NCAA - Round of 32 - Sat - 4 games...

[Irishdawg]

According to the seeds, Georgetown should have won.

As for basing decisions on things other than NCAA tournament results, how about the fact that attendance at the BE tournament was down this year from last? Or the fact that TV ratings for the BE tourney files were lower than last year and were the lowest rated game on TV that night? No room for improvement?

The difference between a 4 and a 5 is pretty negligible, but okay.

Of course there's room for improvement in all things, but we have almost nothing to compare those TV ratings to. ESPN is a sports network that's been around and on cable packages for 25ish years. Fox Sports 1 has been around for almost 2.

The one example I can give you to the difference of broadcasting on ESPN vs. Fox Sports 1. In November, Georgetown played Butler at 2:00 pm on Black Friday and drew 653,000 viewers. That's during football season when there's a ton of other stuff to do when almost no one cares to actively search for college basketball. It also drew practically the same number of viewers as the game before it between Kansas and Tennessee.

They then played again on a Tuesday night in primetime and a Saturday at 5:00 pm with no football to compete against and drew 117,000 and 129,000 viewers. You're not going to outdraw ESPN and the major conference championships whose schools have 20-30,000 students with a network in its infancy and schools who don't even have 10,000 students (for the most part) in its populations. Sure, you can add VCU and Dayton, but that's not going to improve the TV ratings. Might it improve the attendance during the conference championship? Sure, but college basketball overall is suffering attendance concerns because of the convenience of television, and schools and conferences no longer make their largest sources of revenue from attendance. They make it from TV.

[Jet915]

Fact is we had 1 team ranked as a top 16 team. A bunch of teams in the 17-40 range. The tourney in it's deranged way worked out like that. Not the end of the world. Wonder how many BE teams are likely to be pre-season top 25 next season? I thought we were undervalued all year in the polls because of the previous year. Be interested if this season changes the perception with voters in the polls going into next season.

I think we should have 3. Nova (somewhere in the 20s), Georgetown (20s) and Butler (teens). PC could be also if Dunn returns.

[Wizard of Westroads]

Fact is we had 1 team ranked as a top 16 team. A bunch of teams in the 17-40 range. The tourney in it's deranged way worked out like that. Not the end of the world.

This. It's amazing to me how some people fail to grasp the math of the Sweet Sixteen. Their team isn't ranked by any measure as being in the top 16 all year, but they think it choked because it didn't make it. The BE had one team ranked that high his year. By the math, Nova should have made it, and Xavier should have missed, but the tourney in its deranged way worked out.

[Bill Marsh]

As for basing decisions on things other than NCAA tournament results, how about the fact that attendance at the BE tournament was down this year from last? Or the fact that TV ratings for the BE tourney files were lower than last year and were the lowest rated game on TV that night? No room for improvement?

Sure, you can add VCU and Dayton, but that's not going to improve the TV ratings. Might it improve the attendance during the conference championship? Sure, but college basketball overall is suffering attendance concerns because of the convenience of television, and schools and conferences no longer make their largest sources of revenue from attendance. They make it from TV.

All revenue is important - including ticket sales. Adding either VCU or Dayton would Improve attendance at the BE tournament is a top priority.

Want to improve TV ratings? Add Gonzaga. You don't think having 2 top 10 teams battling for conference supremacy would have created more buzz for the Big East? And they are as consistent a program as there is year in and year out. I would stop with them and just make it an 11 team league.

But frankly, adding VCU would created even more buzz by giving the league a 3rd team in the top 15. VCU has also been consistent for over a decade now and have done it with multiple coaches. That's their advantage over Dayton. Once Archie leaves Dayton, which he inevitably well, they are a big question mark because they haven't been successful without him in a long time.

[Bill Marsh]

Fact is we had 1 team ranked as a top 16 team. A bunch of teams in the 17-40 range. The tourney in it's deranged way worked out like that. Not the end of the world.

This. It's amazing to me how some people fail to grasp the math of the Sweet Sixteen. Their team isn't ranked by any measure as being in the top 16 all year, but they think it choked because it didn't make it. The BE had one team ranked that high his year. By the math, Nova should have made it, and Xavier should have missed, but the tourney in its deranged way worked out.

This is an interesting theory. "Grasping the math of it" means a team can't make the Sweet 16? Or somehow isn't supposed to?

Let's see how this theory checks out in the real world, using this year's Sweet 16 as a sample case:

Top 16 = 7 teams in Sweet 16
Below 16 = 9 teams in Sweet 16

Your theory doesn't hold water. At least not this year.

Even if your theory did hold up, are we not supposed to be disappointed that our teams didn't make it? Does "grasping the math of it" mean that we become robots and have no feelings or emotions? Except for St. John's, which lost a key player, our other 5 teams all had legit shots and 4 of the 5 failed. That's disappointing. It's made even more disappointing because Xavier is the longest shot of the bunch to advance beyond the Sweet 16. So, saying that Xavier made it instead of Villanova completely ignores the point that Nova was a 1 seed, favored to go to the Final Four. Losing them from the tournament this early is a huge blow, made worse by the fact that UVA going down has really opened up this region.