It happened again! This past Wednesday, Holy Cross stunned the Patriot League and Lehigh by winning the Patriot League Championship and getting the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Because they were the ninth seed in the Patriot League tournament, won four road games, after not winning an away PL game all season, and ended the pre-tournament season with a 14-19 record, they will play in Dayton on Wednesday, March 16, at 6:40 PM against Southern to get to the 64-team tournament. Holy Cross became the lowest-seed to represent the League.
The fourth-seeded Lafayette Leopards won the tournament last year and, at that time, they were the lowest seed from the PL to win the conference title. For two straight years, regular season champion Bucknell did not represent the Patriot League in the NCAA tournament. It should be mentioned that the regular season champ does get an automatic bid to the NIT tournament.
So the question that needs to be asked – is it time to stop rewarding the conference champion with an automatic bid? The answer is not so simple and just leads to more questions:
- Does a conference want their best team (the regular season champ) to represent them in the NCAAs or do they want their “hottest” team (tournament champion) in the “dance”? The Patriot League will probably NEVER get both.
- Is it fair to the team that played exceptionally well all season to be beaten out by a team that played exceptionally well for 120-160 minutes over one week?
- If you favor the regular season champion to represent the league, must you eliminate the tournament all together or give every team one last hope to continue their season?
- Financially, do these tournaments just make economic sense? The Holy Cross vs. Lehigh championship crowd was the largest in PL history to see a championship. That cannot be bad for the institutions or the league.
- Which team deserves the NCAA and which deserves the NIT?
I love the tournaments. They create terrific basketball with great finishes. But, I am not sure, like many others, what the answers should be to the questions posed. I will leave you to ponder your responses. And I am well aware that, right now, you probably only care about your office pools.
Remember, these pools are for “amusement only”. That is not the case for conference tournaments as they exist right now. They are much, much more important! Should they be?
ABOVE THE EARS (SOME MUSINGS)
- Our local basketball season came to an end this week in Hamburg and in Southampton when the Parkland boys and the Bethlehem Catholic girls lost in the PIAA quarterfinals. It was a great year! And with all the talented underclassmen coming back next season, both the Lehigh Valley boys’ and girls’ team should, once again, provide plenty of excitement.
- The success of District XI wrestlers at the PIAA AAA state finals was even more astounding – seven champions, 10 finalists, 20 medalists, and Bethlehem Catholic and Nazareth finishing as the top two teams in the state. Andrew Gunning won Liberty’s first state championship title in 31 years and garnered Coach Jody Karam’s first individual championship in his 23-year career at Liberty. Kudos to all!!
- Oh, the internet – the NCAA brackets were tweeted out before CBS was able to get through the brackets on their Selection Show. And CBS pays how much to be the network that gets to announce the brackets?
- I had my first Friday night off in a long time this past week and went to see the Red Hot Chili Pipers (not a misspelling), a “bagrock” group made up of bagpipers and others. They were joined onstage for a number of songs by the pipe and drum members of the Liberty Grenadier Band. The young people were outstanding, thrilled to be performing and reminded me, once again, that there is more to high school athletics than just the teams. The bands and cheerleaders work just as hard!
- There was also a little bit of creativity by the “captain” of the Liberty pipers. When he had a chance to play by himself with the Chili Pipers, he took the opportunity to ask a fellow member to the high school prom. She accepted and it was an “aww” moment.
