The winner of the Victoria Times NCAA Tournament

As you may remember, because I touched on the topic a couple of days ago, I was planning on running the Victoria Times European Style NCAA basketball tournaments. Well, I did that, and I finished it off last night before I went to bed. I wanted it to be finished before the real thing started today, to see if anything interesting happened. Yes, some interesting stuff happened.
First, the secondary tournament, where I will touch on teams that made surprisingly deep runs. The greatest surprise were the Big Sky teams, Montana and Weber State. After busting out of the Champions tournament to  Saint Mary's in the first round, Montana defeated Indiana and Missouri before falling to Louisville. Weber State, in the Secondary tournament from the outset, defeated Creighton, Colorado State and Marquette, before falling to Georgetown. Of the last 6 teams in the Secondary tournament, only one of them, Louisville, was from a power conference. The other 5 were St. Mary's (who busted out of the primary to Valparaiso), Harvard (lost in the primary to Long Beach State), New Mexico (lost in the primary to Long Island), and Long Beach State, who lost in the Primary championship game to Kentucky. Louisville was the last surviving non regular season champion by a full 4 rounds, just because of the way it all played out.
The Primary, champions tournament was a mess. The final four of that dance was Middle Tennessee State (wins over Akron, Syracuse and Temple), Long Beach State (Davidson, Kansas, Harvard), Kentucky (Savannah State, Belmont, Valparaiso) and Drexel, (New Mexico, Wichita State, North Carolina). Additionally, Valpo beat Memphis and Texas-Arlington topped Ohio State. Just weird stuff, top to bottom in this contest. Kentucky eventually nipped Long Beach State in the championship game, a game that surely everyone plans on seeing in the final four this year.
The champion of the Secondary Tournament was... Long Beach State. They defeated Louisville rather handily (65-55) which meant to get an overall champion, LBSU had to rematch against Kentucky. Kentucky won that game as well, by two points more. Kentucky won by 14 in the first game, and 16 in the second. Too bad this post was so late, otherwise you could have used this post to help you pick Kentucky to win it all.

And now for another simulation.

Last year, I asked what it would be like if the NCAA set tournaments up like the European soccer. You can read about it here. Whereas the NCAA football simulation was established because the entire college football season stinks, I just did this because there is something endemically unfair about a conference champion not making a tournament. I want the regular season to matter, is all, and for there to be less "selection" involved in the selection process. Anyways, go read those posts from a while back. 

I set up the 2012 Victoria Times NCAA basketball tournaments. I forgot to keep everything organized, and I have everything all paired off and ready to go. The Champions tournament is, as a reminder, seeded like a normal tournament. The champions pairings are: Syracuse vs Utah Valley State, Kentucky vs Savannah State, North Carolina vs Mississippi Valley State, Kansas vs Stony Brook, Ohio State vs Texas-Arlington, Wichita State vs UNC-Asheville, Memphis vs Valparaiso, Temple vs Bucknell, Murray State vs Long Island, Saint Mary's vs Montana, New Mexico vs Drexel, Harvard vs Washington, Long Beach State vs Davidson, Iona vs Nevada, Oral Roberts vs Belmont, and Akron vs Middle Tennessee State. Sorry for not laying that out like a bracket, but the first team listed in each matchup was the higher seed, with the top seed being Syracuse.

The Secondary tournament consists of all the at large teams and conference tournament champions. Additionally, teams that won both the regular and conference tournament will be moved to the secondary tournament in later rounds. Get it? No? Go read the old posts on the subject. The pairings for the first round of the secondary tournament are as follows: Indiana vs Arkansas-Little Rock, Wisconsin vs Lamar, South Dakota State vs Saint Bonaventure, Kansas State vs Colorado, Louisville vs New Mexico State, Creighton vs Weber State, Marquette vs South Carolina-Upstate, Florida State vs Mercer, Baylor vs Tennessee State, Virginia vs Tennessee, North Carolina State vs Norfolk State, Vanderbilt vs Cal St. Fullerton, San Diego State vs Wagner, Georgetown vs Manhattan, Ohio vs Vermont, Saint Louis vs Pennsylvania, Florida vs George Mason, Duke vs TCU, Notre Dame vs Tulsa, Michigan vs Southern, Missouri vs Coastal Carolina, Michigan State vs Wofford, Alabama vs Oakland, UNLV vs Cleveland State, BYU vs Western Kentucky, Colorado State vs Northern Iowa, Xavier vs Buffalo, Gonzaga vs Lehigh, Iowa State vs Illinois State, VCU vs Princeton, California vs Idaho, Southern Mississippi vs Loyola (Maryland), Oregon vs North Dakota and UCF vs Detroit.

