Myron's whining about lack of mid-majors

[SelectionSunday]

Don't give me this bull spit about the little guys getting screwed. There are 65 bids to the NCAA Tournament. Yo Myron, automatic bids do count, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. How many of those automatic bids (i.e. Binghamton, Jacksonville, Portland State, Radford, Morgan State, Chattanooga, Stephen F. Austin, Alabama State, etc.) would go to bigger schools were it not for automatic qualification?

This year the BCS conferences had 36 of the 65, and that's a high-end number in recent times. That means the remaining 29 bids (44.6%) came from schools outside the ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10 & SEC. Does Myron think a 55.4%-44.6% ratio is really that unfair? Give me a break.

The tournament/selection process is just fine the way it is (save for the need to get rid of the play-in game). Every qualifying league should have representation in the NCAA Tournament, and they do. The little guys deserve plenty of access to the tournament, and they have it. What's the problem?

For Myron to suggest the Selection Committee failed because there are no Cinderellas in the Sweet 16 is pure lunacy that rivals (a GopherHole legend) The Loon. The Cleveland States, Western Kentuckys, VCUs, Butlers and Northern Iowas of the world all had their chance to advance to the Sweet 16 by winning another game or two, but they came up short. You'd think a guy that follows college basketball for a living would understand that not every year is there going to be a "darling" story in the Sweet 16. That's not the ways sports work. Every year is different.

The more & more I read of Myron (lightweight), the more & more I miss Jeff Shelman. We had it really good when Jeff was on the Gophers/college basketball beat.

NOTE: I see Coolhand & I were thinking the same thing as we were composing our posts.

 

[Holy Man]

In this new order

the public, Hodger/SS and a number of other 'holers, know a lot more about what goes into selecting the 65 teams than the "experts" in the media. Perhaps that's one reason traditional print media is dying. The interested but not experts like me don't have to rely on the Myron's of the world for our data. We can go to more trusted sources.

It is clear to me that Myron does not care for basketball, and has an axe to grind against the "establishment" which includes the selection committee. If Myron would quit blogging, and just tell us what is going on (i.e. do his job), he might have more readers.

There may be some years where there is a beef in the selection of the last few teams, but it strikes me as getting less frequent as time goes on. Stop your whining, Myron. This is the best sporting event in our country, period.

 

[Monty519]

This is absolutely brutal logic. If anything, the fact that there are no Cinderellas probably means the selection committee did a great job this year. They said they spent a lot of time dealing with seeding the teams and all of that, and it looks like so far that they did about as good a job they possibly could. I love seeing this, because I really feel like most of the teams there have a shot at winning the title. Like, I love Cinderellas and everything, but besides George Mason, hardly any of them make the Final Four, and none of them you really feel like have a great shot of winning the NCAA title. Right now, I could say there are at least 10 teams of the 16 where if they won the title, I wouldn't be surprised one bit. And even probably 3 or 4 more where I'd only be a little surprised. I like that.

 

[monk10]

Once again why I don't have the Trib anymore, and my RSS feed check is the Pioneer Press.

 

[Anderson8284]

The lack of logic is what is troubling, I think

It makes for such bad bad writing, and I think is what gives a lot of us that "fingernail on the chalkboard" feeling. Leaving aside our bias for those Rodents -> it just does not follow in any way that selecting Creighton, SDSU, St. Mary's, or Davidson in place of say Wisconsin, Maryland, Michigan, or Tennessee (to pick on some of the lower seeded major conference schools) would have led to any different 1st or 2nd round results. It's just such "child-like" thinking.....

Some years you do have a George Mason or a Wichita State or whomever that "breaks through". Other years, not. To call the Sweet 16 boring just reveals more about Myron than it does anything else.

 

[Lincoln gopher]

Don't give me this bull spit about the little guys getting screwed. There are 65 bids to the NCAA Tournament. Yo Myron, automatic bids do count, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. How many of those automatic bids (i.e. Binghamton, Morgan State, Chattanooga, Radford, etc.) would go to bigger schools were it not for automatic qualification?

This year the BCS conferences had 36 of the 65, and that's a high end number in recent times. That means the remaining 29 bids (44.6%) came from schools outside the ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10 & SEC. Does Myron think a 55.4%-44.6% ratio is really that unfair? Give me a break.

The tournament/selection process is just fine the way it is (save for the need to get rid of the play-in game). Every qualifying league should have representation in the NCAA Tournament, and they do. The little guys deserve plenty of access to the tournament, and they have it. What's the problem?

