mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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02-21-16 09:27 PM - Post#202364
In response to HARVARDDADGRAD
Maybe that would happen, but there's little evidence that the great teams in all the other conference tourney leagues take their foot off the gas and don't try to win as many games as they can. There's enough of a carrot from potential seeding, the NIT and a possible #2BidIvy to keep teams from going in the tank and just waiting for the conference tournament. If this were a likely scenario, we'd see it in other conferences that have a tournament - many of which have the conference tournament at a neutral/non-top-seed hosted site.
I guess why I differ so much from everyone on this is because I really don't see the costs or benefits as being that large. I like that a conf tourney will force our best team onto bubble watch like all the other mid-major leagues. I like that it potentially could correct a situation where a team has a fluke injury/illness for a back-to-back in late January or early February, loses two games and that's the difference, when that team is actually playing the best in March. But those benefits are small. The costs/odds of getting an inferior team via the conference tourney versus the 14 Game Tournament are also very small as well (not an opinion, a quantitative fact).
This whole discussion is a red herring. We need to free our teams up to play an MTE every year. That's the type of thing that will really boost the profile of the league. We need to pay our 3rd assistants to reduce coaching turnover. There are better rules to change that will drive real results. The conference tournament will happen, and it will be a thing the league can market, but it's not going to demonstrably help the actual performance of the league.
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SRP
Postdoc
Posts: 4911
Reg: 02-04-06
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Yale
02-21-16 10:00 PM - Post#202372
In response to mrjames
I don't know what major conference basketball Mike is watching, but it is glaringly obvious that teams that are already in, but not fighting for a one-seed, are just playing because the games are on the schedule and it's more fun to win. Miami just about quit v. UNC last night when they fell behind, not even going into foul mode in a serious way. (Kansas and Duke always play hard, but this year they have the incentives to get a top seed and to get off the bubble, respectively.) Oklahoma looked pretty unruffled by their three-game losing streak in post-game interviews.
Moreover, we have direct testimony from at least one mid-major coach (I linked to this in the Ivy page tournament thread) who came out and said that his team didn't care at all about the regular season and the only thing that mattered was the conference tournament. At this point it seems like data-denialism to suggest that the tournament is not de-motivating for regular-season games.
Edited by SRP on 02-21-16 10:02 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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02-21-16 11:18 PM - Post#202388
In response to SRP
My hypothesis is based on the fact that lots of one-bid leagues have champs that finish many games against the rest of the league, which would be less common if teams just gave up once they had a league clinched.
There's analysis that could be done here on how teams play versus expectation late in the regular season when seeding is already decided. I would be interested to see be results. Anecdotally, I haven't seen it.
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