College Basketball: Niagara being overlooked by Tournament committee
Eagles’ bid may not fly
There’s a scene in the movie “Hoosiers” where the Hickory High team is introduced in a season-opening assembly in the gym. Six players walk out to mild applause. There’s a brief silence as the fans realize Jimmy Chitwood, the star, is not among them. They begin chanting, “We want Jimmy! We want Jimmy!”
Coach Norman Dale, played by Gene Hackman, walks to the microphone. He gestures for quiet and tells the crowd, “I would hope you would support us for who we are, not who we are not.”
That’s what I’d like to tell the NCAA selection committee, which gathers this weekend to choose the field for the men’s tournament. Try to respect Niagara and the other mid-major programs for what they are. Resist the urge to punish them for what they are not.
What the Purple Eagles are is a very good team from a lesser conference—the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. Niagara, which lost to Siena on its home court in Monday’s MAAC title game, is 26-8, the most wins in 87 years on Monteagle Ridge.
The Eagles were 14-4 in the MAAC, which was the 13th-ranked league in the country, its highest rating ever. They’re 10-2 in their last 12 games, which is supposed to weigh heavily in the process. They won 15 games away from the Gallagher Center, the most road/neutral wins of any team in the nation.
Niagara has a Ratings Percentage Index (or RPI) of 50, which is better than many of the mid-range schools in the six BCS leagues that control college sports these days.
I’m not saying Niagara should definitely get an at-large bid. But they should be in the conversation. Instead, the Eagles are being ignored. The experts give them virtually no chance. The top “bracketologists” don’t even include them among the first dozen or so teams expected to miss the field of 65.
Why? Because of what they’re not: a major conference school. The Eagles don’t have the privileges that come with playing in a power league, where a team’s mere existence in the league guarantees a certain amount of games against top opponents.
So what the experts are saying is that not enough of Niagara’s 26 wins came against quality opponents. The Purple Eagles had 21 wins against teams ranked lower than 100 in the RPI. They lost to Marist, which is 260th. They had only two wins against teams ranked in the top 50.
Still, they won 26 games! That should count for something. But no one is making the case for them. The MAAC has been strangely silent. Going into the title game, it was more concerned about Siena.
“We have a better case than some of these schools,” said Niagara coach Joe Mihalich. “We have a better RPI, better conference record. We really have a good resume. We’re sitting around, thinking NIT. But wait a minute, the NCAA should be talking to us. We should be on the board.”
They’ll be on the board, if briefly. But chances are, they’ll lose out to marginal teams from power leagues, some with worse RPIs.
Arizona is 2-9 on the road. Two road wins? Miami (Fla.), Maryland and Virginia Tech are 7-9 in the ACC. I’m sorry, you shouldn’t get into the NCAAs if you’re not at least .500 in your own league, no matter how good the league.
If such a rule existed, it would open the door for worthy mid-majors who don’t win their conference titles. Those teams are dangerous, with the emphasis on team. They’re often better and more experienced than more physically gifted squads in power leagues. Of course, that’s why the big schools want to keep them out of the Big Dance.
Remember George Mason going to the Final Four in 2006? That was the year when Billy Packer said there were too many mid-majors. George Mason didn’t even win its conference tournament. Four teams from the Missouri Valley got in. Two made the Sweet 16. I saw Bradley, the fourth-place team from the Valley, beat BCS schools Pittsburgh and Iowa in the subregional.
Most teams from major conferences wouldn’t play any road games out of conference if they could get away with it. It’s almost unheard of for them to travel to a mid-major. I checked the schedules from the top 20 schools from the BCS leagues this season. Combined, they played just nine road games against teams from non-power leagues.
“All those (major) bubble teams? They don’t even play 15 road games,” Mihalich said.
The top schools play one or two non-conference road games a year, most of them big-money TV games against other BSC teams.
Teams like Niagara have to go on the road against the power leagues to enhance their power rating. But try getting them to play you. St. John’s dropped the rivalry with Niagara. The Eagles played two Big East teams on the road, losing at Villanova and beating South Florida.
It’s not as if they scheduled all cupcakes. Niagara won at UB, which tied for first in the MAC. It lost at Chattanooga, which won the Southern Conference tourney. It won at St. Bonaventure and Drexel. It beat Siena here and drilled Illinois State in the Bracket Buster.
Siena built its No. 24 RPI by playing at Kansas, Tennessee, Pittsburgh and Oklahoma State—and losing. A loss to a major opponent counts for more than a victory over a mid-major. Another loss to a top team might have made a difference, but Mihalich didn’t think his team was ready for an overly ambitious schedule.
“I loved our schedule for what we did,” Mihalich said. “I thought it was perfect for us and it proved to be.”
Niagara’s 50 RPI is higher than Siena’s was a year ago, when the Saints won the MAAC and upset Vanderbilt in the first round of the NCAAs. This is the fourth time a Big 4 team has been legitimately on the NCAA bubble: Canisius in 1995, St. Bonaventure in 2000 (it got in) and UB in 2005.
“We’re actually enjoying this,” Mihalich said. “We can sit here and argue that we should genuinely be considered as an at-large team. We’re not bitching and moaning.”
Well, someone ought to. The mid-majors are what makes the tournament great. When George Mason reached the Final Four, you figured it would get better. It didn’t. More than ever, the system is rigged to protect the eighth team from the Big East and the seventh from the ACC or Big Ten.
The NCAA powers won’t support Niagara and the other mid-majors for what they are: dangerous. I won’t stop chanting for the mid-majors, but I’m sorry to say, the situation is only getting worse.
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