For Myron to suggest the Selection Committee failed because there are no Cinderellas in the Sweet 16 is pure lunacy that rivals (a GopherHole legend) The Loon. The Cleveland States, Western Kentuckys, VCU's, Butlers and Northern Iowas of the world all had their chance to advance to the Sweet 16 by winning another game or two, but they came up short. You'd think a guy that follows college basketball for a living would understand that not every year is there going to be a "darling" story in the Sweet 16. That's not the ways sports work. Every year is different.

The more & more I read of Myron (lightweight), the more & more I miss Jeff Shelman. We had it really good when Jeff was on the college basketball beat.

NOTE: I see Coolhand & I were thinking the same thing as we were composing our posts.

The same subject was talked about forever on talk radio here in Nebraska because of the Creighton situation. The talk show hosts even started keeping track of the outcomes in games between mid majors and BCS schools. They had to stop because the mid majors were getting killed over all in both the NCAA and the NIT.

 

[parkinglotgopher]

To call the Sweet 16 boring just reveals more about Myron than it does anything else.

I'm getting the impressions that others in this thread agree with me, but is anyone else actually really jacked up about the games this weekend? While it may not be as captivating to a channel-surfing quasi-fan to watch all the top teams advance, I'm expecting a slew of competitive games with no clear-cut winners in any of them.

Pat Forde wrote a great column yesterday about how this Sweet Sixteen may lack some charm without any slingshot-toting Davids remaining (since we can all agree Arizona doesn't really fit the bill of your typical "Cinderella" team) and that it may be a signal that power teams/power conferences are consolidating their evil power, but at the same time this may be balanced when considering the quality of the teams left and the quality that the games between them should produce. Forde's normally solid, but I thought this one was notably enjoyable.

SIAP, but here's a link to the column

 

[SelectionSunday]

Sweet 16

I'm looking forward to this Sweet 16 more than any other in recent memory. The Cinderella stories are cool & add some flavor, no doubt, but there's nothing wrong with having a bunch of heavyweights. As others have pointed out, most of these games don't really have a clear-cut winner, even the games involving the #1 seeds. Just take a look at the the Midwest Region by itself. I look at those 4 teams & think, "Wow, talk about college basketball royalty (Louisville, MSU, Kansas, Arizona)."

 

[Roy Christensen]

There are several posters on this site who know more about Gopher BB than anyone at the Strib. Sid was "spot on" in his younger days but today there is just a big void.

 

[anonymous]

I am not going to argue much on here.

The thing about no surprise teams -- I'm way tired of the Cinderella cliche -- in the Sweet 16 is that there is a much greater chance of there being a lot of really good games on Thursday and Friday nights.

Too often a surprise team reaches the Sweet 16 and they get their doors blown off in the regional semifinals.

 

[coolhandgopher]

I´ve come to understand that the national sports media overlooks college basketball about the major sports unlike no other, save hockey. The only time college bb garners much attention is March and you have a lot of national writers sounding like idiots at that time. I´m fine with that, and understand that-the big markets focus on pro teams, whatever.

However, the more you read Medcalf, the more frustrating and befuddling you become because he is THE BEAT WRITER FOR A BIG TEN BASKETBALL TEAM. I don´t believe he covers any other sport and the lack of skill and effort that he puts forth in this endeavor is bewildering. His columns are easily picked apart; today´s effort was so full of holes it felt like something I would read in a poorly edited high school newspaper.

Which begs the next question-who is editing his writing? One point that I didn´t have time to address this morning was the haphazard inclusion of games to watch this next round-he addresses half of the games and it lacks any insight. Why even include that? Why not make it a separate column for another day?

My last point on this. . .when Medcalf first started as Gophers beat writer, I gave him quite a benefit of the doubt, understanding that he was a young writer thrown into a position that invited a lot of attention and criticism. I expected him to improve over time, as hours, dedication, and insight further developed. I´ve seen none of that development occur. No matter how difficult times are at the Strib, no matter no much print is suffering, this was a golden opportunity for Medcalf and he seems to have pissed it away.

 

[GophersInIowa]

It can be fun and exciting when a Cinderella goes a long ways. I think the last few years have been very unique. Teams like George Mason and Davidson are not going to go that far every year. We just had a stretch where it seemed to happen a lot.

With that said, I'm more excited about the games and matchups this weekend than I have been for awhile. We have a bunch of very good teams going at it. How someone can say that is a bad thing is beyond me.