[h1]Kent State the new Mason?[/h1]
posted: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 | Print Entry
Kent State should be this season's George Mason. Does that mean the Golden Flashes will get to the Final Four. Nope. I'm not going there. But what Kent State did last Saturday during BracketBusters was get a road win on national television that suddenly catapulted Kent State (23-5, 11-2) into the rankings and assuredly in the NCAA at-large picture.
Two years ago, George Mason went to Wichita State and beat the Shockers on the road and that seemed to validate what the Patriots were doing in the CAA. It may have ultimately helped them get a bid when they didn't win the CAA tournament.
Kent State coach Jim Christian cited the Mason example Tuesday.
"It's just like them, winning in a tough environment," Christian said. "It's an advantage to be the road team in the BracketBuster. Everyone wants to be home but the chance to play on the road in a place you normally wouldn't get is an advantage."
Christian said the Golden Flashes needed to get a "signature-type win. We didn't have that. We needed a statement-type game for people to realize we were pretty good in a pretty good league."
Kent State did beat George Mason earlier this season but that isn't the same as taking out a ranked team like the Gaels on their home court, a place where Saint Mary's had beaten Oregon, Gonzaga and Seton Hall earlier this season.
The Golden Flashes finish with two of the final three games on the road -- at Bowling Green, Miami (Ohio) and at Akron.
"We've got to win the championship of the MAC first [before the NCAA]," Christian said.
Christian said that getting ranked now obviously means more than earlier in the season. Plenty of teams were ranked early in the season that are no where to be found now (see: Dayton and Ole Miss). Meanwhile, the MAC will likely be cheering against Kent State in the conference tournament so it can get two bids out of the league for the first time since 1999.
Quick Hitters
Kent State lead guard
Al Fisher is a great example of how recruiting can be overhyped. Fisher was a late pickup. He was a JC guard out of Redlands CC (Okla.). The Golden Flashes needed a player in July, scoured for a guard and found Fisher. They checked him out academically and got him registered right before classes began in the fall. He's leading the team in scoring at 14.4 points and 4.3 assists.
• Monday afternoon we taped Organizing the Madness, a show with Greg Shaheen, the NCAA's Vice President who is in charge of the NCAA Tournament. It will air Tuesday night on ESPNU at 6 p.m. ET.
For the most part it was our way of showing a bit of what we did earlier this month at the mock bracket seminar in Indianapolis.
But there were a few key points that beg repeating:
We need to remember not to get caught up in a team's conference record. A great example is Ohio State. The Buckeyes are 8-6 in the Big Ten. On the surface that looks like a strong resume builder in a conference as established as the Big Ten. But look closer at the record and you'll see that the eight wins came against Illinois twice, Northwestern twice, Penn State, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota. Those are the bottom six teams in the Big Ten. Ohio State hasn't beaten any of the top four so far -- Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana and Michigan State. That's why if you were to examine a 7-7 Arizona State in the Pac-10, you'd see that ASU has conference wins over Arizona (two) and Stanford among its seven wins. Arizona is also 7-7 in the league and Stanford is in second place in the Pac-10. So, this is an example where a worse conference record on the surface has better wins than another conference record in a fellow high-major conference.
This shouldn't come as a surprise since this has happened before where teams with nine or 10 wins in a high-major conference don't make the field.
But coaches, fans, and the like need to be reminded by the committee that the conference record isn't a determining factor for a bid.
Monday night, when I asked West Virginia's Bob Huggins to state his case as to why the Mountaineers should be in the field, the first thing he said was that they were 8-6 in the best conference in the country. So, let's examine the eight wins. West Virginia has one win over a team ahead of it in the standings -- Marquette. One of the eight wins came against a team that is just behind it in the standings in Syracuse. But the other six wins came against teams in the bottom of the Big East -- St. John's, South Florida, Providence (two), Rutgers and Seton Hall. That's why upcoming games against Connecticut and Pitt will be critical to the Mountaineers' chances of earning a bid. They still might earn a berth but hanging the bid process on a conference record is an easy out for the coach when the committee, as Shaheen said, will strip away the record. His line Monday was that these teams should be looked at as essentially all independent teams. Just look at their schedule and determine who they played, where they played and how they played.
Clearly, that won't be advantageous to a lower-profile team since they won't have as many opportunities to pick up quality wins. And that's why it's even more important to win games out of conference for teams like Davidson, which played a host of higher-profile schools (UCLA, UNC and Duke) but didn't win any of them.
• There are still two weeks to play in the regular season but Tennessee's win over Memphis should make Duke and Carolina fans pause. If the Vols were to secure a No. 1 seed by winning the SEC and let's say winning at least one of the next two road games (at Vanderbilt and at Florida) then the Vols would likely be in Charlotte as the top seed. Charlotte is the closest venue to Tennessee and if the Vols are the top seed then they would go, not North Carolina or Duke.
• Texas' win at Kansas State on Monday night was yet another indicator to me that the Longhorns should be a No. 1 seed based on who they've beaten (UCLA, Tennessee, Kansas, Oklahoma and Baylor). As of Tuesday, the Longhorns should be a No. 1 seed in the Midwest (Memphis in the South, and I still say UCLA in the West).
