Confusing the difference between equal accessibility and equal opportunity for teams to qualify for a NCAA Nationals’ berth is logic not unlike a 5th grader who thinks the probability of rain today is one-half because it will either rain or it won’t. A procedure which apportions 14 National Bids, 11 to conferences, 1 bid each to some with as few as 6 & 7 teams, and then another single bid to a conference having 13 teams, is a process produced by those whose values require ignoring proportionality. How do those with values such as this then contradict the very logic they just ignored to support proportionality to arrive at 3 Pool B Bids, particularly while just 2 at-large bids hang in the balance? And allowing this to happen only because 9 new teams are introduced to the independent class for just one year, almost every one having already accepted an invite to join a conference in 2025 makes it even more objectionable. If these same 9 would have been permitted to join their intended conference this year, like 4 others did, there would have been no change in the apportionment for those conferences to earn the same 11 bids. Isn’t that almost the very definition of discrimination?
From a Post on February 12th
Today’s AVCA Coaches Poll:
Case #1: Every #1 seed wins their tournament this week. (Last year 6 of 11 succeeded.)
A consequence of its National Bid protocol puts the committee in a position to right now be making a decision regarding which 2 of 3 teams from the ranks of 11, 13 and 14 will be offered a pass to the dance. In 5 days, no more than 1 of 4 teams from the ranks of 8, 9,10,12, will have played for the right to earn theirs, thereby guaranteeing for the first time ever, 2 of the top 10 teams in a National Coaches Poll will not be playing in the NCAA’s. (For those who want to suggest one of those remaining may earn an at-large, then okay. So instead of 2 teams between 8th & 10th not earning a Nationals Bid, now there will be 2 teams guaranteed from even better ranks in the top 10 who will be left out because either Juniata or Carthage would be at risk based on this suggestion.)
Case #2: Not Every #1 seed wins their tournament this week. (Last year 5 of 11 didn’t.)
Any of a Southern Virginia, Loras, or Vassar loss in their respective conferences won’t substantially change the consequence of two teams among the latter half of the top 10 not getting a bid, if Carthage, Juniata, St. John Fisher, or NYU are the teams to prevail, instead. However, should any other team from the CVC, UVC, or CCIW win their tournament, then we will be looking at 3 in the top 10 not going to NCAA’s. Should Wentworth or Stevens not win the GNAC or MAC, respectively, then lets just say it is going to get uglier than anything mentioned thus far.
How ugly could it get? Well, if Southern Virginia, Stevens, and Wentworth were all not to win their tournaments, then no less than 4 of the top 10 would be home for the NCAA’s, potentially 2 of the best 5, and one of the best 3. Every scenario described above injures a team which plays in a conference. The only way the class of those not eligible for an automatic bid could have been injured by this protocol would be if 4 of its teams had been among the best 9 in the country at this moment in time. The chances for that were somewhere in the neighborhood of the Doomsday scenario described in the first sentence of this paragraph. For those shaking their head thinking it simply won’t happen, then you are also agreeing the committee’s decision last year created potential for only conference teams to be injured at the price of those not in a conference. Sounds discriminatory to me.
Waiting for today’s AVCA Poll to come out to build the final MORE 25 of the season, yet when opening it, the MORE 25 was pushed back into the recesses of my conscious thought. Kind of like the flow of this post so far. Well, now it has returned to the forefront of my mind so here it is for the last time during the 2024 season.
With the regular season coming to a close, I also thought it might be a good time to do a little compare & contrast of the mammoth matrix of the nearly 1500 matches played this season:
I just checked in on many of the first round matches getting underway tonight. Nothing completed that seems below the diagonal, so the better seeds are getting it done right now. However, one still in progress did catch my eye – Illinois Tech just took a 2-0 lead over Benedictine. Should they get one of the next three sets in their favor, then another black spot falling from the D3 Universe, almost like that seen in “Quick Draw” Lotto games, would fall inside the top edge of the red ellipse above. Looks like Illinois Tech might be starting their best impersonation of NC State, the ACC Champ and March Madness Final 4 participant just a few days ago!