Again, the Secondary tournament is redrawn every round, so highest seeds play against the lowest seeds, and losers from the Champions tournament can get worked into the Secondary tournament. Winners of the tournaments play each other in the title game. I'll keep you posted when I have an official Victoria Times Champion.

The Remastered Tournament's Remastered Results

Remember from before the Final Four, when I groused about how the NCAA Tournament doesn't really reward the top regular season teams? It was definitely borne out this year, when Connecticut, a team that finished 9th in conference, ended up winning the national title over a team that ended up second. I don't REALLY have a problem with a team that doesn't win their conference winning the national title, I have a problem with the path for those teams being just as easy as the teams that had dominant regular seasons.
Anyways, I created the tournament and ran it to completion, and there were some surprises and some that weren't as terribly surprising. The unsurprising: The Final Four of the primary, regular season champion tournament was Kansas vs Florida and Ohio State vs BYU, 4 of the top 5 seeds. One of the Final Four ended up in the Final Four in the secondary tournament as well, as Kansas squared off against Notre Dame, Kentucky and Louisville. No real major upsets getting all the way through, though Louisville (who lost to Morehead State in the real tournament in round one) was the 17th rated team in the RPI and was 4th team in the Big East. Naturally, they ended up winning the secondary tournament to face Ohio State, the eventual champions of the primary.
The path to get there shows me that what happened was exactly what I wanted to happen. Ohio State definitely had the easier path, iwth victories over Bethune Cookman, Belmont, Coastal Carolina, BYU and Kansas. Louisville had a longer and perhaps more challenging path, with victories against Iona, Oakland, Alabama, Belmont, Purdue, Kentucky, and Kansas. That is an absolutely grueling path, and if they would beat Ohio State, you would be hard pressed to argue that they didn't earn the national championship.
Of course, they did. Much to my surprise, it was the Louisville Cardinals who ended up winning the top prize in my remastered tournament. I like this idea, and whether you like it or not, I'm going to try it again next year.

The revamped NCAA tournament: Secondary bracket

As I mentioned yesterday, the new NCAA tournament would have a primary bracket, which I highlighted yesterday, and a secondary bracket, which was to be drawn mostly at random. By "mostly at random" I meant this: the highest 34 teams in terms of RPI would be drawn against the lowest 34 (and re drawn depending upon who was still available in future rounds). The first team listed was the seeded team, the second was the unseeded team in the drawing I did last night:
Wichita State vs Oral Roberts, Memphis vs Duquesne, Richmond vs New Mexico, UNLV vs Jacksonville, Texas vs Western Michigan, Butler vs Idaho, VCU vs San Francisco, Syracuse vs Morehead State, Harvard vs Robert Morris, Michigan vs Boise State, Connecticut vs Alabama, Kansas State vs UC-Santa Barbara, Kentucky vs Akron, UCLA vs UNC-Asheville, Cleveland State vs Indiana State, Louisville vs Iona, Purdue vs American, Illinois vs East Tennessee, State, Notre Dame vs Tulsa, Florida State vs Yale, Temple vs Wofford, Missouri vs Montana, Duke vs Texas-San Antonio, Gonzaga vs USC, San Diego State vs St. Peter's, Texas A&M vs Hofstra, Wisconsin vs North Dakota, Clemson vs Boston U., Old Dominion vs Virginia Tech, Georgia vs Alabama State, Washington vs Western Carolina, Vanderbilt vs Hampton, UTEP vs Quinnipiac, Colorado State vs Arkansas- Little Rock.

The Gonzaga-USC game had the smallest gap between the seeded and unseeded RPIs. I'll check back in when I have this simmed down to a sweet 16 of some sort.In the mean time, I'll talk about baseball tomorrow, probably.

What if the NCAA tournament was like European soccer?

