Joe Lunardi, ESPN’s “bracketologist” — part of a group heading for a severe backlash as people get sick of the whole seed projection stuff — wrote a column yesterday about the value of a good non-con schedule (hat tip to Joe T, Insider Sub.):
Why does it matter if Connecticut plays seven sub-150 teams? Or Florida? Or Pittsburgh? Or North Carolina State? All play in incredibly competitive conferences and have more than enough chances to face high-quality teams on a regular basis. In fact, we can document the effect that only half a conference schedule already has had on the respective SOS rankings for these four schools:
NONCONF SOS OVERALL SOS Connecticut No. 211 No. 57 Florida No. 245 No. 120 Pitt No. 244 No. 67 NC State No. 231 No. 61
Now, that looks bad, and honestly Pitt’s non-con, and conference SOS has been sliding until last night. Wisconsin upset Indiana. Florida fell to South Carolina again. Auburn finally won a game. Heck, even ND managed to win a BE game. All teams Pitt had beaten, but because of their struggles up until last night were managing to bring Pitt down.
The result is that Pitt’s non-con SOS shot up 44 spots in one day to a still-embarrassing but not as bad 200. The overall SOS is now 59, and Pitt’s RPI is now #8.
As much as I am interested and find RPI and SOS information interesting and useful — and can get caught up in it, it is easily moved on any given night.
Anyways, back to the column. Lunardi then gets into the importance of non-con SOS.
Except it isn’t. The NCAA Tournament committee has demonstrated time and time again that “whom you choose to play” in nonconference games is a significant factor in terms of both selection and seeding. Who can forget 2004 committee chair Bob Bowlsby answering a question about how Pittsburgh — No. 5 in the RPI, No. 6 in the polls and 29-3 overall — could fall to the lowest No. 3 seed position?
Bowlsby pointed to Pitt’s nonconference schedule (No. 247) and 12 games that season against sub-150 teams (nonleague). …
Only UConn and Oklahoma State were even close to Pittsburgh that year in what I call “avoidance factor” — more explicitly stated as “games you cannot lose without an act of divine intervention” — but the Cowboys won the Big 12 tournament on Selection Sunday while the Panthers fell to UConn in the Big East final. Regardless, with what amounted to a 17-3 record for Pitt (subtracting all “avoidance” games), the NCAA sent the Panthers, and others, one sledgehammer of a scheduling message.
…
The bottom line is that you can pile up all the quality wins in the world — as Pitt did in ’04 with a 9-3 record vs. Top 50 teams — but if you go too far with respect to “avoidance games,” the committee can’t help but seed you lower than comparable teams that don’t. It’s no different from scheduling non-Division I opponents; the committee has to consider the possibility of the team in question playing a “real game” and losing.
Avoidance games are ones that are against teams with sub-150 RPIs. That year, Pitt played 12 non-con games against teams with that kind of RPI. UConn and OK St. each played 7. This season, Pitt has played 6 “avoidance” games. Only Coppin St. looks to even have a chance to move to under 150 (presently at 178). The other 5 teams have RPIs of 205 or worse.
Lunardi is harsh on both UConn and Florida as well. He just used Pitt as the example, because it was the easiest and clearest occurrence in the NCAA seeding.
The interesting thing, and what pisses off most Pitt fans is Florida continuing to still be treated as a top-10 team while playing a worse non-con and losing as much in a weaker conference. I don’t really have an answer for the polls, other than the fact that the pollsters have “name” bias. They look at the non-con and see that Florida beat Syracuse and Wake Forest in a tournament, and regardless that neither team is that good this year (especially Wake) they get extra credit.
