterpunches and finally that Honor Huff knockout blow with the dagger in the third overtime. Thrilling. Sports are cool and fun.
- I’m a little fixated on conferences right now, as some of you have noticed, and I’m curious if the A-10’s on its way to a bad NIT or if St. Bonaventure and Saint Louis just had bad nights. It’s not that they lost. It’s that they lost so badly, and were nowhere close to the Crown.
- We’ve said before that the big thing with the NIT is getting through that first game. It’s different this year—fewer teams are disappointed to be there—but I still think that’s true, especially for the contenders. Stanford and Oklahoma State are through their first game. They’ve got their feet back under them and they’ve found something to play for. Georgia Tech did not get through that first game.
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