Washington DC & Birmingham Bracket Question

Discussion in 'Men's College Basketball' started by mrbigbry, Mar 20, 2008.

  1. mrbigbry

    mrbigbry New Member

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    Hello, here is my question. Does anyone know why the 2 remaining teams after Saturday and Sunday of the DC bracket and the Birmingham bracket will play each other next week in the Phoenix and Charlotte Regionals? The 2 remaining teams in each of the other 6 brackets will not face each other in next weeks games as they get split apart, this seems unusual.
     
  2. cpawfan

    cpawfan Monsters do exist

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    Welcome to S2

    The NCAA Tournament uses a pod system for the first week of games. The top 4 seeds are generally placed in the closet location for them. These pods don't correspond to the actual regions the teams are placed in.
     
  3. mrbigbry

    mrbigbry New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (cpawfan @ Mar 20 2008, 09:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Welcome to S2

    The NCAA Tournament uses a pod system for the first week of games. The top 4 seeds are generally placed in the closet location for them. These pods don't correspond to the actual regions the teams are placed in.</div>

    I does not have anything to do with the top 4 teams (NC is the number 1 seed and they are not playing in DC or Birmingham, they are in Raleigh), the reason why they switched this a few years back (it used to be all like the DC and Birmingham brackets) was that the winning teams would not be able to "scout" or watch each others games "live" in the same location. That will be the case with the DC and Birmingham winners. With the other 6 brackets their sweet sixteen opponent will not play at the same location as they did, they played at another location. It seems like they would make this consistant either one way or the other for all eight locations.
     
  4. cpawfan

    cpawfan Monsters do exist

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mrbigbry @ Mar 20 2008, 11:19 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (cpawfan @ Mar 20 2008, 09:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Welcome to S2

    The NCAA Tournament uses a pod system for the first week of games. The top 4 seeds are generally placed in the closet location for them. These pods don't correspond to the actual regions the teams are placed in.</div>

    I does not have anything to do with the top 4 teams (NC is the number 1 seed and they are not playing in DC or Birmingham, they are in Raleigh), the reason why they switched this a few years back (it used to be all like the DC and Birmingham brackets) was that the winning teams would not be able to "scout" or watch each others games "live" in the same location. That will be the case with the DC and Birmingham winners. With the other 6 brackets their sweet sixteen opponent will not play at the same location as they did, they played at another location. It seems like they would make this consistant either one way or the other for all eight locations.
    </div>

    It has nothing to do with scouting and everything to do with the pod system. None of the sites for the Thur/Sat & Fri/Sun games on the first week are assigned to any region.

    Of course UNC is going to play in Raleigh as that gives a huge home court advantage and that is one of the spoils of being the overall #1 seed.

    http://www.newsobserver.com/734/v-print/story/1002222.html

    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Road to Final Four is shorter for top teams
    Geographic pods established in 2002 gave rise to 'super seeds'
    J.P. Giglio, Staff Writer
    The NCAA tonight will unveil its 2008 men's tournament bracket, a diagram in which millions of fans will try to divine the path to the national championship. But a change in how the bracket is arranged has made it easier to guess the winning route: Pick from the shortest ones.

    The distance teams travel grew in importance six years ago when the tournament selection committee began organizing its 65-team field into geographical groupings known as "pods." The intent was to make it easier for fans to attend early round games. But the change had another effect. It has created "super seeds," top teams that get the weakest early opponents, avoid grinding travel and play closer to their fans.

    A News & Observer analysis of the past 12 years of tournament data found that the distance a team travels for a game is a telling factor in the outcome. Teams that played within 250 miles of their campus won 69 percent of their games. Teams that traveled 500 miles or more won just 46.5 percent.

    For top teams, the switch to pods shortened the road to the Final Four. No.1 and No. 2 seeds now travel less than half the distance they did before in the early rounds, often within a few hours' drive of their campus. Lower seeds also travel less, but still play, on average, more than 1,000 miles from home.