After today's elimination of Kansas, there are no outright champions from any conference in the Final Four. The question then becomes, what is the point of winning a conference, if a team that finished NINTH in their conference still has a chance to win the national title?
So what can be done to perhaps reward a team that is more successful in regular season rather than simply rewarding teams that do well late? What if there was a UEFA style tournament at the end of the season? What do I mean? Well, in Europe, there are two primary championship tournaments, the Champions League and the Europa Cup. We could do this, or something similar, in college basketball. Here is what I envision:
The Championship tournament involves the 32 regular season champions, seeded based on RPI (We are making the Great West a post season eligible conference now). Then, we would have the larger secondary tournament. I don't have a name for this. Entrants to the secondary tournament would be seeded somewhat based on RPI rankings as well. Here is how it works:
All conference tournament champions get entrance in the secondary tournament. In order to make this a 68 team tournament, we will also add teams based on their place in conference, so that conferences 1-6 get 4 teams (either the conference tournament champ and teams 2-4 or if the regular season champ or team 2-4 won the tournament, then simply teams 2-5), conference 7-10 get 3 teams and 10-20 get 2 and 20-32 get 1. Also, to keep conference tournaments honest, if a regular season champ wins the conference tournament, they will get placed in secondary tournament upon elimination from the Championship tournament. How?
This is another highlight from the Europeans that I love. The draw. Let's say Ohio State makes it to the round of 16 in the primary tournament, but loses (just like they did this year). They get thrown in to the third round of the secondary tournament. There wouldn't be brackets, but a seeded draw for competitors. There would definitely be pick 'ems for people to play. Anyways, the top seeded teams would be drawn to play lower seeded teams every round in the secondary tournament.
At the end of the tournament, of course, we have the two tournament champions play each other for the national title. A team that gets hot late has a chance to win a title, like Connecticut this year, but the champion of their conference, Pitt, has a distinct advantage by playing against a smaller field and playing fewer games. Also, there is no squabbling about snubs. Everyone knows their place in the tournament. So what is our field? First, let's get easy and talk about the entire Champions bracket, again based on RPI. Below are the matchups for round one. Again, this is a regular tournament:
Kansas vs Utah Valley State, Ohio State vs Bethune Cookman, BYU vs Texas Southern, North Carolina vs McNeese State, Florida vs Murray State, Pittsburgh vs Florida Atlantic, Utah State vs Coastal Carolina, Arizona vs Northern Colorado, Xavier vs Fairfield, George Mason vs Vermont, UAB vs Wisconsin- Milwaukee, Princeton vs Long Beach State, Missouri State vs Bucknell, St. Mary's vs Kent State, Belmont vs Long Island, Oakland vs Charleston.
The entrants for the secondary tournament are listed below. If the conference regular season winner also won the tournament, they are in parentheses as a potential entrant into the tournament. I will draw the first two rounds probably tomorrow, and inform you what they look like before I start the arduous task of simulating the tournament, as usual using WhatifSports to find who might be the national champ in this format.
Big East
Notre Dame, Syracuse, Louisville, Connecticut
Big Ten
Purdue, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois (Ohio State)
Big 12
Texas, Texas A&M, Kansas State, Missouri (Kansas)
Mountain West
San Diego State, UNLV, Colorado State, New Mexico
ACC
Duke, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Clemson
SEC
Alabama, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Georgia (based on a head to head win over Mississippi State)
Pac-10
UCLA, Washington, USC
C-USA
UTEP, Tulsa, Memphis
A-10
Temple, Richmond, Duquesne
CAA
Old Dominion, Hofstra, VCU
Horizon
Butler, Cleveland State
Missouri Valley
Wichita State, Indiana State
WAC
Boise State, Idaho, (Utah State)
WCC
Gonzaga, San Francisco
Ivy
Harvard, Yale (Princeton)
MAAC
Iona, St. Peter's
A-Sun
East Tennessee State, Jacksonville (Belmont)
NEC
Quinnipiac, Robert Morris (Long Island)
Southern
Wofford, Western Carolina
MAC
Akron, Western Michigan
Summit
Oral Roberts (Oakland)
Big South
UNC-Asheville
Sun Belt
Arkansas-Little Rock
Big Sky
Montana (Northern Colorado)
Patriot
American (Bucknell)
Big West
UC-Santa Barbara
Ohio Valley
Morehead State
America East
Boston University
Southland
Texas-San Antonio
MEAC
Hampton
SWAC
Alabama State
Great West
North Dakota.

Like I said, I will have the seedings for you all tomorrow. Doesn't this sound like a whole barrel of monkeys?