Tourney thoughts

Some thoughts on my favorite 3 weeks of the entire year, the dance.

Loved the PIG debate over at the fans board. Here's my take. 1) I hate the play-in game. Hate it. Hate it. But it's reality, and it's only going to get worse. Eventually what will happen is the field will go to 68 teams, and there will be a play-in game in each region. And if you think the NCAA would ever allow those games to involve teams from BCS schools, you're beyond naive.

2) You have to remember that everything in sports revolves around money. The conference tournaments will never go away because they bring in extra money since they're extra games. If you wanted to make things fair, or actually get the teams that are "most deserving" in, then you'd take the regular season champ from each league. It's much harder to win a league over 18 games than it is over three. But you'd also lose the entire championship week, which is some of the most exciting times in all of sports.

3) The real reason you can't lose the conference tourneys: they make the regular season meaningful. I know those things sounds incongruous, but stay with me for a second. Think of Central's game at home against Quinnipiac. It was a dogfight for playoff seeding between two rivals. If Central had already been eliminated from postseason play, then the game plummets in importance. Conference tourneys make the fight for fourth place through eighth important. Otherwise, half the league's games would be meaningless.

4) You have to take Knight and Boeheim with a grain of salt. You also have to look at it from their perspective. If you coached a team that didn't get in, but a squad you knew could beat more than half the teams that did get in, you'd be upset, too. Now did Texas Tech, 'Cuse, Maryland and the like have every chance to get in already? Yes. Should they be in over a conference champ? No. But you have to admit you can see why, during a discussion of the "best 64" teams, the teams that probably fit that bill and are not dancing are angry.
Knight's 128 theory, while I hate it, is probably the fairest plan I've heard for changing it yet. The conference champs get in, all the bubble teams get in (eight teams per the big 6 leagues, then 16 at-larges works) and everyone's happy. I'm not a fan of the plan, but at least under it no one gets left out.

5) Not that you care, but my final four is UNC, UCLA, Wisconsin and Pitt, with UNC beating UCLA in the final. UConn loses to UCLA in the Sweet 16. The Mount loses by 37 to UNC.
Sleepers: Davidson wins 2 games and messes up many brackets by beating G'Town, West Virginia beats Duke, and Clemson makes the final 8. This, in my opinion, isn't the year to have the mid-major fight, as I think it's a down year for the non-traditional powers. Most of my upset picks in round 1 are big teams (Kansas State, St. Joe's). Davidson is the only low seed I have in the sweet 16.