    The 2008 bracket will likely show a striking example of what happens when favorable seeds are bolstered by favorable locations. No. 1-ranked UNC is expected to play its first two games in Raleigh and potentially the next two in Charlotte. The Tar Heels could earn a trip to the Final Four without ever leaving the Tar Heel state.

    Duke might get the same chance, with many forecasting the Blue Devils as a No. 2 seed that will play in either Raleigh or Washington, D.C.

    Neutrality lost

    "The No. 1 seeds get the best of everything, then the No. 2s," said Citadel athletic director and former N.C. State coach Les Robinson, who worked on the NCAA Tournament selection committee from 1999 to 2004. "The No. 16s get the worst. It's the fairest way to do it."

    But it was also part of the tournament's fairness -- and a reason it was a stage for upsets -- that all games were played on neutral courts. The pod system is clouding that neutrality.

    John Feinstein, whose 2006 book "Last Dance" chronicles the 2005 NCAA Tournament and the history of the Final Four, said giving top teams a chance to play closer to home can be unfair. He pointed to the fate that befell No. 8 seed Wisconsin in 2002 when the Badgers had to play No. 1 seed Maryland at the Verizon Center in Washington. Maryland won 87-57 before a screaming red crowd of Maryland faithful.

    "It was insane," Feinstein said. "They might as well have played that game at Maryland, because it was a home game."

    Maryland coach Gary Williams agreed it wasn't fair, but he wasn't going to complain. Williams said he would rather the NCAA stage its tournament at true neutral sites.

    "Before the pod system, you didn't worry about it," Williams said. "You were going to travel. I just liked it when they threw everybody out there and you just played."

    Greg Shaheen, the NCAA's senior vice president for basketball and business operations, declined to be interviewed for this story.

    A boon for Duke, UNC

    Duke and North Carolina have been the biggest beneficiaries of playing close to home. Since 2000, Duke has played eight NCAA Tournament games within 100 miles of Durham. UNC has played six within 100 miles of Chapel Hill in the past decade. None of the NCAA's other 300-plus teams has played more than two so close to their campus.

    For many teams, playing closer to home than their opponents helped fuel a long trip through the bracket.

    Georgetown beat UNC last year and made the Final Four, playing all of its games as the "closest" team. George Mason, a surprising No. 11 seed, made the Final Four the year before -- playing in a Washington arena 20 minutes from its Fairfax, Va., campus. Illinois traveled just 261 miles to win its way into the Final Four in 2005. Duke went only 400 miles in 2004 before it was in the Final Four.

    Such examples are fewer in the years prior to the change, when teams routinely had traveled 1,100 miles or more before reaching the Final Four.

    Fewer Cinderella teams

    The N&O analysis shows that the NCAA's travel change coincides with less madness in March.

    There have been fewer overall upsets since the change. But more telling is that there have been fewer upsets by teams that had traveled to the game a farther distance than their opponent.

    The result is a changing complexion to the sport's national championship tournament, which landed the NCAA a $6.1 billion television contract from CBS, in part for its unpredictable nature.

    In the six years before the travel change, an average of 10 of the top 20 teams in the tournament made it to the Sweet 16 each year, a coveted middle step of the tournament that is a measuring stick for programs.

    Since then, about 12 of the top 20 are making it each year.

    That's an average of two fewer Cinderella stories each year.

    The system has largely been embraced by the sport's coaches and administrators, even the ones burned by it or whose rivals have been helped by it.

    "It's not stacking the deck against someone else; it's a reward for the regular season," said N.C. State athletic director Lee Fowler, who was the chairman of the NCAA Tournament selection committee in 2002 and has served on the committee six times.

    "It's not a conspiracy by the NCAA or CBS. I can promise you that."

    How do pods work?

    The NCAA seeds the 65 teams in the Division I tournament, sets the schedule and location assignments and pays for each team's travel.

    The NCAA revamped its bracket process in 2002, adopting the "pod" system to keep teams closer to home. Instead of sending a group of eight teams from the same part of the first and second round bracket to one site, the NCAA breaks them up into groups of four. It's called a pod.

