Is March Madness now a myth?
by Jeff Nusser on Mar 23, 2009 12:00 PM PDT
in College Basketball
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PrintA thought hit me yesterday as I was watching the end of the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Consider the following:
This year's Sweet 16
- West: (1) Connecticut, (2) Memphis, (3) Missouri, (5) Purdue
- Midwest: (1) Louisville, (2) Michigan State, (3) Kansas, (12) Arizona
- South: (1) North Carolina, (2) Oklahoma, (3) Syracuse, (4) Gonzaga
- East: (1) Pittsburgh, (2) Duke, (3) Villanova, (4) Xavier
2008 Sweet 16
- West: (1) UCLA, (3) Xavier, (7) West Virginia, (12) Western Kentucky
- Midwest: (1) Kansas, (3) Wisconsin, (10) Davidson, (12) Villanova
- South: (1) Memphis, (2) Texas, (3) Stanford, (5) Michigan State
- East: (1) North Carolina, (2) Tennessee, (3) Louisville, (4) Washington State
2007 Sweet 16
- West: (1) Kansas, (2) UCLA, (3) Pittsburgh, (4) Southern Illinois
- Midwest: (1) Florida, (3) Oregon, (5) Butler, (7) UNLV
- South: (1) Ohio State, (2) Memphis, (3) Texas A&M, (5) Tennessee
- East: (1) North Carolina, (2) Georgetown, (5) USC, (6) Vanderbilt
2006 Sweet 16
- Oakland: (1) Memphis, (2) UCLA, (3) Gonzaga, (13) Bradley
- Minneapolis: (1) Villanova, (3) Florida, (4) Boston College, (7) Georgetown
- Atlanta: (1) Duke, (2) Texas, (4) LSU, (6) West Virginia
- Washington DC: (1) Connecticut, (2) Tennessee, (5) Washington, (11) George Mason
You'll notice that three of the past four Sweet 16s have been very top heavy which, on its face, seems to go counter to the NCAA Tournament's reputation for being March Madness. (The notable exception, of course, was last year.)
I thought that seemed a little odd, and wondered if the "madness" was more anecdotal perception than reality. So, I decided to go back and look at the last 10 tournaments, adding up the seeds of all of the teams to make the Sweet 16. I also decided to add up just the top three seeds from each region to see if the numbers were being skewed by an outlier or two in any given region. Here is what I found:
| 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | |
| All Sweet 16 | 85 | 73 | 75 | 67 | 73 | 72 | 66 | 51 | 75 | 49 |
| Sweet 16 Top Three Seeds | 51 | 44 | 36 | 38 | 44 | 37 | 29 | 29 | 37 | 24 |
Represented graphically, it looks like this:
What do we learn? With the exception of last year, there's an obvious trend ... and it's not toward "madness." Forget all the talk of parity -- the tournament is progressively favoring the higher seeds advancing deep in the bracket. How about this one: Do you realize that every No. 1 seed since 2004 has made the Sweet 16? And that in that time, 70 percent of No. 2 and No. 3 seeds (14 of 20 each) have advanced to the Sweet 16? (It drops off fast after that -- just seven of 20 No. 4 seeds made it to the Sweet 16.)
While the drama is as palpable as ever -- there are still loads of great games to be had each day -- the end results are becoming more predictable. It appears at this point that there are now about eight to 12 very good teams in the tournament, and the rest are fodder. In some ways last year helps prove the point even more; despite three double-digit seeds and West Virginia making it to the Sweet 16, it was the first year all four No. 1 seeds advanced to the Final Four.
How to explain this trend? I'm not sure.
The most obvious explanation is the advent of NBA's rule prohibiting players from joining their league, but that only started in 2006. It certainly helps explain the dominance of the upper seeds the last four years, since those players that would have been going straight to the NBA were going to big time schools. Compounding the situation is that those players presumably were going to schools that already were in position to contend for a chamionship, since players figured they were only coming to campus for a year.
But this doesn't help us figure out the 10-year trend. Maybe the NCAA - gasp! -- is just getting much, much better at seeding teams. Other than that, I don't really have a viable explanation. I'm all ears if you have one.
