MARCH MADNESS BRACKETOLOGY
Like many of you, I'm busy filling out a couple of NCAA Tournament brackets in my never ending quest to actually cash for once. We do watch a lot of college basketball once football ends but that doesn't allow us much in the way of non-conference viewing. As many of you have noticed by now, I seldom rely on the opinion of others to form mine. But some of the seeding in this bracket has me scratching my head & since I refused to sit thru 3 hours of analysis/bickering on ESPN last night, could someone give me a clue how this works?
How are these seeds assigned? I have questions about several of them but I'll only take up your time with one, near & dear to my heart admittedly, but it's one I'm very familiar with. Meaning I've seen these teams play a lot this season. It involves Oklahoma, Kansas & Missouri from the Big-12 Conference. OU is a #2 seed playing in Kansas City this weekend. Kansas is a #3 seed playing in Minneapolis & the Tigers are also a #3 seed, playing in Boise, Idaho.
A quick recap; Kansas won the regular season Big-12 championship with a 13-3 record, losing at Texas Tech on senior night & splitting with both K-State & Mizzou. They beat OU at Norman, when Blake Griffin was out & beat Texas at Lawrence. They lost as the #1 seed in the conference tournament. Missouri won the Big-12 Tournament, posted a 12-4 regular season record, losing at Nebraska(I said when it happened it would cost them), at K-State, at Kansas (blown out) & at Texas A&M on Senior day. They won at Texas & Oklahoma State, both tournament teams. Split with K-State & Kansas, while beating Oklahoma with Blake Griffin. OU, 12-4, lost to Oklahoma State as the #2 seed in the tournament as well as to Kansas, Missouri & Texas.
So here's what I'm puzzled about, is the seeding more weighted toward non-conference play? Because if conference play even matters at all, Oklahoma couldn't be rewarded with a #2 seed & a trip to Kansas City while regular season champ, Kansas is sent packing off to Minneapolis & tournament champ, Mizzou, is shipped off for the highest mileage road trip of any of the top seeds. The fact that OU couldn't beat either of these teams is somewhat mitigating too isn't it? Maybe not.
I'm sure there's an explanation for all this, I just need help finding it. Someone please enlighten me so I'm not forced to listen to Dick Vitale & company.
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