Conference Madness Breakdown

[DDThompson]

11 conferences are represented of the 16 remaining teams. Truly Sweet.

Of the BCS conferences:
Big10 has the most with 3 of 5 teams remaining (a 60% success rate)
SEC has 2 of 4 (50%) and PAC10 1 of 2
Big12 has 2 of 7 (29%)
BigE has 2 of 8 (25%) by seeding should have 5 teams in Sweet16
ACC has 1 of 5 (20%)

THE two basketball conferences (ACC and Big East) own the worst two winning percentages. The ACC can be forgiven slightly (although the committee shouldn't be for their generous apportionment of a conference resting on its laurels) as only Duke and Maryland were given seeds to finish in the Sweet16.

The Big East is another matter. Of their 8 bids, only Louisville was given a seed not favored to win in the first round (and that was a #9 seed - basically a push). The other seeds were 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 6, 6. That is a TERRIBLE showing. Which is as an obvious statement as saying Dick Vitale is an ACC shill. The BEast did not defeat one team with a higher seed. Not one. Zip. Zero. Nada. Of course, they didn't have a chance to defeat higher seeds as there two #6's lost in the first round and their record against lower seeds was a flaccid 6-5.

The Big12, like the BEast, only had one team seeded in the lower-eight seeds. And while winning as many games as the Big10, the conference's record got fat on one-bid conferences (4 of 7 wins) and had a lackluster record against teams with lower seeds/pushes (6-5). And then, of course, there is Kansas vs. UNI: while there may have been more head-shaking upsets in the tourney, this was certainly the most stunning upset of a #1 seed in the MM tournament. Ever.

The "power" mid-major conferences were big disappointments as well. The Mountain West with 4 bids (just one bid less than the Big10) and the Atlantic10 with 3 teams only advanced 1 of 7 into the Sweet16. Pundit favorites Temple, Richmond, and New Mexico were all handled easily by lesser seeds. The A-10 media darlings lost to lower-level conference teams and New Mexico was man-handled by a #11 seed and struggled to defeat a #14 seed.

The Big10 earned the most wins along with the Big12 (seven) and the best record against other BCS teams at 3-1 and unlike a couple of the basketball conferences, the Big10 teams beat the lower seeded teams like they were supposed to (5-1).

If the games went according to chalk through the first two rounds, the BEast should have had a 12-3 record; didn't. It finished an awful 6-6. The Big12 should have been 9-4 but finished a lackluster 7-5. The Big10 ended even while only BCS conference (the PAC-10) ended up on the plus side of the seed records.

That means there is more than one cinderella in this year's March Ball.

The breakdown is as follows: Overall record, vs. BCS, vs. Mid-Majors [including multi-bid leagues] (mm), vs. low conferences (ob=one bid), vs. Higher seed (h), vs. seeds one off (pushes), vs. lower-seeds (l) and lastly the seeding record = what the conference record should have been based on seeding

conf_____all___bcs__mm__ob___hi__push__low__seed
ACC____ 4-5.....3-4....0-1....2-0....0-1....0-0.....4-1.....5-4

BEast___ 6-6.....1-2....1-2....4-2....0-0....0-1.....6-5.....12-3

Big10___ 7-2.....3-1....1-0....3-1....0-1....2-0.....5-1.....7-2

Big12___ 7-5.....1-4....2-1....4-0....1-0....0-2.....6-3.....9-4

Pac10__ 3-1......2-1....1-0....0-0....2-1....1-0.....0-0.....1-3

SEC____ 4-2.....1-0....1-2....2-0....0-1.....0-0.....4-2.....3-3

MWC___ 2-4.....1-3....0-1....1-0....0-2.....0-0.....2-1.....4-3

A-10___ 2-2.....2-0....0-0....0-2....1-0.....0-0.....1-2.....3-3

 

[HawkeyeShane]

Good stuff DDT! Way to bring it.

 

[drew003]

Interesting breakdown. I was really surprised at the Big East's performance. I thought ACC and Big 12 weren't that good, and its hows. I also though the Pac 10 got dissed a little too much, they can't be completely devoid of talent they have the entire west coast to recruit. Big 10 is performing like we thought, we have some good solid teams. Maybe not spectacular but several Top 20 teams.

I think the tournament is also showing that mid-majors with high win totals are good teams. Every discredits these teams because they play a "soft" schedule and they get look seeds. But who would you rather play, a slightly above average Power Conference school that barely made it in and has 10 losses or so, of a team like Cornell, UNI, Murray State, ect... that only lost a few times. These teams gets under-seeded because of their schedule but are every bit as good as the above-average Power Conference team, at least over a 3 week tournament.