Show some balls, Tournament Committee -- Duke -v- Kentucky in play-in game

Nice try. Kentucky has the No. 1 SOS in the country. Owns two wins against the RPI top 50 since January. More than Missouri State. Kentucky is much different than Missouri State.

 

01/03 Houston W 77-70
01/06 at Ole Miss W 68-58
01/10 Auburn W 84-57
01/13 Miss St W 64-60
01/16 at S Carolina W 87-49
01/28 Tennessee W 76-57
02/03 at Arkansas W 82-74
02/07 S Carolina W 95-89
02/20 LSU W 70-63
02/28 Georgia W 82-70
03/08 Alabama W 79-67

Those wins didn't exactly come against murderer's row. And Tennessee wasn't at full strength in that one game.

 

Oz,

You're giving UK too much credit for beating Louisville. Hell, UMass and Dayton beat the Cardinals early on. Not only that, UK only beat Louisville because it sucked less than Louisville that day. If Louisville shoots just 36 percent, they beat UK. The Louisville team that finished second in the Big East is a far cry from the team that lost to Kentucky.

Indiana might be a better "signature" win for Kentucky, but considering that Indiana has played like steaming dog feces on the road, that's even a stretch.

 

It's absurd to have Duke and Kentucky in a play-in game. There are at least a dozen conference champs not as good as they are. There are teams that are on the bubble not because they aren't clearly N.C.A.A.-worthy, but because there are lower-tier conferences that get berths. That's OK with me, that's the charm of the tourney. But don't pretend that two of those lower-level champs shouldn't be in the play-in game.

And if TSP was being tongue in cheek....um, never mind.

 

I'm not pretending.
Kentucky and Duke have every advantage imaginable and should be better than they are this year. They underachieved, based on those advantages. Down year, my ass. Let 'em eat sushi in Dayton, I say.

 

But then how do you spin that in the selection show? "Okay, so Ohio State plays North Texas, Kansas gets Jackson State, North Carolina matches up with Florida A&M and UCLA will face either Duke or Kentucky." Of course, the way everyone wants to give away that 1 seed, you'd think that was the case anyway with teams trying to drop to a 2.

 

A play-in gives Duke another chance to break another shnoz.

 

Both coaches did a poor job with the talent they had. They are entitled to an off year or two, but they are not entitled to be publically shielded from that truth

 

I think you're overestimating how "winded" a team would be two days after a game. I think they should just do away with the play-in game, but they must keep it, then the way they have it now is the only way it'd work.

 

But would you rather play a team that played three days ago in a different town, or a team that may have last played a week ago or more?

Has a play-in game winner ever been remotely competitive in their first-round game? 1-vs-16 is getting to be a better matchup than 10 or 15 years ago, when it was almost an automatic 30-point win. But not if you have to play an evenly-matched team just days before.

 

I don't know if you changed arguments or I misread your previous post. I thought you were talking about having 8 bubble at-large teams play in a mini play-in round, and have the four winners be in as 16 seeds. My feeling is that the 1 seeds would much rather play a rested, but legitimately bad 16's over a "winded" bubble team from a power conference.

Is that what you meant? Or did you mean have eight weaker teams play the play-in and that way you get four more at-large bids in the dance?