Bracketology: Syracuse, Gonzaga among debates as NCAA committee starts process
The five-day journey to pick the field of 68 begins Wednesday in New York City
By
Jerry Palm
•
3 min read
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The NCAA Tournament selection committee gathers Wednesday in New York to begin the five-day grind of selecting, seeding and bracketing the 2017 field. No part of the job is easy except bracketing, which is largely geography-driven and guided by a set of rules. The committee does a very thorough job, but some teams are harder to evaluate than others. Here are six that might cause some of the biggest debates in the committee room with seeding or selection.
Syracuse enters the ACC tournament trying to fight off several negatives. They have a few bad losses (UConn, St. Johnâs, Georgetown) and a terrible road record, which has resulted in a very high RPI. The Orange have some good wins (Duke, Florida State, Virginia, Wake Forest), but all came at home. If they cannot win Wednesdayâs ACC tourney opener vs. Miami, the committee will have to try to balance what good this team did on its home floor with the rest of the season. The committee has to deal with home-court heroes every year, and the Orange look like that team this time around. Syracuse had some roster issues as well, but like I said with Xavier, teams have to earn selection.
The Zags (32-1) won the West Coast Conference tournament Tuesday night. When the committee revealed its top 16 on Feb. 11, then-undefeated Gonzaga was the fourth No. 1 seed. Committee chairman Mark Hollis said it was further down the list because of strength of schedule. Gonzagaâs strength of schedule ranks 77th, or about the same as Feb. 11. Now that the Zags have a loss at home to BYU, will they be able to hold off challengers for their spot on the top line?
The Bruins were another team dinged by the committee for strength of schedule. Even after beating Oregon, UCLA was 15th of the 16 teams on that Feb. 11 mini-bracket, and strength of schedule was the primary reason. You would think playing in the Pac-12, and especially having a game against Arizona since, would have helped, but the Bruinsâ SOS actually is slightly worse than before and about 15 spots lower than Gonzaga. UCLAâs SOS is barely in the top 100. It brings into question whether it can even be a No. 2 seed, let alone a 1, even if it wins the Pac-12 tournament.
There are teams like this in the bracket just about every year. The Mountaineers have proven they can beat anybody anywhere and lose to almost anybody anywhere. They have beaten Baylor and Kansas at home and won at Virginia, but they also have bad losses to Temple, Texas Tech and at home to Oklahoma. If the Mountaineers had won a couple of those games, they would be in the hunt for a No. 1 seed. As it is, the committee probably will try to figure out which team it is going to get when the tournament starts.
Now that the Shockers are in, it will be interesting to see where theyâre seeded. They have only three top-100 wins, two of those over Illinois State, but they also have no bad losses. Only one team with so few top-100 wins has been seeded above No. 11, but it seems likely the Shockers will do better than that. The predictive rankings love them because of big scoring margins, but that is not supposed to be a factor for the committee. They are ranked in the polls for largely the same reason. They might be a better team than their profile indicates and get seeded better than that, but how much better will be a point of debate for the committee.
The Musketeers are interesting for the committee because, plagued by injuries to two key players, they had a bad run at the end of the season. Guard Edmond Sumner is out and their best player, Trevon Bluiett, missed a few games during a six-game slide that coincided with the toughest part of their schedule. The committee always takes injuries and roster issues under some consideration, but you have to earn selection. That consideration usually comes during seeding, and even then, it is not more than one line. Xavier may have some work to do on the getting selected part.
