SEC Looking At Eliminating Basketball Divisions
by Year2 on May 21, 2011 10:38 AM EDT
in SEC Basketball
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PrintWe've already heard about some of Mike Slive's planned proposals for the SEC meetings, and here comes another one. He's going to present the concept of ditching the league's basketball divisions and expanding the conference season from 16 to 18 games.
The idea is not without merit. The main impetus appears to be the mess than the divisions can make of SEC Tournament seeding. This season presented a great example. Vanderbilt was ranked No. 18 with a 23-11 (9-7) record, but it had to play in the first round thanks to being third in the East division. Meanwhile Mississippi State finished second in the West, so it got a first round bye despite its 17-14 (9-7) record. Vandy even won the head-to-head matchup. There's no reason other than the divisional rules as to why the Commodores should have been playing while the Bulldogs didn't.
On top of that, Alabama missed the NCAA Tournament despite going 12-4 in conference play. Now, the Crimson Tide had some heinous non-conference losses that definitely contributed to the NIT bid. However, the Elephants also played in the much weaker division and had fewer chances to get big wins in the league.
The conference has discussed these measures without adopting them before, so there's no guarantee we'll have no divisions next year. At the least, we know it's going up for discussion again.
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Makes sense
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I'm not sure it would fix the second problem.
Re: Alabama not “getting a chance at big wins”.
There’s some nice “symmetry” right now. Home-and-home with everyone in your division, everyone else once (with rotating hosts). If you get rid of divisions, you’re now distributing 11 opponents amongst 18 games; you can’t play everyone twice. How do you decide who each team plays twice in an “equitable” manner?
Since the current divisions are geographically based, does it make sense for, say, Arkansas to play LSU only once, but South Carolina twice (completely hypothetical). Nope. So why get rid of the divisions?
Given the state of league, where there’s sometimes one team that is just plain uncompetitive with the rest of the league (like 09-10 LSU or Arkansas in 08-09), would this format not be potentially “unfair” to those teams that only get to play the bottom feeder once, compared to those who get to play them twice?
Hmm...
The league as a whole has been unfair to Eastern division teams for over five years now… Granted, I expect Tennessee to suck pretty badly after NCAArmageddon… but I sure wish we played LSU, Auburn, and Ole Miss twice a year.
Seriously, the only SEC East team that wouldn’t have likely won or came in second in the West last season would have been South Carolina… and I’m honestly not that sure South Carolina wouldn’t have managed a bye. Same story goes all the way back until 2004/05 with the crappy Eastern team varying between Carolina and UGA.
If they want to keep divisions, they need to equitably divide the schools who legitimately put effort into developing their basketball programs. The imbalance in the SEC is staggering, and outside of Arkansas(and to a much lesser extent Bama) I don’t see much evidence that western division fans even care.
The imbalance is relatively recent...
And, it’s dynamic. You say the current format is unfair, but under the proposed format, there’s no possible way for every current East team to play every current West team twice per season. That’s where the real “unfairness” will come from. Somethign like Florida getting to pound on Auburn twice, but Vanderbilt having to split games with a hopefully much improved (knock on wood) Arkansas squad. I’m just skeptical that the logistics will work out in an equitable way.
I could be on board with letting the team with the second best record in league getting the 2 seed in the tourney, regardless of division. That wouldn’t require breaking up the divisions at all, though. And saying things like “the East is just too tough” doesn’t really cut it (IMO), because, again, the talent differential only occurred relatively recently and likely isn’t permanent. The imbalance is evident, but not necessarily staggering. The top “half” of the West (‘Bama, MSU, OM and Ark) went 11-13 vs. East last season. For Arkansas’ part, nearly half of our total conference wins came against the East, against Tenner (sans Bruce Pearl), an Elite Eight Kentucky squad, and Vandy (on the road, no less).
Unless the conference goes to 22 conference games (and it won’t), there will always be a rotation. You just have to hope that the rotation will even itself out over time.
