Some interesting tidbits from an Athletic article earlier this week interviewing the chairman of the selection committee, Charles McClelland. It's the first time I've ever seen someone talk about Quad 1A and 1B games. Seems like that notion would help us if Florida ends the season on the wrong side of the 30th NET ranking, for example. Seems like he is at least aware of some of the nuances that we discuss here, for better for worse.
Big 12 gaming the system? Importance of road wins? Those sliding quads? Commitee chair Charles McClelland answers our questions.
theathletic.com
Some excerpts from the article:
We caught up with the chairman this week to discuss some pertinent issues (and nominate ourselves for future committee membership … still waiting to hear back on that one).
How about the notion that certain leagues, like the Big 12,
have gamed the system by playing soft nonconference schedules and then simply racking up quality wins against one another? Iowa State, for example, played the No. 323 nonconference schedule per the NET, yet had five Quad 1 wins before the reveal. (The Cyclones added another Saturday against Texas Tech before losing to Houston on Monday.) They were awarded an early No. 3 seed by the committee, 12th overall.
“We spend a significant amount of time discussing this exact topic,” McClelland said. “It’s always good for the game to play good nonconference schedules. If teams are going to play a weak nonconference schedule, it makes it critically important for them to do well in their league games. Even in the loss at Houston, it was a hard-fought game, and I think the nation could see, even if they watched just that one game and not the entirety of the season like we do, that Iowa State is a very good team and certainly deserving of the seed we gave them.
“But if you do play a weak nonconference schedule and then you get into the league and don’t win those games against the best teams and are just kind of floating there at let’s say 9-9 … just because you have a tremendous amount of wins doesn’t necessarily guarantee you a way into the tournament.”
This week provided more evidence that winning on the road is extremely difficult. McClelland said the stats provided to the committee show that top-10 teams are winning on the road against unranked teams at about half the rate they have in the previous several years. So will road wins be extra valuable on Selection Sunday?
“It’s a red flag when almost all of your quality wins come at home,” he said. “So it’s paramount that teams prove they can win away from their home court.
“But we look at several metrics. We have tons and tons of data. Who you play, where you played and what the outcome was will always be the fundamental core of what we do.”
The quad system always creates confusion and controversy. A team can get a Quad 1 win by beating the 75th-best team (on the road) or by beating the No. 1 team.
McClelland said the committee puts all results of those in context; team sheets are set up so that there are both Quad 1A-1B and Quad 2A-2B wins that separate truly high-end victories from more pedestrian ones.
“It’s not just a matter of counting Quad 1s and Quad 2s,” McClelland said. “There’s no such thing as a bad win because winning is winning especially in those first two quadrants, but they are not all created equally. Having a Quad 1 win against a team that’s not seriously considered for a spot in the tournament is still a good win, but it’s not as good as a road win over a team we have on top four lines.”
Or how about those wins that once looked good but now aren’t so much, or vice versa? We presented McClelland the example of UCLA. The Bruins were as low as No. 209 in the NET after a brutal start, but a recent hot streak has them near the top 100, meaning what was once a Quad 3 win for somebody early in the season could be a Quad 2 at the end of it.
“There could be any number of reasons why a team is struggling — injuries, transfers, the coach not being there — so we have to take the entirety of the season into consideration,” McClelland said. “We also do that with the wins and the quads. We know this was a Quad 3 in November, but because UCLA has increased its overall level of competitiveness, it’s now a Quad 2 win. We take all that into consideration, absolutely.”