What was supposed to be the crowning achievement of a magical season for the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team, the type season not seen all too often around Olean, instead turned into the equivalent of Clark Griswold getting a membership to the Jelly of the Month Club from Frank Shirley instead of his Christmas bonus.
If this isn’t the biggest bag over the head, punch in the face I ever got. God damn it.
St. Bonaventure enjoyed one of its finest seasons in a long time in 2015-16. They went 22-8 overall, including 14-4 in the always-competitive Atlantic 10. Bona finished in a three-way tie for first in the conference. They beat three Top 50 (Dayton and St. Joe’s twice) and had an RPI rating of 29 on Selection Sunday. Though they did not win a single game in the Atlantic 10 tournament, Bonaventure’s resume made them as close to a lock for the NCAA Tournament as you can be.
No team had ever won a share of its conference regular season crown and posted a top-30 RPI and been snubbed from the NCAA tournament. Bracket Matrix, a site that tracks all the projected NCAA tournament brackets, had Bonaventure in on 52 of 59 forecasts. Mainstream bracketologists like Joe Lunardi and Jerry Palm not only had them in, but had them in comfortably as 9 and 10 seeds.
When the brackets were revealed Sunday evening during CBS’ laborious, drown-out, torturous Selection Sunday special, St. Bonaventure was nowhere to be found. They had been snubbed, screwed, wronged, whatever adjective you want to use to describe their omission. What the selection committee did to St. Bonaventure was a disgrace. They got mistreated by this committee. What they did to that group of kids is borderline criminal. And that’s not a quote from me, that’s a direct quote from St. Joe’s head coach Phil Martelli, a man who knows a thing or two about the NCAA Tournament and saw his team, the Atlantic 10 tournament champions and an 8 seed in the Big Dance, lose TWICE to St. Bonaventure this year.
Joe Castiglione, the head of the NCAA’s selection committee, answered a question during a conference call last night about Bonaventure and why they weren’t included in the tournament. His reasoning was that Bonaventure’s non-conference strength of schedule was outside the top 150 and they had five losses to teams outside the tournament, as well as head-to-head losses to Syracuse and VCU, two teams that just snuck into the tournament.
These are all fair points, but if that’s the criteria the committee is using, Castiglione has some explaining to do for a few other teams that were included in the tournament. Bonaventure’s did not have a strong out-of-conference schedule, this is true. Their best non-conference win came against Ohio, a team with an RPI of 82. I can see that troubling the committee. But what about Temple, a team that earned the seed I thought Bonaventure would get, 10th in the South region? Temple’s best non-conference win came against Minnesota, a team with an RPI of 208. The Owls made the tournament comfortably.
Teams like Syracuse, Michigan, and Vanderbilt all got at-large bids despite having much lower RPI’s than Bonaventure. What’s the point of keeping track of RPI if it’s not going to be used to determine who’s in and out of the NCAA tournament? Sure, Syracuse beat Bonaventure back in November at the Carrier Dome, but the Cuse went just 9-10 in conference play. The ACC already had like 12 teams heading to the tournament. They really needed one more?
And then we get to Tulsa. Oh, where do we begin with Tula? The Golden Hurricane were the last team into the tournament, taking the final spot from the Bonnies, who were the first team out. So put those two teams resumes up against each other and I’m sure Tulsa’s is more impressive, right? Well Bonaventure has a better RPI than Tulsa (29 to 58) and the Bonnies posted a winning record against Top 50 teams, while Tulsa was below .500 against the Top 50. Tulsa finished fifth in its conference, (the AAC, which is a very similar conference to the A-10 in terms of quality) and lost twice in two weeks to lowly Memphis, including by 22 in the conference quarterfinals. The same Bracket Matrix that has Bonaventure in 52 of 59 brackets had Tulsa in a grand total of zero.
How the hell did Tulsa make this tournament?
There might be something fishy going on here. You see Tula’s athletic director is Derrick Gragg. He used to work at the University of Missouri. Guess who hired him for that job? Joe Castiglione, the very same man who is now the head of the NCAA selection committee. Hmm, how convenient. Turns out that Gragg and Castiglione are still very close. Was the selection of Tulsa a favor from Castiglione to his protégé at Tulsa? I guess that’s for the inner conspiracy theorist in you to decide.