The best way to have it even itself out over a short period of time is to have a shorter rotation. I think that’s why the ending of divisions is linked to an 18-game schedule.
I think the argument for making the SEC Tournament seeding work more fairly is the better argument than the one about getting the hypothetical future Alabama more good wins. There’s almost always a complaint about how the seeding turns out every year, so ending the divisional format would eliminate that problem.
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The imbalance is neither relatively recent nor dynamic
The West won more interdivision games 3 of the first 4 years, and then has done it once since. The East has won more of them every year since 2000. That’s 11 years and running.
The only thing that’s happened since then is that the imbalance has become a chasm. Remember two years ago when Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Vandy combined to go 24-0 against the West? That’s embarrassing.
Honestly, I don’t know why you’re against this. This isn’t football, where one or two losses end postseason hopes. Even in a loss, playing a Top 25 team does more to help a team’s RPI than routing bad teams. That’s why Alabama missed the tournament — all those conference wins against the West only pulled their RPI up to 80, right below Iona, Valpo, and Drexel.
Well, actually, I'm pretty sure that Alabama's losses...
St. Peter’s, Providence, and Seton Hall (especially St. Peter’s) had a lot to do with them missing the tournament. They were also 4-2 against the East, so it would appear that those wins did little to improve Alabama’s RPI, as well. I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make.
I think I’ve made it pretty clear that removing divisions (at least under the current proposal) does nothing to addess the issues that they’re claiming to address. Geographic considerations are still going to more than likely mean that the all the current West teams play each other twice, and vice versa for the East.
Just add two more interdivision games on a rotating basis and change the rules so that the second best record gets the 2 seed in the SECT.
Just do what the Big 12 did when they still had 12
They scheduled it along their divisional lines but grouped everyone as one group for seeding purposes with only one regular season conference champion. Either that or wait a year and see what the Pac-12’s system will be like and if it works well take that.
sounds kind of like tie-breaker talk
they need to make it where multiple teams cant win Conference Championships… the fact USC has to share the SEC Baseball Championship with UF and Vandy after beating both teams, is ridiculous
Keep the divisions, but seed 1 through 12
and don’t give an automatic #2 to the second-best division winner. Again losing the baseball example, it’s kind of ridiculous that the East champ has a tougher second round matchup than the division runner-up and 3 seed. Hoover generally doesn’t affect the postseason much for baseball, but such a setup could be the difference between the NCAA and NIT for a team on the basketball bubble.
As for Alabama basketball, when your best non-conference win is over David Lipscomb, you better win the conference tourney if you want to go to the NCAA’s.
"They've just discovered a new use for sheep over there at Clemson... wool." - Lewis Grizzard
by GwinnettGamecock on May 22, 2011 3:27 PM EDT reply actions
But then why bother keeping divisions?
Just take the route the Big 12 did before it imploded. Have 1 division and a 16-game schedule, where you play teams in the same football division twice. Or copy the SEC women’s basketball schedule (they don’t have divisions either).
I mean really, several other conferences experimented with basketball divisions and dropped them. The only other ones left using them are the Sun Belt, Southern, MAC, and Southland. I can see where those conferences might care, in order to keep travel costs down. But that shouldn’t be a problem in the SEC, where the average attendance isn’t 2500.
Because winning the division has significance
Say Vandy had swept Florida this year. That would have put them at 11-5 and first in the East. Wouldn’t that have meant something to you, even with Bama at 12-4 in the West?
I don’t want to do anything that costs Carolina H and H with the five East teams. If you want to add a rotation that follows football and offers two crossover H and H opponents, I have no problem with that. That gives you 18, and preserves the division rivalries.
"They've just discovered a new use for sheep over there at Clemson... wool." - Lewis Grizzard
by GwinnettGamecock on May 22, 2011 9:43 PM EDT up reply actions
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