When I first thought of my topic for this article, my biggest surprise was that I haven't already written about it because I've spent that past 1-2 years ranting about it on twitter. With that being said, I'm about to rant again on how the NCAA has made a mockery of non-conference scheduling and strength of schedule.
On that beloved Sunday every March when the NCAA Basketball Tournament brackets are revealed, one of the biggest statistics taken into account for seedings is Strength of Schedule (SOS), which is mostly based on non-conference scheduling.
So when that day came around last March, I had already done my breakdown on where each team should probably be ranked mostly based upon their record and SOS. Everyone knew there were a good 15-20 teams with a legitimate chance to win it all because the field was that wide open, so the biggest seeding question was, who gets the number 1 seeds? Louisville and Kansas were locks. That left Duke, Gonzaga, Indiana, and Miami to fight over the 2 remaining slots. Gonzaga easily had the best record of those 4 teams, however they played the weakest schedule. Indiana, Duke, and Miami all finished with 27 wins, Duke finished with 1 less loss than the other 2. Duke had by far the toughest schedule in the country and went 4-0 against top 5 teams in the nation, including wins over Miami, the overall #1 seed Louisville, and the B1G Champion Ohio State Buckeyes.
Out of everything I just stated, I think I made a case, bias or unbias, for Duke to get one of those 2 remaining number 1 seeds. In reality, Gonzaga and Indiana picked up the 2 spots. Gonzaga was the team I really took offense too. They had one of the weakest schedules in the nation, played in one of the weakest conferences in the country, and if you looked at their non conference schedule, you'd probably need Google to find out where their opponents were.
Of course I'm not in those meeting rooms when they put the bracket together, but what I will say is the NCAA and the Committee has to stop advertising SOS and non-conference scheduling as part as the criteria when seeding schools for the most anticipated event in all of college sports every year.
We're currently 2 months away from March Madness and I just hope the committee doesn't do anything to trigger another year long temper tantrum when they put this year's bracket together. Based on the rankings so far this year, I'm on my way to another long year of complaining.