However, this also leads us to another question: Is this upper crust dominance such a bad thing? We all like the nice stories, but we generally only like them in small doses -- once we get past the first weekend, beyond wanting to see great basketball, don't we like tuning and seeing teams, coaches and players we're familiar with?
If that's the case, then this is a good thing ... is it not?
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It depends on who you want to be fair to
For the fans, at least the neutral ones, this isn’t a good thing because the tournament becomes predictable. This also hurts the network I would imagine, since ratings should in theory go down if people already know what will happen.
For the institutions, this is a good thing. It’s the same argument as with the proposal of a playoff system in college football, where you may end up with a winner that nobody thinks is really the best team, just the “hottest.” The schools that had the best years, that have the strongest resumes, are in the Sweet 16: that seems fair.
My guess is that the whole thing is cyclical. Maybe over a period of three or four years, power teams end up pretty much filling up the brackets. But then it will be a huge deal when a 10 seed or two break into the Sweet 16, and people will flock to watch the madness again (even though by today’s standards it might not be that unrealistic).
Tony Bennett for Heisman!
But this is a 10-year trend
Which would seem to argue against cyclical, wouldn’t it?
by Jeff Nusser on Mar 23, 2009 12:58 PM PDT up reply actions
maybe it's a big cycle :)
Tony Bennett for Heisman!
by johnnycougar on Mar 23, 2009 3:47 PM PDT up reply actions
Also
Not to make baseless speculation, but isn’t that about the time when the internet really started booming in popularity? Also, dun dun DUN, ’99 was the first year Ken Pomeroy kept track of his statistics, and perhaps the committee started looking at better statistics (even his) around that time, and thus seeding teams better.
Just looking quickly over the seeds, it looks like recently more 2 and 3 seeds have been making it, maybe indicating that not just “top heavy” tournaments have resulted but also that the top 12 or so teams every year are really seperating themselves. Maybe this does have more to do with protecting the top seeds like Pman suggests. Or maybe there’s been recent innovations in statistics / game film studies that help the best teams become less likely to be upset. Or maybe it’s just coincidence, I don’t know.
Tony Bennett for Heisman!
by johnnycougar on Mar 23, 2009 3:58 PM PDT up reply actions
When did they start so emphatically "protecting" the top four seeds?
If that is a relatively recent innovation, it would help explain the move towards the chalk.
I agree
It is kind of ridiculous that UNC has played 6 straight non-Final 4 tournament games in North Carolina, and haven’t played 1st/2nd Round games outside of North Carolina since 2004. I mean it’s important to protect higher seeds but why give the higher seeds more home games (Villanova *cough*)
by StraightOuttaPullman on Mar 23, 2009 4:11 PM PDT up reply actions
They've said it's part of the reward of having a good season
To which I say, isn’t playing a team that’s supposedly far worse than you reward enough?
If you want to get all conspiracy about it (and I do), consider it the powerful thinking of a way to keep themselves in power. Seriously, how often do those top four seeds end up in the hands of schools from non-power conferences? Almost never. All this does is help those power conferences advance past the first weekend.
The pod system started in 2002, if you’re curious.
Don't forget
Teams that do well also have larger followings, and thus more people willing to buy tickets if they don’t have to buy plane tickets as well. It is definitely about money.
Tony Bennett for Heisman!
by johnnycougar on Mar 24, 2009 10:29 AM PDT up reply actions
I've been to lots of regionals
A couple before the pod system was put in place. The venues were still sold out.
by Jeff Nusser on Mar 24, 2009 12:27 PM PDT up reply actions
A few random thoughts
Some of the possible, and likely, reasons have already been discussed (especially better researched seeding, I think coupled with a willingness to ignore conferences and give many high seeds to one strong conference such as a the Big East this year).
So here are two reasons that haven’t been discussed as much.
