How irrelevant is the CBB regular season?

[Omaha1]

We've got two teams playing for the national title who were roughly the 25-30th best teams in America based on NCAA seed. I love the tourney but I sort of lament the fact that it seems like a team's success is based on the tournament rather than the regular season which is a far better indicator of a team's year long achievements.

[SCS]

Almost entirely irrelevant tbh, once you get in the tournament anything can happen. This is one of the problems with single elimination tournaments instead of double elimination or just having a Premier League style champion. Americans love our playoffs though and I have to agree that it can lead to some exciting moments.

[Randy]

yeah. In all honesty, it pretty much means nothing once you have secured a spot in the dance.

like mentioned above, it is the balance of exciting tournament/ marketing/ $$$ of the NCAA Tourney vs. declaring a true champion. Obviously, the former has won out in college basketball.

Does anybody actually believe UCONN is the best team in the country? I sure don't.

[stever20]

bottom line, it's never going to change and it shouldn't change.

Thing about basketball a lot of it is styles and individual matchups.

[GreatDaneAttorney]

Does anybody actually believe UConn is the best team in the country? I sure don't.

Now that UConn has picked up so many Top 15 wins in the tourney, you can certainly make the argument that they are the best team. They've beaten Kentucky, Florida, Michigan St, and Nova in their last 4 games to coincide with their regular-season wins over Florida, Harvard, Memphis (2x), Cincy (2x), Maryland, and Indiana.

[stever20]

Does anybody actually believe UConn is the best team in the country? I sure don't.

Now that UConn has picked up so many Top 15 wins in the tourney, you can certainly make the argument that they are the best team. They've beaten Kentucky, Florida, Michigan St, and Nova in their last 4 games to coincide with their regular-season wins over Florida, Harvard, Memphis (2x), Cincy (2x), Maryland, and Indiana.

shoot, just look at last 10 games for UConn....
16 Louisville
30 Memphis
22 Cincy
16 Louisville
35 St Joe's
8 Villanova
9 Iowa St
12 Michigan St
1 Florida
7 Kentucky

#5 in final RPI to include the tourney. Only ones ahead of them Florida(who they beat 2x), Arizona, Wisconsin, and Kansas. 2 of those 4 didn't even make the final 4. You definitely could make that argument.

[notkirkcameron]

We've got two teams playing for the national title who were roughly the 25-30th best teams in America based on NCAA seed. I love the tourney but I sort of lament the fact that it seems like a team's success is based on the tournament rather than the regular season which is a far better indicator of a team's year long achievements.

I would rather have a crazy tournament because the regular season is always going to be the long haul dominated by the usual suspect teams.

Consider this. In the 25 seasons since 1989-90....

In the ACC...
Either Duke or North Carolina have finished first or second in the ACC every year but 1996 (Ga. Tech & Wake), and 2003 (Wake and UMD), and UNC and Duke finished first and second in some order 8 times. ('91,'94, '98, '01, '06, '08, '11, '12). Put another way, one of Duke or Carolina finishes in the Top 2 almost every year, and once every three years, they both finish in the Top 2.

In the SEC, Florida or Kentucky either finished first in a single-table SEC conference, or won their division in 16 of those 25 seasons.

In the Pac-10/Pac-12, either Arizona or UCLA won the regular season title 18 out of 25 seasons. One of them was either first or second 21 out of 25 years. The only exceptions to this trend were 2002 (Oregon & Cal), 2004 (Stanford & Washington), 2010 (Cal & Arizona State), and 2012 (Washington & Cal).

In the Big 12, since the formation of the Big 12 Conference in 1996, Kansas has only finished lower than 3rd once (2000, 5th), including winning the last 10 conference championships and 12 of the last 13. In the 25 seasons since 1989-90, Kansas won either the Big Eight/Big Twelve regular season or tournament title 20 out of 25 times.

Even the Big East is not immune. UConn, Syracuse, or Georgetown won at least a share of the Big East title (or a Division championship when the Big East used a divisional format) in 19 of the last 25 seasons. The only exceptions were 1993 (Seton Hall), 2001 (Boston College & Notre Dame), 2004 (Pittsburgh), 2009 (Louisville), 2011 (Pittsburgh), and 2014 (Villanova).

Notable by its absence on this list is the Big Ten, who has had 8 teams win at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title, with only Northwestern, Nebraska, Penn State, and Iowa having never gotten a taste of the brass ring. [Iowa's last Big Ten title came in 1979 and their last outright title came in 1970. Northwestern last won the Big Ten in 1933, and last won it outright in 1931.] However, the Big Ten also only has one National Champion in the same time span (Michigan State 2000).


A regular season where elite teams can bring home conference championships and an NCAA tournament where anything is possible certainly beats the alternative of the same teams winning the big conferences every year, and a boring chalk tournament.

[DeltaV]

The NCAA Basketball isn't the only one...NFL has had some serious upsets in recent history as well. 12 out of 32 teams make it, so you just have to finish in the top third to have a shot. Haven't at least 2 '6' seeded teams won the superbowl in the past decade?

I like the excitement and uncertainty (even when the result is Nova losing in the first weekend...). If the alternative is like the NBA, where the outcome is basically already known, I'll take uncertainty any day.

[robinreed]

Post by Omaha1 » Mon Apr 07, 2014 9:17 pm
We've got two teams playing for the national title who were roughly the 25-30th best teams in America based on NCAA seed. I love the tourney but I sort of lament the fact that it seems like a team's success is based on the tournament rather than the regular season which is a far better indicator of a team's year long achievements.

Top

Both are relevant as you must impress in the regular season in order to get in the tournament. There will always be a championship tournament and because it is climatic it will always be the most viewed, talked about and anticipated. By the way to answer another poster I strongly suspect that UCONN is the best team in the country now but it was not during the early season.

[Bill Marsh]

yeah. In all honesty, it pretty much means nothing once you have secured a spot in the dance.

like mentioned above, it is the balance of exciting tournament/ marketing/ $$$ of the NCAA Tourney vs. declaring a true champion. Obviously, the former has won out in college basketball.

Does anybody actually believe UCONN is the best team in the country? I sure don't.

They sure were the best team in the tournament. And that's really all the tournament is designed to determine.

In college sports, which are really developmental leagues, the expectation is that players and their teams develop - and hopefully improve - as the season progresses. It makes sense to have a tournament at season' send to see how far teams have come.

Whenever there is a tournament format, there will be surprises and teams that suddenly get hot. Just look at Major League Baseball. Even with their 5 and 7 game postseason series, rarely does the team with the best regular season record win it all.