Can the talking heads explain 11 Big East bids now?

[MVCfans]

Big Least facts:

The Big East flopped again. Only six top-four seeds in the tournament were eliminated the first weekend. Four came from the Big East.

First it was Louisville losing to Morehead State. Then Pitt fell to Butler. Syracuse went down to conference cohort Marquette Sunday, followed by Notre Dame’s loss.

The league, which put 11 teams in the tournament, owns only one win over a non-Big East team seeded 10th or better — Marquette beat No. 6 Xavier.

Connecticut and Marquette are the only Big East teams left, and each beat a Big East team in the round of 32.

This isn’t the first time the Big East embarrassed itself.

Last year, Big East teams were seeded one, two, two, three, three, six, six, nine. Only one team — West Virginia — made a regional final.

[cu8493]

Charles Barkley has been hilarious. The last comment I heard from him last night was something along the lines of calling it the Itty Bitty East.

[musiccitybulldog]

It makes you question the ratings rationale through the year as well. I wonder if something like a three team cap per conference would help?

[oneNEIGHBOR]

It makes you question the ratings rationale through the year as well. I wonder if something like a three team cap per conference would help?

i dont think you should get in if you have a losing record in your conference. Also a conference should not be able to get more then half of its teams in.

[CaseyGarrisonforPrez]

It makes you question the ratings rationale through the year as well. I wonder if something like a three team cap per conference would help?

It would help in terms of making the NCAA Tournament boring for the common fan. I think that would radically limit viewership.

[blueblood]

Going back to last Wednesday I would have said all of those Big East teams deseved to be in the tourney. I had most of them winning. I bet most of you did too. Most of us fell to the "eye test". Its hard to avoid when these teams are on TV 7 days a week. I saw VCU once. Give it a month and most of us won't remember which ones lost and it will happen all over again next year. Lets be honest, I did yard work during the Richmond-Morehead State game and I made a lot of money on Ohio State.

[bigdawg]

Charles Barkley has been hilarious. The last comment I heard from him last night was something along the lines of calling it the Itty Bitty East.

And thank god for it. Espn has their tongue so far down the big east's throat that no one on the network would dare cross the league. It makes me wonder how influential the conferences are in their tv deals and with the announcers who appear to have so much to say about who deserves to be dancing.

[DUShock]

Valley Brethren: The most significant statement that we non-BCS programs can make is to win against the BSers in the exempt tourneys and regular season match-ups that we get. If the MVC can respond with wins then we can regain our position as the premier non-BCS program. Given how far we've slipped (notice the plural pronoun) it will take at least 5 and likely 10 years to get back into the national conversation. I give props to the CAA they win when it matters. I really become agitated with the BCS overhype. Wnning consistently is the only way to silence the overcritical media pundits.

All the best to those Valley schools still playing, regardless of the tourney our teams are reinforcing the foundation for the 2011-12 season and that is a good thing. Now if the Shocks and Bears can meet in NYC for a title match that would make a statement.

Go Valley!!

Go Shocks!!!!

[Jamar Howard 4 Pres]

Statistically, the Big East should have gone about 12-6 so far. They are 9-9. Definitely not good, but not the worst performance ever like many seem to think.

[pafan]

A cap of 3 teams per league might be a little low (all of the power six conferences typically get at least 3), but a number more like 5 or 6 would do the trick.

This year, we had:

Big East: 11; Big Ten: 7; SEC: 5; Big 12: 5; ACC: 4; Pac10: 4; Colonial: 3; MWC: 3; A10: 3

Under your proposal, these top nine conferences would get no more than 27 bids. The remaining 41 bids would break down to 22 more automatic bids and 19 at-large bids. So you'd be taking away bids from schools like Penn State and Michigan, and giving them to Marshall (CUSA) and Cleveland State (Horizon).

==========

The Big East was an interesting case study this year in sports mathematics. If you took the top 68 RPI teams and put them in the tournament, the results would have been the same, 11 bids for the Big East, because almost any win in the conference was an RPI top 100 win (example: West Virginia). But there was no dominant team, as UCONN demonstrated in the Garden.

How could the committee have justified excluding Marquette if there were 10 Big East teams already in? How could they have justified excluding Villanova if there were already 9 Big East teams in? There's no good metric which allows separating the "good" teams from the "OK" teams... except for good old wins and losses.