The NCAA is one of the many reasons in this world we can't have nice things. It's almost a billion-dollar industry and it just can't seem to get anything right, whether it's the BCS football standings or preventing schools from committing serious violations. And now the basketball selection committee can't even do its job?
I'm not even an NCAA basketball expert and I can tell you there were some colossal botches in this year's process to determine the 68-team field for March Madness.
Here are three glaring ways the committee screwed up.
Oregon gets No. 1 seed over Michigan State
It doesn't take a college basketball fan to say, "Wait, Oregon is ranked higher than Michigan State in the NCAA Tournament?" This could quite possibly be the most ridiculed decision of the committee and there's no reason it shouldn't be.
Michigan State was ranked No. 2 in the country after the end of the regular season and then they won the Big 10 Tournament with their victory over Purdue yesterday. Ipso facto, Tom Izzo and the Spartans did nothing to hurt their ranking and instead bolstered their resume.
Not in the eyes of the committee apparently. Oregon was ranked No. 8 before entering the Pac-12 Tournament. They won that victories over Washington, Arizona and Utah, but how does that propel them into the top-four and kick Michigan State out? It was said the committee was high on RPI this year, and yes, Oregon's was higher (No. 2 vs. No. 11), but Michigan State's non-conference RPI was tops in the nation.
The Spartans beat Kansas, Louisville, Providence, Florida and Oakland outside of the Big 10 while Oregon defeated Baylor, Valparaiso and Alabama and lost to UNLV and Boise State out of conference.
Here's more reasoning as to why this decision made little sense.
Monmouth gets snubbed
The committee was high on RPI, huh? That doesn't seem to click since Monmouth sported the No. 55 overall RPI in the NCAA and yet Michigan (No. 58), Tulsa (No. 60), Vanderbilt (No. 60) and Syracuse (No. 68) made it to the big dance.
Look, I get competitive conference play is a big factor in the decision making, but if Michigan State got snubbed for their conference RPI, then why is Michigan in? And how much money did Tulsa pay the NCAA for a bid this year? The Golden Hurricane finished fifth in the American Athletic Conference, which ranks eighth in RPI. Tulsa had two wins against ranked teams - Wichita State and SMU - which isn't even impressive since Wichita hasn't been ranked for a majority of the year.
Their non-conference losses include South Carolina, Arkansas-Little Rock, Oral Roberts and Oregon State and they dropped two of their final three games of the season to Memphis by a combined 32 points.
Why even bother questioning such absurdity?
Kentucky gets a No. 4 seed and faces potential second round matchup against Indiana
Texas A&M got a No. 3 seed when they lost to Kentucky in the SEC Tournament final, had the same conference record (although they won the tie-breaker because they beat Kentucky in their only regular season conference matchup), and finished 15th in the AP Poll versus Kentucky's No. 10 ranking. Kentucky's RPI also bested A&M's by eight spots and their non-conference RPI was 12 spots better.
So what gives?
Kentucky coach John Calipari explained why ever so succinctly:
"This little group of 10 says this year it's top-50 wins," he said in terms of what the committee was weighing when seeding each NCAA team. "Last year it was road wins, two years ago it was RPI. It's a moving target instead of making it "this is how we're going to rate these teams."
Indiana, who the Wildcats will likely face in the second round, ended the season ranked higher than A&M. The Hoosiers competed in the Big 10 conference, which had a higher RPI than the SEC as well. Indiana had seven losses on the season and all of them came on the road against Duke, Michigan State, Wisconsin and Penn State (the other three were at neutral sites). Out of those, Penn State is the only troublesome loss.
Meanwhile, A&M suffered losses against Arizona State, Arkansas, Alabama, Vanderbilt and LSU - only one of which is a tournament team.
Let this world of senselessness live on.
