March Madness 2011 Bracket: Fixing What the Committee Got Wrong

1. Replace VCU (23-11, RPI: 49, SoS: 84, vs. Top 50 Teams: 3-6) with Colorado (21-13, RPI: 65, SoS: 49, Top 50: 6-7)

Colorado not making the tournament is just absurd. It played a much tougher schedule than VCU and beat twice as many Top 50 teams.

The Buffaloes beat Kansas State (a No. 5 seed in the tournament) three times! They beat Texas when the Longhorns were ranked No. 5 in the country. They had two tough, close losses to No. 1 seed Kansas, neither of which was in Boulder.

What did VCU do? I don’t know either.

2. Replace UAB (22-8, RPI: 31, SoS: 78, Top 50: 1-4) with Virginia Tech (21-11, RPI: 60, SoS: 88, Top 50: 2-5)

Virginia Tech has been on the NCAA tournament “snub” list for the past four years. This year, the Hokies beat Duke when Duke was the top-ranked team in the country. Virginia Tech also won two games in the ACC tournament last week.

UAB played one Top 25 team all year. That team was Duke, and Duke won by 21.

Look at UAB's schedule. The Blazers beat a bunch of mediocre-to-bad teams and lost to some mediocre-to-bad teams, and when they played good teams, they got beaten.

3. Replace Clemson (20-10, RPI: 57, SoS: 62, Top 50: 0-5) with St. Mary’s (25-8, RPI: 48, SoS: 105, Top 50: 1-4)

Clemson was 0-5 against Top 50 teams this year. It does not have a quality win on its schedule.

St. Mary’s beat St. John’s and lost to BYU by one point. Yeah, it had a couple of bad losses, but what did Clemson do?

I thought expanding the number of teams in the tournament was supposed to help mid-major schools like St. Mary’s.

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