The Selection Committee is Cleverer Than You

Matt McCullers

Yeah, so it’s safe to assume that many of us are unhappy with the Selection Committee. It is maddening to see that teams like Syracuse and Tulsa were extended an invitation but teams like St. Bonaventure and Monmouth were denied one. In addition, some of the seeding just flat out did not make sense (I mean, how is Texas A&M a higher seed than Kentucky when the Wildcats BEAT them in the SEC Championship?). The root of all of this evil is the Selection Committee’s desire to be as clever as possible by creating potential match-ups between old conference foes and inventing new non-conference rivalries (one recent rivalry they unsuccessfully tried to create was a UNC-Kansas rivalry). Now, sometimes a little cleverness can be good, but this year it seems that the committee valued cleverness over straight statistical fact.


The most egregious example of this problem is the seeding of Kentucky as 4-seed and Texas A&M as a 3-seed. Remember, Kentucky beat the Aggies in the SEC Championship and both have identical records at 26-8. They lead the season series against the Aggies 2-1. They also have better non-conference wins over Duke and Louisville. The Aggies beat Baylor and Iowa State, both of which were home games. Kentucky deserves a better seeding. Yet, they didn’t get it and I have this crazy idea that the committee did this just to be clever. Look at who Kentucky may potentially play. They may play Indiana in the second round. If you can remember four years back, the Hoosiers beat the Wildcats off of a buzzer beater in non-conference play. The committee cleverly enough placed Indiana as 4-seed in top-seeded Kentucky’s region. Kentucky got their revenge and eventually went on to win a championship. Back then, people were talking about this possibly great non-conference rivalry between Indiana and Kentucky - but that didn’t really happen. Maybe the committee is trying to resurrect this.



If Kentucky makes it to the Sweet 16, they may play North Carolina! In the Roy Williams era, UNC and Kentucky have played each other in non-conference regular season play every year except in the 2012-13 season and this season. Here, the committee maybe thought that they should take matters into their own hands. Making Kentucky a 4-seed in the East Region is literally the best way these two teams could match-up early in the tournament.



(Also, if Texas A&M advances to the Sweet 16 they may play…guess who…Oklahoma! This is significant because the Aggies used to be in the Big 12. Again, another example of the committee trying to be clever.)



The beauty about the NCAA tournament is that its success rests on its unpredictability. By posing Kentucky in this situation, the committee is predicting something. This should not be happening. The committee is simply there to seed teams in the fairest way possible based off of statistical fact. But when cleverness gets in the way of the nature of the tournament and fact, then there's a problem. Hopefully the NCAA notices that people were unhappy with a lot of the decisions this year, and a change will be made in the future.