It's that time of the year for March Madness, when literally hundreds of basketball teams are filling arenas all over the country with a good many of them making their way to the television screen.
Headlining all the games is the NCAA Division I National Championship Tournament, featuring 68 of the best collegiate teams, well mostly, from across the land in one great, big, ginormous competition. It is so ginormously big that billionaire Warren Buffett offered one billion dollars to anyone who could fill out the NCAA bracket sheet predicting the outcome of all the games.
It was a safe bet since every bracket submitted had gone by the boards by the 21st game with 34 still to be played. Since "bracketology" has become a game to be played in earnest, I don't know of anyone who has ever even made it as far as the 30th game.
To get into the NCAAs, you have to be the winner of a collegiate conference tournament to get an automatic invitation. Of course, when a team like Cal-Poly unexpectedly wins a tournament with a losing record, another at large team that would have gotten an invite won't be getting one, and that explains part of the March "madness."
The other 36 teams invited are brought in based on their record, strength of schedule, power index and, most importantly, how many committee members happen to like them. In the case of Wichita State, if you win too many games, like 35-0, and it is not against the right kind of opponents, the committee will make sure that your sub-regional will be the most powerful one ever bracketed. Wichita State was bracketed with defending national champion Louisville, perennial power Duke and highly ranked Kentucky. As I was writing this column, the Shockers saw a last second shot fall short in a 2-point loss to Kentucky.
Our Razorbacks looked like they were finally headed back to the Big Dance before they played flatter than land in south Texas in their last two games, but they did get an invite to the NIT. They played Indiana State in the first round, whupped them 91-71, and played last Monday at California in the hopes of advancing to the quarter-finals.
While the NCAA tournament is, of course, owned by the NCAA, interestingly enough, so is the NIT. Because of that, any regular season league champion who does not get an NCAA bid gets an NIT bid automatically. That usually affects the smaller conferences rather than the big six or seven leagues. All told, 100 teams play in the NCAA/NIT tourneys.
But that's not all. Beyond the NCAAs and NIT is the CBI and the CIT. The CBI is a 16-team invitational made of teams that were left out of the other two tournaments but teams that had a good record. The SEC's Texas A&M played Illinois State in the quarter-finals Monday night after an opening round victory last week.
The very lowest rung of major college basketball tournaments is the College Insider Tournament that features 32 teams with no bracket at all. It seems that after every round, the committees get together and decide who plays who in the next round. That seems like a good way to insure some madness for sure.
Indiana University made some news last week after the NIT failed to invite them to their tournament. Their 17-15 record precluded their being in the NCAAs and in the NIT as well. They did get an offer but they were so "offended" by being invited to the CBI, that a torrent of profane, vile and abusive tweets, e-mails and posts were put up by Hoosier fans disgusted at the prospect of playing in so "lowly" a tournament. Again, March "madness" in full bloom.
Cochran among area leaders
Lady 'Hawk Mikhaela Cochrane is among the area leaders in Northwest Arkansas Best Track Performances regarding prep track and field stats.
Cochran's 100-foot discus throw ranks her fourth among all classes 7A and below. Springdale's Ryann Goodsell leads with 117-6 with Har-Ber's Grace Bogle second with 102-8 and Bentonville's Leann Mitchell third with 100-1.
The Pea Ridge junior is also third in the high jump with a 5-0 best effort. Fayetteville's Olivia Thomas leads with 5-6 with Rogers' Elise Randels second with a 5-1 mark.
SEC schools week in basketball?
It has been repeated ad nauseum on sports talk shows and in print on how weak the Southeastern Conference is in collegiate basketball.
The Razorbacks finished fifth in the 14-team league in basketball and according to many pundits, that was just horrible. Georgia finished third in the league and got no invite to the NCAAs, a testament to how little the SEC is regarded.
I didn't realize it until just yesterday that Arkansas would have been the SEC West Champions in basketball if they hadn't dissolved the divisions. I really wish they hadn't changed that part of the program.
Supposedly, they dissolved the divisional standings a couple of years back because it made the seedings all crazy in the conference tournament. Of course, now they play some teams twice a year, and some teams not, but that's not crazy? They could have gone ahead and had divisional standing to increase fan interest and seeded the tournament based on their won-lost record anyway. I don't get it.
Incidentally, the supposedly basketball weak SEC is 12-0 so far in post season competition. Of the Sweet 16 teams in the NCAAs, all three SEC schools (Tennessee, Kentucky and Florida) chosen are still in it, and among the 16 colleges left in the NIT, SEC schools Arkansas, Missouri, LSU and Georgia are still playing. The eighth SEC school Texas A&M is in the final eight in the CBI. I know of no other league or conference that can boast of so fine a record.
Baseball Hogs good and bad news
The baseball Razorbacks have had a roller coaster season to date.
Six games into the conference season, the bad news is that the Hogs find themselves in last place in the SEC West. The good news is that they are just one game out of first place for the overall lead of the SEC.
Mississippi, Auburn and Mississippi State lead the SEC West with 4-2 marks with Arkansas, LSU, Texas A&M and Alabama trailing with 3-3 ledgers.
In the SEC East, there is a five-way tie for the lead between Vanderbilt, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky and Florida, all with 3-3 marks. Georgia with a 1-4 mark and Missouri at 1-4 are the only underachievers in the league.
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Editor's note: John McGee is an award-winning columnist and sports writer. He is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Editorial on 03/26/2014