While I understand the NCAA Tourney Selection Committee has a very difficult job and schools will always be left out, there was one oversight by the Committee this year I can not reconcile... Mississippi State.
Purely from a numbers standpoint, they were prime bubble material at 23-11, finishing 9-7 in the conference and no major bubble-busting wins or losses to set them apart. i think the only instances you can point to in their season to say they weren't worthy was the extremely strange season-opening loss to Rider and back-to-back losses in the last week of SEC Regular Season play. However, they put together a run to the SEC Championship game in the SEC tournament which included wins against Florida (made the tournament) and Vanderbilt (made the tournament). They lost in the SEC Final to Kentucky who is a number seed and needed overtime for the second time this year to fight off the Bulldogs.
The argument the Committee can come back with is Florida and Vanderbilt beat Miss St. in the regular season. However, in both those losses Mississippi State was on the road and they bounced back to win on a neutral site. So, I would say advantage Miss State. I know Vandy was deserving of the tourney but Florida?
Florida finished the year 21-12 (worse record than Miss State), 9-7 in the conference (same as Miss State), and 1-1 against Miss State.
Now here is where I have the biggest issue: Florida opened the year 8-0 with lots of cupcakes and an impressive win against Michigan State. Ok, great. Since then, they have been 13-12 with only ONE win against a team in the tournament. Really? .500 ball and one decent win.
Dickey V may be annoying at times but this is one point I whole-heartedly agree with him on. The body of work is important but what is equally, if not more important, is how the team enters the tournament. If I have worked through my issues all year and put together a very formidable tournament team (ie Notre Dame, Mississippi State), I should be awarded with a bid. If my team was doing well but fell off towards the end (ie Purdue dropping to a 4 seed, Cincy and UConn playing in the NIT), I should be penalized.
This is part of the logic missing in the selection process. It NEEDS to get smarter. You spend all of this time with "Bracketology" and Joe Linardi... its all an utter joke. Just media-drunk garbage to please Sports Center viewers. How about investing time and money into better analytics, which can capture the value of a win based on current conditions, can capture momentum swings in a team's season, and debunk some of the number anomalies (like in College Football where if I beat a team 70-7, I must be better than the team that won 35-0???).
I get it. This was probably political. Florida has two Nat'l Championships and its fun to see them finally back. You got freshman standouts like Kenny Boynton who can become "recurring themes" in the tournament for years to come. You have Billy Donovan, the young and sexy Pitino disciple. What you don't have is double-double machine Javaris Varnado who is a senior and will never have a chance to where the NCAA patch. And that is a shame.
Parity is great and teams get left out all the time but this one was hard to stomach.
I am a Big East homer and even though the Big East is well represented in the NIT, I know who I will be pulling for... Mississippi State.
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