My friend Jeff from the Huffspot has some great postings on his site ,and he emailed me comments on mine. Here's his comments and my reply.
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I wouldn't say "weird" as opposed to "inconsistent," Gary, as there were some
selections made that just don't belong and don't make sense. The seedings aren't
all that great, either. UConn seems to have it easy, with a soft 2, 5, an
erratic 3 and 4, and a very overrated and disappointing 6. It has far too many
of the "last-in" bubbles, and its ratio for autos to at-larges is 3 to 13. What
did UConn really do to deserve this? They didn't outrightly win their conference
during the regular season, and they didn't get very far in their conference
tournament. Memphis may be the weakest #1, but that's got a good bunch of
games.
Gonzaga got shafted by, I can only guess, Tennessee. What a surprise.
Bucknell is a 9!
As for your rules; I think the selections show how much those things were considered selectively. For example:
Rule 5: Alabama got a gift because of this one. One quality out-of-conference win, to Winthrop, at home, and beat Florida, Tenn, and LSU at home. They only beat Kentucky away. A record of 17-12? It isn't like the SEC is as good as the Big East or Big Ten, despite the number of draws.
Even adding an injury stipulation would have Rule #7 the least followed. GMU should have lost their bid, had they followed through with this philosophy, in the way that it hurt schools like Creighton (out), GW (now an 8 seed), and Villanova (which had to say Ray would be playable).
If Rule #9 was considered, fully, then who would have been snubbed, ultimately? It looks as, according to my projections, that a better bracket could have been made by the RPI outright, and would be less controversial. Based on a Last in/first out scenario, this is what I have:
Air Force: Missouri State
Utah State: Hofstra
Seton Hall:
Cincinatti
Alabama: Creighton
Apply rule #7, and GMU hands its bid back to Seton Hall.
If you want to take Bradley's bid, you can give it back to Alabama. Would people have as big a complaint about Bradley being snubbed as opposed to Hofstra?
I really think the issue here was that the thought of giving the MVC and CAA
one more bid over a second bid to both the Mountain West and WAC caused some
heat at the tables on Sunday
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