After Multiple Schools Miss Out On March Madness, Coaches Question Selection Process

The NCAA men’s basketball March Madness tournament bracket was announced over the weekend, but many schools and fanbases are upset with the seeding and teams that got in. Most notably, the Big East Conference only saw three teams receive a bid, compared to eight teams getting in the postseason tournament from the Big 12 and SEC conferences. St. John’s, Providence and Seton Hall all finished with at least 20 wins this year, but were all left out of the field of 68 while UConn, Marquette and Creighton are all top three seeds.

Selection for the tournament takes into account multiple different algorithms as well as expert opinion. Those include the Basketball Power Index (BPI) and the NET rankings, which rank teams based on their strength of schedule and how well they performed in those games. Rick Pitino‘s St. John’s team finished 24th overall in the BPI and 32nd in the NET rating and lost to UConn in the conference semifinals, but weren’t picked by the selection committee.

“First off, I think we should all probably never mention that word [NET] again because I think it’s fraudulent,” Pitino said. “I think the NET is something that shouldn’t even be mentioned anymore… We tried to play a tough schedule. We tried to do things the right way, and we didn’t get in. But I never make excuses. I respect the committee for what they do.”

Along with Pitino’s Red Storm, the Indiana State Sycamores were highly rated in the NET rankings at 28th, but also missed out on the tournament despite finishing second in their conference tournament with only six losses on the year. Indiana State was the highest NET ranking team to not make the postseason tournament this year.

The Providence Friars finished the year with a 21-13 record and 58th in the NET rankings in a season which included multiple big wins against Marquette and Creighton. Despite making it to the semifinals of the conference tournament, the Friars only finished seventh in the Big East standings under head coach Kim English.

“I think the analytics are bulls—,” English said to reporters following the March Madness tournament selection. “I think you could schedule bad teams in your nonleague and beat the snot out of them, beat them by 50 or 60. Coaching for so long has been a gentleman’s agreement: You have a large lead at the end of the game, for health reasons, you take guys out. To get some other guys the opportunity to play, you take guys out. But right now might be a change in college basketball. Scheduling to beat teams by 40 and 50 might be a thing to do.”

The Oklahoma Sooners were also left out of the end-of-season tournament despite eight other teams from their conference making the Big Dance. They finished with a 20-12 record with no Quad 1 losses but ended ninth in the conference as they lost nine of their last 14 games.

The Pittsburgh Panthers were in a similar spot, finishing the season with a 22-11 record which included wins in 12 of their last 16 games. Even with a win at Duke which kicked off their late-season run, the Panthers finished fourth in the ACC with eight conference losses and missed out on the tournament.

Multiple bids for the tournament were stolen in conference tournament week, including the Pac-12 being won by 11-loss Oregon and the ACC being won by 14-loss North Carolina State. Oklahoma, Seton Hall, Indiana State and Providence were the first four teams out of the March Madness tournament due to these upset wins, seemingly missing out by sheer bad luck.

St. John’s, Oklahoma and Pittsburgh all declined their invitation to the NIT tournament after not being selected for the March Madness tournament.