1. The early exit trends of the past 10-15 years. More then HS players being forced into the NCAA, early exits leaving has an impact. The impact isn’t necessarily on the teams that get a large amount of these players though. Here’s my examnple, USC gets OJ Mayo and then DeRozan. If Mayo stays, DeRozan may look elsewhere. Let’s say he signs in the PAC-10, with us just for the fun of it. That takes a spot from another freshmen, in this case I’ll use Klay. We were Klay’s best Pac 10 option, maybe he ends up at Nevada. Say what you want about Klay, but he’s better then many players in the WAC. In turn, Klay would take the spot of a young guard on Nevada’s roster, and he might end up with a WCC team. Call it trickle down talent. Not a huge impact, but the more players stay with big programs, the more talent trickles down to the little guys.
2. Improved training. This one might be a stretch, but bear with me. Big conference teams play a brutal conference schedule, followed by a conference tournament, and that can wear out a rotation of 7-8 guys. 15-20 years ago, I don’t think Syracuse wins the night after playing 6 OT’s, and then competes the next night in the championship game. Improved training staffs are keeping teams fresher and more injury free, and as Marquettes guard showed, getting players back from injury quicker. Smaller conference teams may not exert the same energy playing quality games all year as they breeze through an easier conference, and in the past would be rewarded with fresher teams in the tournament. Improved preperation and training has teams playing amazingly well after short turn arounds and long, wearing seasons. Not sure it has that big of an impact, but if all teams are playing at equal levels of energy and with relatively uninjured lineups, then the better teams (higher seeds) are likely to win.
All the more reason to seed teams based strictly on performance, rather than on perceived talent
You’ll get more upsets that way. If a 5 seed is really only an 8 seed that played their hearts out, they might be more likely to crash out.
Many years from now, when his name's recalled
Everyone will say, "He should have passed the ball"
-- Al Stewart, "Football Hero"
I attribute it to the committee getting the seeds correct even more now than ever.
Also, the pod system probably has a huge effect. Seriously, last year UNC didn’t have to play outside of the state of North Carolina until the Final Four.
ISome of it is in the head
I think there are two factors
The decade of parity was the 1990’s, when the megastars of basketball started going straight to the NBA. So clearly part of it is the tendency for megastar players to attend high reputation schools in power conferences, and for these schools to get high seeds in the tournament. It would have been unheard of in the late 1990’s for any school to keep star players around for two years like Florida did and UNC has done.
I think the other factor is psychological. Power teams and their big name players are finally getting it that certain low-seeded teams can play unique styles of both ofense and defense and shoot really well (the trend started by Princeton in the 80’s and Gonzaga in the 90’s) and can beat you on any given tournament game on a neutral court. In the games I watched this year, all the best teams were ready to play from the beginning and put the hammer down early. The few exceptions were late games on the west coast featuring teams from the east or midwest, where jet lag may have played a serious role.
The neutral court in your home state factor has been going on for decades. In fact in the 70’s and 80’s, high-seeded teams used to play ON their home court. So I don’t see the trend as a result of anything new in the high-seed protection business.
Not to mention
that with the increase of televised games and analysis on the internet, it DOES make it easier to seed well.
Also, the graph, while interesting, obviously doesn’t give a full picture. How many Conference Tournament upsets put someone in the NCAA’s without necessarily having the resume to be there. Last year the strong mid-majors seem to win their tournaments and get into the NCAAs where they made serious noise. This year, not so much. I don’t know how things looked in previous years, but IMO this could weaken the field, making any high seed’s road much easier.
Actually, this year's minor-conference tournaments were almost ridiculously chalky
There were something like 20 “NIT auto-bid” conference tournaments in which only the winner would get a bid and the #1 seed, if it lost, would go to the NIT. Only five of those were not won by the top seed. A typical year would see more like 10 NIT auto-bids.
It’s all to the good, as far as I’m concerned— in fact, I’d like to see small-conference tournaments abolished entirely, since they really invalidate the relevance of the regular season in those leagues— but regardless, you’re arguing the opposite of the truth.
Many years from now, when his name's recalled
Everyone will say, "He should have passed the ball"
-- Al Stewart, "Football Hero"
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