I wanted to start writing this entry a little after six thirty pm March eleventh eastern standard time, however better judgement prevailed. If it were to be read on radio it would have drawn about 27 million dollars worth of fines from the FCC due to language content. It is now a little after ten in the morning on the 12th of March and I am still fuming about what transpired last night. For those of you who might not know, I wear orange and blue goggles so I have a bias in this situation, but there is NO WAY IN HELL that the Syracuse men's basketball team should not be in the field of 65 for the upcoming NCAA men's basketball tournament.
I am not sure where I should start because I have about a million things to say about this, and why it is complete and utter bullshit. I really want to know if any team from a power conference, especially one as deep as the Big East, has won ten regular season conference games and not gone dancing come March? Also how do two teams from your conference finish seeded lower than you in the Big East, yet one gets an eight seed (Marquette), and the other an nine (Villanova) while the Orange are left at home with no ticket punched for the tourney? Give me a break. Syracuse has beat a two seed in Georgetown, and an eight and a nine seed in Marquette and Villanova, but the tournament committee thinks that is irrelevant. Instead, a team that had a sub five hundred record in an incredibly weak division of the SEC makes the field as a twelve seed because they got blown out by Florida in the SEC championship game. They played and beat no one all year, and won against bad teams in the conference tournament and for that they are rewarded with a tournament birth. Whose ass were the heads of the selection committee stuck up the entire season. Clearly they were not watching the same games as the rest of the nation. If they were, Arkansas would not be in the tournament, and neither would Stanford or Xavier.
Don't get me wrong, Xavier had a good year, however an A10 team who loses in their conference tournament before the championship game to Rhode Island does not deserve a bid. The A10 had a very weak year, and in no way should be considered a two bid conference. The winner and auto bid of that tournament should be the only team to make the field, no questions asked, and of story.
On the other hand, Stanford can be very weakly debated, even though I whole heartily believe they were not tournament worthy. They had one decent win all year against UCLA. They beat a then ranked #17 Oregon in their own building. During conference play you are supposed to win your home games. It was a good win, but one in which I believe they should have won. They also beat Washington State and Washington, ranked respectively 23 and 24 at the time. Once again these games were at home and they should have been victories. Those two teams are not high enough caliber to rank them as quality wins. So Standford, an eleven seed in the tournament has had one decent win all season. (By the way, they only had 18 wins all year, hardly worth an at large bid.) They were blown out by Air Force (34 point loss) and Santa Clara, neither of which made the final field of 65. They were inconsistent all year losing to teams that they should have beat. This is not a trait that NCAA tourney worthy teams have. Even the chairman said that teams who qualify should at the very least play up to their ability when taking strength of schedule into consideration. When questioned how Stanford got in based on his previous statement, the Princeton AD and chairman of the committee could not come up with a valid reason. At this point neither can I.
You can always say that if Syracuse won a few more games, or didn't loose to the likes of Wichita St. (#22 at the time), Ok. St. (#24 at the time), Drexel, or St. Johns then they would have made it an impossibility for the selection committee to omit them from the final field. That is not the case, and the most disappointing(actually angering, maddening, outrageous, fill in the blank ____ etc...) thing about this is that at the end of the day Syracuse and coach Boeheim did enough to get themselves in the tournament. This was not a team that has to look back at some of those losses and ask "what if". This was a team who met all the criteria to make the NCAA tournament, and was flat out cheated and robbed. This is a blunder and absolute disgrace on the part of the NCAA tournament selection committee. I am to0 angry to continue any further.
