Hey Roger Goodell, if you want to see parity, come to Baltimore this weekend.
Conference tournament time is upon us, and with it comes the
dozens of low-seeded schools—especially in traditionally one-bid leagues—that
are infused by the belief that they can become the Cinderella that slays the
giants and earns the golden ticket to the NCAA Tournament.
The truth is that the prospective Cinderellas are usually
home long before midnight—especially in the CAA, where they usually get back on
to the carriage moments after they exit.
The CAA’s 32nd postseason tournament begins
tonight, when the eighth-seeded Flying Dutchmen will wear the home uniforms
against ninth-seeded UNC Wilmington against some hardy and/or lost souls at the
Baltimore Arena. And history suggests the Dutchmen and the Seahawks—as well as
everyone except top-seeded Delaware and second-seeded Towson—are facing almost
impossible odds in their quest to cut down the nets Monday night.
A team seeded lower than second has won the CAA tournament
just six times. And only one of those champions was seeded lower than fourth:
In 1993, seventh-seeded East Carolina became the CAA’s one and so far only
Cinderella champ by knocking off the no. 2, no. 6 and no. 1 seeds in a
three-day span.
Not only have the underdogs rarely won the tournament,
they’ve rarely even survived into the semifinal round. Only three teams seeded
sixth or lower—East Carolina as well as sixth seeds James Madison in 1997 and
George Mason in 2007—have advanced to the finals.
In addition, just 17 percent of the CAA Tournament’s semifinal
combatants (21 of 124) have gotten there as the fifth seed or lower. Thirteen
of those reached the semis as the fifth seed, which means it had to win a
virtual toss-up with the fourth seed in the quarterfinals.
The road has been incrementally less difficult for teams
seeded in the lower two-thirds since the CAA expanded to 12 teams in 2001-02.
Since then, 21 percent (10 of 48) of the semifinal teams have been seeded fifth
or lower. But six of those teams were the fifth seed.
Recent history has been even more unforgiving: The top seeds
have reached the CAA Tournament semifinals in each of the last three years.
So to listen to the CAA coaches speak of the wide-open
nature of the tournament during the final conference call of the season Tuesday
was to hear delusion at its finest…right?
“We’re a lower-seeded team,” Flying Dutchmen coach Joe
Mihalich said. “Somebody [from] some conference—seventh seed, eighth seed,
ninth seed—is going to all of a sudden turn around and be the champs.”
“Everybody’s going down there believing they have a chance
to earn the NCAA bid,” Northeastern coach Bill Coen said.
Except this time, everybody has legitimate reason to hope.
By various measures—equal parts eye test and statistical—the
just-concluded CAA season may have been the most competitive in its history and
certainly in the so-called modern era (i.e. since the America East four joined
in 2001-02).
Of the 72 CAA regular season games, just more than
half—37—were decided by seven points or less or in overtime.
“All you’ve got to do is look at the scores in the league to
see it’s pretty wide-open,” Drexel coach Bruiser Flint said.
A closer look at the scores indicates just how wide-open the
league really is. Top-seeded Delaware needed a last-minute comeback to beat UNC
Wilmington, 66-65, at home and trailed Hofstra by double digits in the first
half both at home and on Long Island.
UNC Wilmington, meanwhile, went 1-3 against Delaware and
Towson—with a net point differential of negative-8. And Hofstra lost to Delaware,
Towson and third-seeded William & Mary in an eight-day span last month by a
total of 15 points.
“That 8/9 game is going to be a heckuva game,” Delaware
coach Monte Ross said. “It’s not your typical 8/9 game in your league just
because those guys have played so well against everybody else in the league. A
lot of times in the league, you get an 8/9 game, you have some teams that were
blown out and not really competitive.”
The CAA is far more competitive from top to bottom and
between the haves and have-nots—and drastically so—than it has been at any
point in the last 13 seasons.
Delaware went 8-0 against the bottom four teams in the
league (College of Charleston, James Madison, Hofstra and UNC Wilmington) but
had a net point differential of plus-51, the second-smallest figure for the no.
1 seed against the bottom four teams since 2001-02.
In addition, while bottom four teams went just 3-21 against
the top three teams, their average margin of defeat was just 4.6 points per
game. That is by far the smallest average margin of defeat for the bottom four
against the top third since 2001-02.
“I think it says a lot about the bottom of our league, or
the teams that finished towards the bottom, [that] they are very strong and
have played everybody very, very tough,” Ross said.
The gap actually began closing last season—which was, not
coincidentally, the first for the CAA without emerging national power VCU as
well as the last season in the league for former conference heavyweights George
Mason and Old Dominion, neither of whom had anything resembling a vintage
season.
Last year, top-seeded Northeastern actually had a far
hairier time against the bottom four teams than Delaware did this year. The
Huskies went 6-2—only the second time since 2001-02 that the no. 1 seed has
lost two games to the bottom four teams—with a net-point differential of just
plus-14, an average of 1.8 points per game.
Meanwhile, the bottom four teams (William & Mary, UNC
Wilmington, Hofstra and Old Dominion) went 2-27 against the top four (Delaware.
Towson and James Madison finished two through four) but suffered an average
margin of defeat of just 6.9 points per game.
That was less than half the average margin of defeat for the
bottom four against the top four in 2011-12, when the top four went 29-0
against the bottom four while winning by an average of 14.4 points per game.
That figure is elevated by the presence of 1-17 Towson, which was outscored by
180 points in its eight losses to the top four. But even disregarding Towson’s
figures, the nine through 11 seeds lost 22 games by an average of 11.3 points
per game.
In the 11 seasons between 2001-02 and 2011-12, the no. 1
seed outscored the bottom four teams by an average of at least 10 points per
game. And in those 11 seasons, the top four teams in the CAA outscored the
bottom four by an average of 10 points or more eight times—including in 2006,
the first best year in CAA history, when the top four went 29-0 against the
bottom four with an average margin of victory of 16.7 points per game.
Is the recent parity the new normal in the CAA? More
importantly, and urgently, will this season’s parity finally translate into
chaos in the tournament?
With a clear top two teams in Delaware and Towson, as well
as a fourth seed in Drexel that is, like Delaware and Towson, playing within
two hours of its campus, nobody should be surprised if the chalk has held once
again come Sunday’s semifinals.
But the unprecedented balance within the CAA means nobody
should be surprised, either, if a lower seed—or multiple lower seeds—sneaks into
the semifinals or beyond. And it means everybody, from the outbracket
contestants all the way up to the top seed, is taking on the March mantra of
the underdog.
“We finished at the bottom, and I feel like any given
night—heck, our game at Delaware, we ha a chance to win and ended up losing by
one,” UNC Wilmington coach Buzz Peterson said. “Any given night, some crazy
things can happen and have happened. It’s pretty even.”
“We have the
same mindset, that anybody can win it,” Ross said. “Why not us?”
Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com
or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.
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