Villanova was Doomed by Tournament Seeding

The No. 1 overall seed deserved better than this

NJ.com

On Saturday afternoon, the Villanova Wildcats were defeated by the Wisconsin Badgers in the NCAA Tournament’s Round of 32 by a score of 65–62. Villanova was the top overall seed in the tournament this year, but faced probably the toughest eighth seeded team of all-time. The Wildcats should have won this game, but were completely doomed from the get go by the tournament’s selection committee.

The point of the regular season in any sport is to determine match ups for the postseason. The team that has the best regular season is supposed to have the easiest road to the championship. This was not the case in college basketball this year. Villanova wasn’t the only misfire for the selection committee, but it certainly will be the one to get the most attention.

Wisconsin had a very good regular season, finishing second in the Big Ten conference at 25–9. They finished only two games back of the fourth seeded Purdue Boilermakers, who went 25–7. Why were they given an eight seed? Your guess is as good as mine.

Big Ten Network

BPI, the basketball power index, is a measure used to determine where teams should be seeded in the tournament. It takes regular season record and strength of schedule into account. Losses to bad teams and wins against good teams weigh heavily in a squad’s BPI ranking. Villanova is the best team in the country under this statistic.

Here is Wisconsin’s BPI Ranking compared to the other eight seeds in the tournament this year:

Wisconsin: 20th

Miami: 30th

Arkansas: 45th

Northwestern: 46th

Wisconsin is a top 20 team in BPI, ahead of teams like Arizona (2 seed), Florida State (3 seed), and Butler (4 seed). Questionable. Very questionable.

But hey, Villanova should have beaten them. They didn’t play well enough to deserve a win against a good team. However, Wisconsin wasn’t the end of the line of great teams the Wildcats would have had to go through. Their next matchup would have been against fourth seeded Florida. The Gators rank in the top ten in BPI respectively, and there is only one other team with that low of a seed in the top ten (West Virginia).

Let’s say Villanova gets to the Elite Eight against their likely opponent in the Duke Blue Devils. Duke was the highest ranking two seed in the entire tournament in terms of BPI — why does Nova have to play them before the Final Four? A question that I would love to hear the answer to.

Yahoo Sports

Villanova coach Jay Wright seemed very surprised that his team had to play such an experienced, talented team so early in the tournament. He said before the game, “This is the greatest 8 seed I’ve ever seen.” It’s hard to feel bad for the best team in the tournament losing in the second round, but not when they should have had that level of competition later in the month.

I feel that the tournament selection committee has some serious explaining to do here. Villanova had a terrific season following their national championship run, and were seemingly punished for it. These issues aren’t new, either. Watch Kentucky coach John Calipari rant about his team getting a four seed right after beating Texas A&M in the SEC tournament, who was ranked ahead of Calipari’s squad as a three seed:

This seems to me like a broken system that is doing a terrible job of seeding teams in the most important tournament of the year. The NCAA can chalk this up to their laundry list of issues in the way they run their organization. Villanova is just the latest example of seeding injustice.