By the only evidence the NCAA tournament committee provided, Middle Tennessee State would not have made the bracket if not for winning the Conference USA tournament. The Blue Raiders were given a No. 12 seed; the highest any at-large selection received was an 11. On its full seed list, the committee ranked the Blue Raiders 48th, below every at-large. Had MTSU lost in the conference final, it apparently would have been judged – like every other mid-major school – as unworthy.
Thursday afternoon, the Blue Raiders proved what a farce their exclusion would have been. Their 81-72 flattening of fifth-seeded Minnesota also underscored the shame of how the committee has treated mid-major schools. If a team like Middle Tennessee State – 30-4 this season, coming off a defeat of Michigan State in last year’s NCAA tournament – requires an automatic bid, then what chance does any mid-major have?
The answer, of course, is almost none. Check out the bracket. If you classify the Atlantic 10 as a power league, only Saint Mary’s received an at-large bid from outside a major conference, and the Gaels are a name brand that contends on a near-annual basis. Last year, only Wichita State received an invite from that pool of teams, and the committee sent the Shockers to Dayton for a play-in game.
And it could have been worse for the mid-majors. Only Wichita State and Gonzaga are mid-major conference champions in the field ranked ahead of the final at-large teams. The committee has sent a clear message to mid-major schools the past two seasons: If you don’t win your conference, we don’t care what you did the regular season.
The rest of the seeding said the same thing. Wichita State received a 10 seed despite having become an annual power. St. Mary’s, which lost four times and just once to teams other than top-ranked Gonzaga, is a 7 seed.
It’s unhealthy for the tournament, as Middle Tennessee State proved halfway through the first day. Without muscular point guard Giddy Potts and the versatile offensive weaponry of Reggie Upshaw, the tournament would feel incomplete. Discovering (or, in this case, rediscovering) players like that, on schools from off the radar, is what makes the first weekend of the NCAA tournament so special.
There is no revisionism in the charge that the committee underappreciated MTSU. By the time the game tipped, oddsmakers had made the Blue Raiders a two-point favorite. People knew Middle Tennessee State was a basketball team worthy of better than a 12 seed; it’s just that none of them were sitting on the NCAA tournament committee. The same principle applies to the seeding of Wichita State, which Vegas views as one of the top 20 teams in the nation.
After watching Middle Tennessee State, aren’t you at least a little curious about what Illinois State might have done? The Red Birds went 28-5, including 17-1 in the Missouri Valley. And yet they didn’t come close to earning a bid, because they lost to Wichita State. Did we really need to see Vanderbilt, the fifth-best team in the lousy Southeastern Conference, struggle to keep up with Northwestern? Couldn’t Illinois State have had at least had a chance in an early-week play-in game?
The system has always been unfair to small-conference teams, and the shifting landscape of college sports has only exacerbated it. As conferences realigned, small conferences lost some of their best programs to bigger conferences. The departures robbed those conference of potential at-large teams. More subtly, they robbed other top teams of opportunities to boost their strength of schedule, a major factor in tournament selection.
And the last thing potential at-large teams from small schools needed was another scheduling obstacle. Power conference schools, almost by rule, refuse to play small schools away from home, making it difficult for those teams to score attractive wins. That’s gotten worse, too. As college sports economics change, teams are even more reticent to give up the revenue from a home men’s basketball game.
“We are a moneymaking industry,” Southern Illinois Barry Hinson said late last month. “Don’t ever think for one moment that it’s anything other than that. With that being said, that’s why is becoming an extinct animal.”
Middle Tennessee State is thriving in the NCAA tournament, for the second straight season, but only because it gave the committee no other choice. They were good enough to send Michigan State home last year and knock out Minnesota this year. But they were apparently not good enough for an at-large bid, and that should be troubling for college basketball.