Didn't Like the NCAA Tournament This Year? Blame the NBA

When the National Basketball Association instituted its age rule before the 2006 draft, one of the rule's primary selling points was its promised impact on college basketball.

By requiring each entrant to turn 19 during the draft's calendar year, the idea was to force more of the top high school talent to spend at least one year in college.

This is working to a degree, but ask Brandon Jennings about a rather troublesome little loophole in the plan.

Regardless of whether other blue-chip prospects follow his lead and head overseas to get paid for a year while smoothing out the rough edges in their games, a disturbing trend may be developing right here on native soil.

And in college basketball's showcase event no less.

This year's NCAA tournament had some great moments to be sure, but they're a little less fun for the majority of the country when it's Goliath hanging on to beat another Goliath.

And there were less of even those.

Out of 63 games in the six rounds of basketball (excluding the play-in game), we saw 16 end in upsets.  If you exclude "upsets" where the difference in seeding was one rung (i.e. 8 v. 9, 1 v. 2, etc.), there were only nine real surprises.

Of these nine, only three featured teams outside the power conferences—Cleveland State, Western Kentucky, and Dayton.

The Sweet 16 featured only three teams hailing from outside the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac-10, or SEC. The Elite Eight featured zero such teams, which was also the number of teams seeded lower than No. 3 that survived to the final eight.

Upon closer inspection, the tournament was even more predictable.

If you assume that (A) the higher seed is the stronger team, (B) the stronger team is the favorite, and (C) the favorite should win, then no seed lower than No. 8 should ever win.

Seeds No. 5 through 8 should go 1-1, seeds No. 3 and 4 should go 2-1, the No. 2 seeds should all go 3-1, two No. 1 seeds should go 4-1, a No. 1 should go 5-1, and the eventual champion (6-0) should be the remaining No. 1 seed.

Obviously, this is never the way the thing shakes down.

But, using these as the expectations for seeds, here's how the power conferences should've performed and how they actually performed in raw terms of wins/losses (assuming North Carolina was the overall favorite despite Louisville's No. 1 overall seed):

ACC—Seven teams seeded Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 7, 10; expected 14-6; actual 9-6

Big East—Seven teams seeded Nos. 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 6, 6; expected 19-7; actual 17-7

Big Ten—Seven teams seeded Nos. 2, 5, 5, 8, 10, 10, 12; expected 6-7; actual 9-7

Big XII—Six teams seeded Nos. 2, 3, 3, 7, 8, 9; expected 9-6; actual 11-6

Pac-10—Six teams seeded Nos. 4, 6, 6, 7, 10, 12; expected 5-6; actual 6-6

SEC—Three teams seeded Nos. 8, 9, 13; expected 1-3; actual 1-3

Basically, the tourney unfolded according to plan—clearly there were some teams that outperformed expectations and others that failed to meet theirs.  But the BCS conferences essentially walked the walk.

The ACC seems to have been slightly overrated, but understandably so because of UNC's presence in the conference. If you look at the bad ACC losses in the field of 64, three of the four beat the Tar Heels during the regular season (Boston College, Wake Forrest, and Florida State).

Since UNC proved to be worthy of the hype, you can see why the committee members maybe overlooked some warts on teams that managed to vanquish the eventual champs.

On the other side, both the Big Ten and Big XII seemed to have been a tad underrated.  The two conferences sent 13 teams to the Big Dance and lost only Illinois to truly early demise while scoring some nice wins along the way.

The bigger problem for the NCAA is there were no really huge surprises—no Davidsons or George Masons. The magic seemed absent.

Cinderella missed the ball this year (unless she came dressed as an Arizona Wildcat or Xavier Musketeer).

And that's no good because Cinderella's fine caboose is what sells the tournament—we all love a good fairytale.

Granted, the above is just an approximate look through some rough numbers and there are stats on the flip that would neatly support a contrary interpretation. For instance, a lot of the No. 1 v. No. 16 games were closer than usual and most of the games were competitive if not nail-biters.

Unfortunately, I think that might be symptomatic of the problem as well.

Flash back to the relatively new NBA age minimum. The idea was the rule would even out the college basketball landscape by dropping more transcendent talent in the mid-majors and non-traditional powers.

This has undoubtedly happened as evidence by the increased ability of the also-rans to compete with the big dawgs this year.

But it could backfire and we may be seeing the start of it.

If the big boys no longer overlook the smaller schools once tourney time rolls around because they're familiar with the talent on the opposing rosters, we will have lost a good deal of the madness from March Madness.

Let's not kid ourselves—the elite programs will always be elite.

More of the A-list high school athletes will always choose the power conferences because 20 minutes on ESPN every week is better than 40 minutes on the "Sports Leader" every month or so.

This is especially when you've got the kind of talent and confidence that allows you to believe you can bring something really special when the cameras come a-callin'.

If you (justifiably) believe you can stand out when given the chance, it will always make more sense to go with the option that offers more chances on the biggest platform—it's the most efficient way to market yourself.

So what happens when a team like Connecticut has McDonald's All-Americans lined up three deep, but sees a team like Western Kentucky coming from a mile away?  After all, there's a good chance the Hilltoppers will feature some very good players with whom the A-listers are familiar in that scenario.

Without a good deal of complacency on the side of overwhelming strength, there's NO chance a school like WKU will be able to compete. There just won't be enough depth to hang with a focused big gun.

More bad news since, if I'm jumping off against several dudes I know from the AAU circuits or wherever, you'll almost always have my attention.  And that means fewer upsets.

In an event where upsets are the happy ending, we could have serious trouble brewing.

Our fairytale's heroes must sneak up on the monsters to beat them and, ironically, the NBA may have permanently blown their cover.