NCAA tournament thread

[racerlover]

The way FSU was playing, they could have thrown the ball in from the last row in the arena. Ran into a buzzsaw. It happens. We'll be fine. Now get us in the damn MVC!!!

[mvfcfan]

Do it like the WCC and the top 2 seeds are in the semifinals automatically. If the wheels have fallen off the 1 or 2 seed due to injuries or whatnot they’ll lose anyway. That way you’re really rewarding the regular season and making sure your best chance at an NCAA win gets in. It also gives everyone a chance in case someone gets really hot for an extended period of time.

That's how the OVC does it. In this case it basically helped them get 2 bids into the tournament this year. Belmont and Murray State both played very good teams in the semifinals that didn't hurt their SOS or their NET rankings. (Winning against bad teams sometimes hurts your RPI, and I assume it might hurt your NET as well).

The downside to playing an OVC style tournament is that is really reduces the amount of fans that will come out. In the OVC you have fans from 4 different schools that won't even make the trip (only 8 of 12 make it) and most won't come unless their team at least makes it to the semifinals. If they played a normal 12 team (or even 8 team) tournament I think more fans from the other schools would show up.

I think I like the way they do it now better however, because it makes the regular season actually mean something. In the MVC, the only goal is to stay out of Thursday.

[Mikovio]

While the top 2 Valley teams don't get an actual double bye like the OVC, they get to play a bottom 4 team that played the night before and presumably doesn't have good depth. That's why only one top 2 seed in the history of Arch Madness has lost in the quarters. Granted it would be more of an advantage to spend that day resting. I guess I like the balance of the current format. If you start tinkering with it to make it impossible for bottom teams to compete you will have more difficulty selling tickets across the board, especially advance tickets.

[pafan]

The downside to playing an OVC style tournament is that is really reduces the amount of fans that will come out.

The OVC tournament set a Ford Center record for attendance this year. And also an OVC tournament record for attendance, for both the semis and the finals. If anything about their format cuts back on attendance, it is the fact that the quarters and semis are both on weeknights. But the location is pretty decent if I may toot my city's horn a bit.

I don't think the MVC would lose much revenue if they went to a top 8 tournament. The Thursday games are pretty lightly attended, and always have been. Years back when the MVC published the allotments of tickets each school sold for Arch Madness, you always had several teams, usually with Evansville among them, who would only sell their minimum allotment of 250 all-session tickets. And all those thousands of Creighton and WSU fans who dominated the tourney didn't show up until Friday anyway.

[Jsnhbe1Birds]

Even if they stay at 10 they can do a double buy tournament but I like the idea of going to 12 teams and going to a double buy and going to a four round, 10 team tournament. The last 2 teams aren't needed anyway nor do we want them to even have a chance to win and get a play-in 16 seed. Makes the regular season better.

Round 1...Quarters....Semis.....................Finals
4 vs 9
.............Game 5.....Buy 1 vs Winner of 5
5 vs 8

........................................................Game 8

6 vs 7
.............Game 6.....Buy 2 vs Winner of 6
3 vs 10

[Mikovio]

The OVC tournament's attendance depends on Murray making the top 2 though. When Jax State/EKU played for the championship in 2017 in Nashville attendance was 877.

https://static.ovcsports.com/custompage ... OVCW07.HTM

The problem with going to 8 and the reason Thursday was added in 1997 is because you can sell all session tickets in December and fans don't have to worry about their team not even being there. Otherwise you'll see a lot more people waiting until late February to finalize their plans.