Bracket Banter: NCAA and NIT
Drexel's Dragons are outraged and breathing fire, Syracuse's Jim Boeheim is whining (once) again and Air Force is probably looking for a small country to invade to express its school's outrage.
But we're here to tell you the school that got jobbed the most by the Committee was the Univeristy of Akron from the MAC, which didn't get an NIT bid. Shame on you CM Newton (ex- of the SEC and the chair of the Old Boy network NIT Selection Committee). And shame on your good buddies among the sham NIT field pickers which includes a bunch of old guy basketball legends like Dean Smith, Gene Keady and Don Devoe who probably think the "Zips" are something you get after the "runs."
Does the CM stand for Can't Make the right decision? Or is it for Clearly Mismanaging the NIT?
When the NCAA (and ESPN) took over the NIT, there was hope that the selection process might gain some credibility and create a better, more deserving field. We should have known better. Even in a year when NCAA Chair Gary Walters said there was 104 20-win teams that were getting consideration for the Big Dance, the Little Dance organizers couldn't figure out the proper 32 to choose from those 40-some-odd programs.
All the Zips did was go 26-7 (most wins in the MAC, highest RPI in-league), come within a buzzer-beater (by Miami, Ohio) of being the MAC Tourney winner and go 10-4 on the road while beating NCAA Tournament participants Niagara, Oral Roberts and Miami (OH) in the regular season. They lost by two to NCAA dancer Nevada and finished 13-3 in the MAC. They were 8-2 in their final ten.
Coach Keith Dambrot told the Clevelend Plain Dealer's Elton Alexander: "It's hard to believe we didn't get in. I can't figure it out. Only nine teams in the country had more road/neutral wins than us [13]. This is on the league. I can't blame us. We did what we had to do. It's not right. It's just not right."
Oh, and the team is chock full of ex-teammates and buddies of a guy named Lebron James, who very likely would have brought more attention to the Zips and the NIT than 75 percent of the named field. CM, have you heard of this James kid? Some call him The King. Same way some might call you The Clueless.
Listen, I know it's "just" the NIT, but for crying out loud, if you're going to have a legitimate second tier tournament, shouldn't you have a legitimate committee making the picks and not some BCS conference loving old fogey?
"I'm as flabbergasted as anybody," Rick Boyages told the Plain-Dealer, the MAC's director of basketball operations. "These [NIT selection committee] guys get every piece of material we've got on our teams. This is my job. I don't understand this."
The Zips wuz robbed and for that those NIT-wit "guys" should be ashamed.
Whoooo. That felt good.
Now, after the jump, we can get onto some of the other mistakes, intrigue and potential match-ups in both the brackets.