mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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09-21-16 03:12 PM - Post#210666
In response to HARVARDDADGRAD
I provided most of my empirical work and accompanying thoughts on episode 2 of this season's podcast, but I can summarize here:
In the current Ivy landscape, the difference between the objective odds of winning the NCAA bid via the 14-Game Tournament or via the conference tournament is minimal. Back when there was one really good team and a bunch of awful teams, there was a BIG risk in having the conference tournament. Not anymore, though. We have 2-3 teams (sometimes more) every year that are good enough to play competitively with NCAA-caliber, big conference programs. I mean, last year's four-seed would have been Harvard, which beat bubble team BYU and played Kansas and Oklahoma extremely tight.
As the league continues to strengthen, we could potentially have a team left out of the four-team tourney that could have avoided the 16-line in the NCAAs.
I'd be more jazzed about this whole thing if we could have gotten more MTEs and not given up a non-conf game, etc, but if there was ever a time to go this route, the time is now...
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