Selection Monday Fallout & Regional Rankings Fiasco - THIS SYSTEM IS MOST DEFINITELY BROKEN!!!!

 Am a day late in writing this article but perhaps after what all went down yesterday, it might be just as well because I was probably too upset emotionally to write up a halfway objective posting anyway and I really needed to get myself over my initial outrage of the utter fiasco the NCAA Selection Show was on the women's side.  You know, I've gotta tell ya - I've been doing this for a while now and, these last five years have just been something else when it comes to indescribable incompetence and so much political back-stabbing and the like that surrounds the committees that have put this (expletive deleted) year after year after year.  It definitely does get old after a while and each year it becomes more and more difficult to understand and accept. 

So, as you all know by now, GAC (with the AQ) was the only MIAC team that got to put on its dancing shoes during the Selection Show yesterday with Concordia being left out in the cold.  Not that I wasn't necessarily surprised or not anticipating this.  When you see the stupidity being perpetrated by the committee year after year after year, you come to expect bleepery to be done.  And, it was done again yesterday.  But, I wanted to at least try to drill into things a bit deeper and (hopefully) keep a halfway open mind to things to see if I can understand why they did and what they did.

So, let's first look at Concordia, shall we?  We know that they have the two wins against regionally-ranked opponents - against GAC over the Thanksgiving weekend and then against Amherst out in Vegas right before the first of the year.  What probably weighted them down before the committees eyes (and may have kept them off the table altogether) is that they had those three "bad" losses - at Bethel and at Augsburg along with the home loss to St. Kate's.  But here's the contradiction in my mind.  You can bet that Wartburg (out of the ARC) was one of the last teams to get to the table and barely squeaked in.  Now, during the regular season, they had six games against regionally-ranked opponents - all fine and jim-dandy you say.  However, of those six games, they were only 1-5 against those regionally-ranked opponents (the lone win coming at home vs Loras during the regular season on 1-18).  On the D3 Hoops Selection Show, someone made the comment that "Well, they were undefeated against non-(regionally) ranked opponents!"  So what???!!!!  The bottom line here is that their record against regionally-ranked opponents was an abysmal 1-5!!!!  So exactly what was the committee rewarding here?  If they place so much (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted) value on wins over regionally-ranked opponents, how does that 1-5 record that I speak of possibly overshadow what Concordia did (2-2) against regionally-ranked opponents???  Someone PLEASE explain this one to me.  And don't get me wrong here.  I'm not in any way, shape or form trying to trash Wartburg at all.  That's a great program that's operated by a great coach (Bob Amsberry) whom I have tremendous respect for.  But, you cannot use the regionally-ranked argument here against Concordia whose record against regionally-ranked opponents is better than Wartburg's.  Plain and simple, it just is.  And I don't care if you play six games against regionally-ranked opponents or one hundred.  If you play those games, you'd better win more than just one, don't you think???  

Oh, you want to see more bleepery you say?  Take a look at the last regional rankings that came out after the selection show.  You may want to settle in with a few cold ones so you can get a good laugh out of this:

Region 9
1	UW-Whitewater	10-4	21-6
2	Loras	14-2	23-4
3	UW-Eau Claire	9-5	20-8
4	UW-Oshkosh	8-6	19-8
5	Wartburg	15-1	21-6
Cut line: No at-large teams below here
6	Gustavus Adolphus	20-2	25-2
7	UW-Stout	10-4	18-8

 

So, really the only difference from last week when you still had some moving pieces in all this was that the brain wizards simply flipped UW-Eau Claire and UW-Oshkosh and left everyone one else where they were at from the week before; essentially neglecting the fact that Wartburg got drop-kicked at home by Loras in the ARC Championship Game while GAC breezed by Concordia in the MIAC Championship Game.  And how kind it was of the committee to keep UW-Stout in the seventh spot despite the fact that they blew a 19-point lead at home in their loss to UW-Eau Claire in one of the WIAC semifinal playoff games this last Friday night while Concordia held firm when they received a stern challenge from a very good Hamline team in one of the MIAC semifinal playoff games this last Friday night up in Moorhead.  

Oh, and there's the brackets from the actual selection show themselves that I almost hesitate to bring up because they're so ridiculously bad but they do require mention simply because GAC was effectively nixed from hosting a pod.  Consider, you could have had a pod in St. Peter consisting of:  (1) GAC (as host) (2) UW-Eau Claire (3) Wartburg and (4) Northwestern.  But, if it isn't clear enough already, logic and the NCAA Tournament Committee is something of an oxymoron.  Here's what's really laughable to me:  Northwestern gets sent to the Chicago pod to face host Chicago and, in an utter stroke of genius, UW-Oshkosh (b'gosh) gets sent over to Ada, OH (located just off US Highway 30 and on the former Pennsylvania RR Chicago-New York mainline) to the Ohio Northern pod where they'll face off against Washington & Lee.  Oh, and GAC?  Well, the committee basically said (expletive deleted) it, we'll just send them over to the UW-Whitewater pod so they can go up against Ohio Wesleyan.  I don't want to spend a lot of time on this particular subject because it'd be too easy to just absolutely go off on this and I want to try and stay on subject.    

So let me come out and just say this:  Despite those who say, "Oh, there's no bias against the MIAC."  Guess what?  YES, THERE IS.  And it was basically admitted freely by the D3 Hoops gurus when I attempted to argue my point to no avail.  And why you ask?  Well, because UST set the standard for women's basketball over the last several years and because they're now gone, there's no one else who can set the standard - at least in their minds anyway.  Whether that's fair or not isn't important.  What's important is that the MIAC now has to face the harsh reality - whether it's fair or not - that they are viewed as a second-rate conference in the eyes of many with no one to "fly the flag" so to speak.  As such - and as I stated before - it's time for a change.  The MIAC now has no choice but to make some hard choices and changes in the way they do things when it comes to women's basketball.  First and foremost, it MUST ditch the absolutely asinine and ridiculous 22-game round-robin conference schedule in order to allow for more out of conference games; nee, against regionally-ranked opponents.  Look, I beg of the coaches that may be reading this:  Now, I can lead you to where the water is but I can't make you drink.  Ultimately, that's going to be up to you guys.  I just hope to God you make the right choices in all this.  

The water is over here.  Do you want to drink?  Si o no?  It's up to you.