    For example, the No. 1 team plays the No. 16 seed in the first round. The winner advances to the second round to face the winner of the first-round game between the No. 8 and No. 9 seeds. Those four teams -- 1-16, 8-9 -- are considered the pod.

    Two groups of four are assigned to one of eight subregional sites, based on geography. So instead of eight teams from the East Regional, Raleigh might get a combination of four from the South and four from another region.

    Being a No. 1 seed doesn't guarantee the best location for the entire tournament, though. Oklahoma was the No. 1 in the East Regional in 2003. The Sooners advanced to the regional final to play Syracuse, the No. 3 seed. But the game was in Albany, N.Y., and the Orange, whose campus is 145 miles away, won the game 63-47.

    "Were we happy?" Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione asked. "Playing in Albany and in front of that sea of orange was tough, but we weren't going to use it as an excuse."

    Despite the experience, Castiglione, whose team started the 2003 tournament in Oklahoma City, called the pod system a good system.

    "It's achieving what it was intended to do," Castiglione said. "I think it has been a very good approach and necessary one."

    Coaches don't mind

    Finding opponents of the system is almost as impossible as a No. 16 beating a No. 1 seed. Even ACC rivals agree with Castiglione. Virginia coach Dave Leitao said the state of North Carolina has so many qualified NCAA sites -- Raleigh, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Charlotte have all hosted NCAA games since 2002 -- that it's almost impossible to negate an advantage for UNC or Duke.

    "Whether it's fair or not is not the question," Leitao said. "It just so happens that both in-state schools play at a high enough level to take advantage of it."

    George Mason coach Jim Larranaga, whose team plays in the Colonial Athletic Association, advanced to the 2005 Final Four as a No. 11 seed. The advantage of playing in Washington wasn't intentionally set up for the Patriots, as it is for the better seeded teams early on.

    "They didn't do it to help us," said Larranaga, whose team beat national powers Michigan State and UNC to get to the Washington regional. "I know that we had to earn our way."

    Larranaga called the benefit of playing closer to home a "tremendous advantage" for the top seeds, but he still wouldn't change the pod system.

    "It works better than the old system," Larranaga said. "No matter where the games are played, you want to give the fans an opportunity to go to the games and the only way to do that is if it's a reasonable distance."</div>
     
  5. mrbigbry

    mrbigbry New Member

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    LOL, no I understand all of that, I not sure you understand what I am trying to say and it is hard to explain without me phyically showing you a complete bracket sheet, but I will try to explain this in more detail. If you take a look at a complete bracket sheet, the four REGIONAL sites of Charlotte (East), Detroit (Midwest), Houston (South) and Phoenix (West) already know which brackets they will be hosting they just don't know who the teams are. Look at Charlotte for example, they are hosting the 4 winners of one Raleigh, one Denver and 2 Birmingham winners, but the two Birmingham winners play each other and the Raleigh and Denver winner play each other. If you look at the Detroit region, they are hosting the 4 winners consisting of one Raleigh, one Omaha, one Tampa and the other Omaha winner but the difference here is that the Raleigh plays one Omaha and Tampa plays the other Omaha, in other words the two Omaha's don't play each other first but in the Charlotte Regional the 2 Birmingham winners play each other first. That is the best I can explain it, they should make the regional pairing consistant with all four regions not 2 regions one way and 2 regions the other way which is what they are doing.
     
  6. cpawfan

    cpawfan Monsters do exist

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mrbigbry @ Mar 20 2008, 11:52 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>LOL, no I understand all of that, I not sure you understand what I am trying to say and it is hard to explain without me phyically showing you a complete bracket sheet, but I will try to explain this in more detail. If you take a look at a complete bracket sheet, the four REGIONAL sites of Charlotte (East), Detroit (Midwest), Houston (South) and Phoenix (West) already know which brackets they will be hosting they just don't know who the teams are. Look at Charlotte for example, they are hosting the 4 winners of one Raleigh, one Denver and 2 Birmingham winners, but the two Birmingham winners play each other and the Raleigh and Denver winner play each other. If you look at the Detroit region, they are hosting the 4 winners consisting of one Raleigh, one Omaha, one Tampa and the other Omaha winner but the difference here is that the Raleigh plays one Omaha and Tampa plays the other Omaha, in other words the two Omaha's don't play each other first but in the Charlotte Regional the 2 Birmingham winners play each other first. That is the best I can explain it, they should make the regional pairing consistant with all four regions not 2 regions one way and 2 regions the other way which is what they are doing.</div>

