bracket setup for the new huge conferences

[WastedTalent]

That's what makes conference tournaments fun tho. Even David gets a chance vs Goliath

Ehhhh. That's what makes the NCAA tournament awesome. In conference tournaments the teams have already played during the year. Kentucky has already **** pounded Missouri twice this year, not a lot of intrigue there.

And for the big conferences that have the bottom four teams play in the first round, those games may not even be on TV, so there's no money to be made. Hell ticket sales may not even pay to have the venue open.

Biggest thing is the fans, but I'd think they could easily refund the ticket money, then resale those tickets to the contenders that are willing to pay for them. If tech wasn't allowed in the big 12, I'm sure there's a bunch on here that would love to pay for their tickets.

I actually thought the big east did this one before the split up, but I'll have to check.

 

[heitclone]

UCONN already won 5 games in 5 days in 2011. Then won the NCAA tourney.

Yup, the BE teams had to do this when they formed the first super bball conference a few years back. UCONN and Syracuse both had runs of winning 5 games in 5 days. That's brutal for those teams but hey the conference and ESPN get plenty of extra scratch for dragging the conference tournaments out another few days.

 

[heitclone]

Maybe we should all go back to the 12-team conferences when everything was perfect. The NCAA needs to step in and realign these conferences. Its getting ridiculous

The big 12 is perfect right now, 10 makes the most sense for any league. Big 12 fans get treated to the best games night and night out. Nebraska's new gym has been open for 3 seasons and teams are still making their first trips there, why even be in the same conference? Why let scheduling be the number 1 factor in the standings and post season qualifying. Standings and regular season champ are pointless when every team plays a different schedule.

 

[Acylum]

Didn't read through the whole thread, but didn't the MVC a few years ago have the bottom two teams not even qualify for the post season conf tournament?

 

[cyclimate]

There are some conferences that have not had people qualify for the tournament. Summit league had that where only the top 8 made the conference tournament. I think some others have had that same thing.

Some small conferences do a bye or double bye to get the top 1 or 2 seeds past early rounds. While takes away from some of the post season fun, they are trying to make the conference season mean something. When you only get one bid, you want to get it to a team that deserves it.

Not only did Syracuse do the 5 games in 5 days in the old Big East, one of the games was a 5 or 6 OT game.

 

[HFCS]

Specifically in the Big Ten I think the 4 bottom (5 game seeds) would have to win the tournament to get in because they all have horrible losses...but Michigan is interesting.

Their record is within striking distance...a 3-1 record could potentially boost them in or at least make them a solid bubble team. If they had finished one spot lower they could have hit 3-1 without even playing in the title game. I think this setup is a potential bonanza to play your way onto the bubble compared to a straight up 16 team bracket.

On one hand I want to dismiss that for diminishing the regular season record...on the other they're still legit games vs hungry teams.

Obviously with just 10 teams we can't make some tournament where teams have 5 game paths, but I wonder if there's some hypothetical bracket where our low and mid level teams have 4 game paths...would probably take making seeding some teams so high they don't even have 3 games which would kind of suck.