How do you make college basketball's regular season meaningful?

[bigbluelou]

I like this; if we as fan can participate in choosing which "walk on" makes the sacrifice.

Based on Roy Williams' treatment of his walk-ons in the Fla St game a couple of years ago, those poor guys would just be left with bloody nubs on the end of each hand.

 

[Cawood86]

There is nothing in sports that compares to the first weekend of the NCAA tourney IMO.

The regular season is the same in most sports. Does anyone remember who beat who from week 3 of the NFL this year? Doubtful. Won't even mention MLB. The NBA is the same. 82 games. Good grief. Who cares about a game between Toronto vs Charlotte in December?

 

[mj2k10]

My opinion: There are too damned many D1 teams, which waters everything down. While it does make for some fascinating Cinderella stories in the tourney, they are so few and far between that it makes the regular season less interesting to me. Who really cares about Stony Brook vs. Slippery Rock? (BTW, I just made up that matchup so don't try and call me out on it.)

I don't suggest that we have as few as D1 college football (120'ish) but maybe 150-200 D1 schools max. It would make the names more recognizable and provide for more interesting regular season, out-of-conference match-ups.

I agree with this 100%, and it ties into my annual rant about how power 5 schools schedule in Nov/Dec.

350 schools in D1 basketball is ridiculous, and what it does is create a huge pool of bottom-feeders whose business model is to serve as sacrificial lambs for power 5 schools for a hefty fee, then hope to win their conference tourneys, and cash that NCAA check.

You have a conflict of interest of sorts, because part of the charm of the tourney is giving the little guy a chance, and if you lop-off 100-150 schools from D1, that element is diminished, but at some point you have to make a choice for the general health of the sport. I just see no real purpose in leagues like the SWAC, MEAC, Atlantic Sun, WAC (current alignment), America East, Southland, Big Sky, Northeast, OVC, Big South, Metro Atlantic, Summit, Sun Belt, and so on, and so on, all being D1. Maybe there are individual schools in those conferences that (sort of) belong, but as a whole, it's just 100-200 schools that might not even be all that good if they competed in D2.

 

[Orange Soda King]

Watch and enjoy all the games. That's what I try to do. Even though last year's team didn't win at all, there was so much joy and so many great memories with that team that will never be taken away

 

[KingOfBBN]

If a mid major goes undefeated throughout the regular season and there only loss is in there conference tourney, they are in the dance no questions asked. I have cannot recall a mid major, with 1 loss, not making the tourney. Do you have any examples? Maybe I am way off here.

Not talking undefeated in their entire schedule but conference. One off the top of my mind is 14-2 Midd Tennessee not getting a tournament bid in 2012 because 16-19 (7-9 conference) won the tourney.

 

[hangin#8]

You could argue conference tournaments keep the regular season more interesting because no matter how down your season may be, you always have a chance to make it a success at the end and thus teams keep playing hard. If it was more like college football, you'd end up with a ton of meaningless games. Sure, college basketball doesn't get any Bama-LSU games where the loser's season is a failure, but we also don't get a ton of games like this Kentucky-Vandy game this weekend.

 

[ukalum]

Don't conferences have the right to chose how they pick their automatic NCAA tournament qualifier? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Ivy League is the only team who gives the auto berth to the regular season champion. Is this just an exemption for that league or is that option open to every conference? Quick google search doesn't tell me much.

Conferences do have the right to determine who gets the autobid from their conference. The Ivy League does not have a conference tournament, so the regular season champ gets the tournament bid.

If I were the commissioner of one of these 1-bid conferences, I would make it so that the regular season champ gets the autobid. These conferences are where the bottom feeder gets hot and wins the conference tournament. You rarely see that in a P-5 conference.

 

[ukcatsfan2]

Go 31-0!

 

[Neue Regel]

Conferences do have the right to determine who gets the autobid from their conference. The Ivy League does not have a conference tournament, so the regular season champ gets the tournament bid.

If I were the commissioner of one of these 1-bid conferences, I would make it so that the regular season champ gets the autobid. These conferences are where the bottom feeder gets hot and wins the conference tournament. You rarely see that in a P-5 conference.

Some good comments. You do see almost every season it seems where a team from a 1 bid league had an outstanding regular season only to stub their toe in their conference tournament and not get invited to the dance because of it. I think giving it to the RS Champ in those leagues is a pretty good idea since only one squad can dance.

I really miss the round robin in the ACC, I would be open to the idea of even doing away with the ACC Tournament if everyone could play each other twice so that it's fair. I doubt that ever happens though, the ACC Tournament has too much tradition and the winner of it has always been the official Champion of the league. Some people have tried to cloud this over the years but it doesn't change that fact. The ACC never even officially recognized a so-called "regular season champion" until 1990 when Clemson finished first and they made a big stink out of not getting recognition.

You hear the argument against conference tournaments, "a weekend shouldn't trump the entire league season", yea but the same argument can be made for the NCAA Tournament. "three weeks shouldn't define an entire season." Well, like a well known ACC coach once said (Everette Case) "Tournament Basketball is Championship Basketball."

I'm torn a bit on the issue since I love the ACC Tournament and all of it's history but I'm also sick of unbalanced ACC Schedules. Take UVA last year, played Duke once, UNC once and Notre Dame once and they finished first by one game. That's two top 10 teams they only played once each. I don't know how you strike a happy medium, obviously it would be difficult now that the ACC has expanded to have both a round robin schedule and the league tournament. Would be way too many games. Will be interesting to see how the tournament does in New York and DC the next couple years. When it was in Florida you didn't see an overwhelming amount of FSU fans, football country down there.

 

[Aike]

Play hard, play well and regular season games are very meaningful. I can remember literally hundreds of enjoyable regular season games.