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Editorial 2/05/05
Do or Die Saturday for the Ramblers
2/05/04
by John C. Thomas
A Saturday afternoon win against the visiting Butler Bulldogs (9-11, 4-6) won’t earn a whole lot for the Loyola Ramblers (7-14, 3-8), but a loss would virtually clinch a first round road game in the 2004 Horizon League Tournament. In the new league tournament format, the last three spots in the league turn teams into virtual traffic cones on the road to a tournament birth. So for Loyola, a win against Butler is essential to avoid that ignominy.
Loyola will have to win against Butler, pull an upset in one of three road games against UWM, UWGB, and Detroit, win at home against Cleveland State, and then cross their fingers for luck in order to move up to the sixth seed from their current eighth place standing. Without a win against Butler, the Bulldogs would have five conference victories and hold the tiebreaker against the Ramblers if the two struggling teams end with an identical conference record. A win would give Loyola a 4-8 conference record and the Bulldogs a 4-7 record with any tiebreaker to be determined.
If Loyola can somehow climb to the sixth seed, they would host the seventh seed at the Gentile Center on Tuesday, March 2, and have a great chance to move on to face the winner of the third seed. If the Ramblers fall short of the sixth seed, it’s traffic cone time.
It used to be that a team with a little luck and a hot streak could overcome a lackluster regular season record to model a Cinderella slipper in the league tournament. But after sixth seed UIC topped fifth-seeded Loyola in the conference tournament final in 2002, something had to be done to make the ultimate outcome more predictable. The last thing anyone would want is a surprise upset or a Cinderella story in college basketball. Hence the new league tournament format.
The tournament format heavily rewards the top two league finishers by granting byes in the first two rounds. But even more significantly, the format provides that the higher seed plays in their own building. Thus the bottom three seeds must win four games-- at least three of them on the road-- while flying from one city to another with little notice in order to gain an NCAA Tournament dance card. The odds against such a thing happening requires a NASA supercomputer to figure.
Proponents of the tournament format suggest that top seeds should be rewarded for their performance during the regular season. OK then, reward them with either byes or home court advantage. Doing both is overkill, and unduly punishes teams that may have had injuries or other circumstances that resulted in an unrepresentative regular season conference record.
Another disturbing element of the conference tournament format is that it’s built on a defeatist principle. What if the Horizon League became a much stronger men’s basketball conference two or three years from now, and had three or four excellent teams that would get bids whether they won the league tournament or not? In that instance, this tournament format would possibly keep more teams out of the tournament than maximize Horizon League representation, because it would stack the deck against a potential Cinderella. Adjusting the tournament format back to provide a fairer shot for lower seeds would likely come a year too late.
The mission for Loyola has been clear from the beginning of the season, however, and all the Ramblers had to do to avoid the specter of facing a first round road game was to play like a team and win. After wins in their first two conference games, they gave up on that strategy. And now we have to crunch numbers and draw out scenarios to prepare ourselves for the eventual post-mortem to this very disappointing season.
Link: Tracking the Bracket