Let’s be honest, though. We all know the real reason Bona got left out. It has nothing to do with their non-conference schedule. It has nothing to do with their killer loss at very bad LaSalle back in February or their A-10 quarterfinal loss to Davidson on Friday. It has everything to do with money.
The NCAA is one of the most corrupt non-profit organizations out there. Just like the NFL or FIFA, you can count on the NCAA doing some shady stuff in order to make a buck. We’ve all heard about their lack of compensation for their “student athletes.” The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is one of the biggest moneymakers for the NCAA. The NCAA earns nearly $900 million in revenue from March Madness every year. The reason for that is mainly TV, but also because of the draw of big-name schools with large alumni bases and huge endowments. There’s a reason why Michigan, Syracuse, Vanderbilt, and Tulsa were able to find their way into the tournament and St. Bona and Monmouth, two teams with far better resumes, were left out.
Tiny, private St. Bonaventure has an enrollment of about 2,000 students. Their endowment was $60 million in 2015. Let’s compare that to Tulsa. Located in the second-largest city in Oklahoma, Tulsa has about 4,300 students and an endowment of $1.037 billion. Tulsa ranked 92 among all U.S. and Canadian institutions in the market value of endowment assets. St. Bonaventure was 579th. Meanwhile, Michigan was 10th with an endowment over $9 billion, Vanderbilt was 23rd at $4.133 billion, and Syracuse was 80th at $1.166 billion. When reading those numbers, the lightbulb should go on as to why Bonaventure was left out of the NCAA tournament.
In the end, like so many things in life, the decision to keep Bonaventure out wasn’t made on an even playing field. It wasn’t about the best resume. It wasn’t about who had earned their way in. It was about economics. The NCAA chose to ignore the RPI ratings in 2016 in favor of out of conference schedules and other metrics that favored bigger schools from bigger conferences. Not only was St. Bonaventure disrespected, the Atlantic 10 was kind of jobbed as all three of their participants in the tournament were under seeded.
You can argue that Bonaventure and other smaller schools from smaller conferences should find a way to schedule tougher opponents. You’re right, but good luck finding the Big East or SEC team that wants to come ride the bus to Olean and play at the Reilly Center. You can’t even get those teams to come play at neutral sites like Buffalo or Rochester. Bonaventure is stuck in a catch-22. They need to schedule tougher opponents to improve their out-of-conference strength of schedule, but those games will all have to be on the road and they’ll all likely be losses. The Bonnies and other small-school teams will be just continuously running around the hamster wheel, getting nowhere.
You know what will happen when Bonaventure does make the case to the committee with a better out-of-conference schedule? Since there’s no set criteria for selection, the committee will decide to go with RPI or some other metric that will favor those large schools who will sell tickets and draw big numbers on TV. They change what they feel is the most criteria for selection each year. One year it’s RPI. The next it’s Top 50 wins. Next year, it’ll be non-conference strength of schedule. They do whatever suits them and their wallets best.
March Madness is one of my favorite things in the world. It truly is. How can you hate the idea of a full day of games beginning at Noon on a Thursday and Friday in mid-March? Take a day off from work, post up at a bar or on the couch and enjoy the fun. I’ve seen the tournament in person, both here in Buffalo and three hours away in Cleveland. That Cleveland trip is one of my favorite memories with my friends. Many of the details of that weekend can’t really be retold in this space.
But, you know what? Screw the NCAA tournament this year. Why should I care? If the system is rigged to keep some of the best teams out, why should I devote my time and attention to it, especially when it was my school that was wronged the most? We’re not even 24 hours from the brackets being revealed on Sunday night and I’m still sick to my stomach. I had a headache all evening because I was so mad. My face felt like the surface of the sun. I can’t look at a bracket, I can’t think about making plans for these games. It hurts too much. I’m sure I’ll come around because I’m a sucker, but the thought of getting excited for this year’s NCAA tournament makes me want to puke.
I just want to look the committee members straight in the eye and I want to tell them what cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, nake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed, sacks of money shit they are. Hallelujah. Holy shit.
Where’s the Tylenol?
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