    I fully understand what you are talking about, however, there is zero point in doing what you are suggesting. The only way they can make all four regions consistent is to do away with the pods.
     
  7. mrbigbry

    mrbigbry New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (cpawfan @ Mar 20 2008, 11:18 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mrbigbry @ Mar 20 2008, 11:52 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>LOL, no I understand all of that, I not sure you understand what I am trying to say and it is hard to explain without me phyically showing you a complete bracket sheet, but I will try to explain this in more detail. If you take a look at a complete bracket sheet, the four REGIONAL sites of Charlotte (East), Detroit (Midwest), Houston (South) and Phoenix (West) already know which brackets they will be hosting they just don't know who the teams are. Look at Charlotte for example, they are hosting the 4 winners of one Raleigh, one Denver and 2 Birmingham winners, but the two Birmingham winners play each other and the Raleigh and Denver winner play each other. If you look at the Detroit region, they are hosting the 4 winners consisting of one Raleigh, one Omaha, one Tampa and the other Omaha winner but the difference here is that the Raleigh plays one Omaha and Tampa plays the other Omaha, in other words the two Omaha's don't play each other first but in the Charlotte Regional the 2 Birmingham winners play each other first. That is the best I can explain it, they should make the regional pairing consistant with all four regions not 2 regions one way and 2 regions the other way which is what they are doing.</div>

    I fully understand what you are talking about, however, there is zero point in doing what you are suggesting. The only way they can make all four regions consistent is to do away with the pods.
    </div>

    I knew someone would take advantage of the situation and Bob Huggins (coach of West Virginia) did it, why not, I would too. They showed a camera shot of him a couple of times out on the floor watching the Xavier and Purdue game because he knows he is facing the winner of that game. They don't have to do away with the pods, they just have to fix a minor flaw in the pods for next years games and I'll bet someone with authority noticed this and will take care of the matter. Just a FYI, for what is worth the winning coach(s) of the Butler and Tennessee game will also get to watch the Oklahoma vs Louisville game that immediatly follows their game, because they will get to play the winner of that game. Out of the 16 games today and tommorrow these are the only two games that have this opportunity, the other 14 games do not. Don't even think that the "pods" designed it that way, it is a flaw in the system, one that I'm sure they will fix next year.
     
  8. Big Frame

    Big Frame Well-Known Member

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    If you need to watch the game to "Scout" the other teams there is something wrong with your coaching staff.
     
  9. cpawfan

    cpawfan Monsters do exist

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mrbigbry @ Mar 22 2008, 07:41 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I knew someone would take advantage of the situation and Bob Huggins (coach of West Virginia) did it, why not, I would too. They showed a camera shot of him a couple of times out on the floor watching the Xavier and Purdue game because he knows he is facing the winner of that game. They don't have to do away with the pods, they just have to fix a minor flaw in the pods for next years games and I'll bet someone with authority noticed this and will take care of the matter. Just a FYI, for what is worth the winning coach(s) of the Butler and Tennessee game will also get to watch the Oklahoma vs Louisville game that immediatly follows their game, because they will get to play the winner of that game. Out of the 16 games today and tommorrow these are the only two games that have this opportunity, the other 14 games do not. Don't even think that the "pods" designed it that way, it is a flaw in the system, one that I'm sure they will fix next year.</div>

    It isn't a flaw at all. With all of the video available to coaching staffs today, there is zero advantage gained from this.

    By your theory, Texas A&M had an advantage over UCLA because their game on Thursday finished before the UCLA game started and Duke had an advantage over West Virginia.
     

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