Stony Brook had a story book season.
Just two years removed from a seven win season in which they went 3-13 in the American East, the Seawolves used a ten game winning streak during the middle of the conference season to win an outright league title.
An impressive feat, no doubt, and one that deserves praise.
But the Seawolves lost in the semifinals of the America East tournament last night, meaning that the fruits of their labor will result in a trip to the NIT, not the NCAA Tournament.
Muhammad El-Amin led Stony Brook to an America East regular season title.(photo credit: SBRadioSports)
There has been some debate recently about whether or not this is the correct way to handle each conference's automatic bid. Is getting hot for three or four days and winning a conference tournament really the best way to determine a champion for the league? Isn't the best way to determine the best team in a conference to look at their body of work, so to speak? To see who can be the most successful over the course of a season? How easy is it for a star on a team like Siena, who has been absolutely dominant in the MAAC this year, to roll an ankle and cost the Saints a trip to the tournament?
Well, yes it is.
But that doesn't mean that the team should be the conference champion or earn the automatic bid.
Where in sports to we award a title to the team that wins the regular season. In baseball, no longer does the best team in each league win the pennant. You have to play a divisional and championship series before you move onto the World Series. In the NBA, the winner of each conference gets the top seed in the playoffs. In football, the top two teams receive a first round bye, but still have to play their way into the Super Bowl.
How is college basketball any different?
That is beside the point. What makes college basketball so popular this time of year is the tournament aspect. All it takes is one hot shooting night and a couple of breaks, and anyone can advance. It is the heart of the argument against the BCS. And for many, including myself, these two weeks are just as entertaining as the three weeks of NCAA Tournament play. Take away the auto-bid from a conference tournament champion, and you take a huge part of what makes March Madness March Madness.
The one thing that does need to be changed is the advantage that conference champions get. It is irrelevant for the major conferences. If you are a regular season champion in any of the Big Six conferences, or in leagues like the Mountain West, Missouri Valley, Atlantic 10, or Conference USA, you are more than likely going to have a good enough resume to garner an at-large berth.
For the majority of the smaller leagues, that is not going to be the case. But no matter what league you play in, winning a conference title is a difficult thing to do and should be rewarded.
All of the low- and mid-major leagues should take a look at how the Horizon and the WCC run their conference tournaments. The top two seeds in both leagues get byes into the semifinals of the tournament, meaning they need to win just two games -- against teams that have already played at least one game -- to earn the automatic bid. That's a huge advantage.
They should also take it a step further. The league's regular season champion should also be afforded home court advantage in the tournaments. Winning two games on your home floor for the right to represent a your conference in the NCAA Tournament is a huge, and fair, advantage for the league champion.
But any talk of doing away with the conference tournaments as a whole or giving the automatic bid to the regular season champ is ludicrous.
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4 comments:
I see what you are saying but on the opposite hand, MLB, NFL, etc does not have a tournament to get into the postseason. The team that wins the division gets into the postseason to play a series of games to win the title.
So while it is true that in those other sports that a team can get hot, the teams that make it to the playoffs are rewarded for their regular season performance. We do not have an NL East playoff to determine who is the division winner at the end of the year (where we could see the Nationals advance to the postseason)
Agree with Joshua, the comparison made is inaccurate in that the NCAABB and pro leagues are not doing the same thing. The pro leagues run the regular season to set up a single tourney. The college basketball ranks run a regular season to set up a tourney that sets up another tourney.
I find it sad that 3-5 days of tourney action out weighs 14-20 game conference schedules.
Josh and AJ - But isn't the conference tournament a postseason? Isn't winning the tournament "winning a championship", regardless of whether or not it earns you an auto-bid?
I understand that argument, but personally I believe that the conference tournaments really are the championship tournaments for small conferences. They aren't making Final Fours. Stephen Curry's and Antonio Gates' come around only so often.
I realize that outlook is basically the opposite of everything the NCAA
Tournament stands for (at least in my eyes), but I don't think getting rid of the conference tournament's auto bid is the answer. Yes, teams that win the regular season should have more of an advantage in the tournaments (home court, byes, etc.), but imagining March without Championship Fortnight is like having Christmas without the Christmas tree.
It just wouldn't be the same.
I actually agree with your point of conference tournaments deciding the auto bid but I think the way you tried to justify it was faulty. Does the MLB/NBA/NFL have playoffs within the division to determine the winner of that division? For example, does the NL East play the regular season, seed those teams and then have a playoff to determine who the division champ is? No, so that is the disconnect between your points.
A more valid point is that you see teams play with a sense of urgency in those 3-4 games and prove to the committee that they play well in a tournament do or die situation. If the conference champ comes out flat and loses, who is to say they would not do that in the NCAA tournament?
Also, to address the injury concern, this seems like a point for tournaments. If a star player goes down for the season in the first round of a conference tournament and that team loses, why should they get a bid (talking about one bid leagues). They are obviously a much different team without that player.
So, I agree with your point that conference tournaments should decide the auto-bid (for various reasons) but I just thought you made a poor comparison to pro sports.
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