Normally I like to start the McDonald’s All-American game preview by telling you how last year’s game was our first chance to see future pros and college basketball’s next generation of one-and-done stars. But you will have to forgive me if I pretend the 2012 event didn’t happen.

UCLA’s Shabazz Muhammad played in the event last year and led all scorers with 21 points. You know, the same Shabazz Muhammad who lied about his age all these years so he could be playing against younger competition to improve his draft stock.

Cameron Ridley of Texas played in the event last year and he looked like potentially one of the better incoming centers. And then he averaged four points a game for a dreadful Texas squad.

North Carolina’s Marcus Paige played in the event last year and had seven assists. For much of the season Paige’s ORtg was below 90, until a hot final month of the season finally gave Tar Heel fans hope for the future.

Kentucky’s Nerlens Noel played in this game last year. You know, the same Nerlens Noel who didn’t really develop an offensive game until late December. And Noel, despite missing most of the season with a knee injury, is still viewed by many as the least risky NBA draft choice this year.

During Robert Morris’ first round NIT upset of Kentucky, I thought Jimmy Dykes hit the nail on the head with the 2012 group of super-elite talent. He was mainly talking about the three Kentucky freshmen, but the same could be said for many in last year’s McDonald’s All-American game. “Archie Goodwin, Alex Poythress and Willie-Cauley Stein are still being projected as first round draft picks. I don’t see it. Those guys need another year or two of college basketball. There is a huge difference between being draftable and making an NBA roster. If you aren’t careful you find yourself playing in the D-league for a couple of years playing for the Maine Redclaws or the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, staying in hotel rooms with outside doors.”

Hmm, of all the things about staying in a cheap hotel room, the outside doors never struck me as that significant.

But the point is simple. With a few exceptions (Anthony Bennett, Marcus Smart) last year’s class didn’t quite live up to typical McDonald’s All-American game standards. But I am confident that this year’s class will be different. First, the top 2013 prospect Andrew Wiggins is better than anyone in last year’s class. I know this not only because of all the great scouting reports I have read about Wiggins, but also because of what he did on the basketball court against the 2012 class. As a junior in last year’s Nike Hoop Summit, Wiggins dominated. He scored 20 points for the international team, frequently beating his 2012 competition with athletic moves to the basket.

But this class is about more than just Wiggins. Indiana fans annoyed at Syracuse’s overwhelming size in the Sweet Sixteen will be happy to see a versatile Top 10 forward named Noah Vonleh in action. Vonleh will ensure that even if Cody Zeller declares for the draft, Indiana will still have plenty of front-court strength. Florida fans who wanted more close-game decision making this year will be pleased to see Top 10 PG Kasey Hill in action. Hill lacks the size of the Harrison twins (Andrew and Aaron), which might make him a multi-year star with the Gators.

Oh, and if you love or hate Kentucky, you must watch this game. On paper, Kentucky has the top recruiting class of all time. Randle, the Harrison twins, James Young, Dakari Johnson, and Marcus Lee give the Wildcats 6 of the top 20 players in this year’s class. (Sadly 4 of them are on the West team and 2 of them are on the East team. I was really hoping to see 5 future Kentucky players on the floor at the same time for the same squad.)

And if seeing future stars does not provide enough drama, Top 5 prospect Aaron Gordon will announce his college decision during the game. Even if we should probably burn the tape from the 2012 event, 2013 is a true glimpse at future glory.

It seems unlikely that Charles Barkely watches a single basketball game between November and February. And while Greg Anthony and Kenny Smith have their moments, both feel like NBA guys calling a college game. Both are complete professionals, but with Anthony calling Brooklyn Nets games this season, and Smith working Inside the NBA on TNT, neither is primarily focused on the college season.

That is why I was so excited when CBS hired Doug Gottlieb and planned to bring him in-studio starting in the Sweet Sixteen. While Gottlieb can rub a lot of people the wrong way by being extremely negative (think Billy Packer-lite), I can live with it. Because unlike the others, Gottlieb is passionate about college basketball. He follows it religiously from November to February, and he has an impeccable ability to recall college basketball trivia. Plus Gottlieb is not afraid to start and make an argument. In a room with Charles Barkley, Gottlieb’s ego is not too small to get lost.

Still, my initial impression was that four people is too many for a half-time show. At half-time of the Miami vs Marquette game, all four analysts rushed through their opinions, and I felt like I didn’t learn something from any of them. And throughout the course of the evening, Gottlieb was particularly bad. He felt like a kid who was trying to say too much to impress his new friends. On ESPN’s College Basketball Live, Gottlieb’s ability to drop random trivia made the show must-watch TV. But on a show like this, mentioning how Brandon Triche’s dad lost to Keith Smart’s Indiana team just seemed like too many words in too little space.

And Gottlieb seemed to have extremely poor chemistry with the others. He either didn’t react to what other folks said, or he reacted, but didn’t have enough time to make his point. Prior to the opening game, Greg Gumbel cut him off by laughing at him. It certainly wasn’t an auspicious debut.

Still, I think we saw at half-time of the Syracuse vs Indiana game that the four analysts all have something to offer. All four absolutely nailed key points about the Syracuse 12 point lead on Indiana.

Kenny Smith, “It isn’t so much about the zone, it is about Syracuse’s size. That is what is causing all those turnovers.”

Doug Gottlieb, “There isn’t anyone on Syracuse that Jordan Hulls can guard defensively, but Indiana needs him out there for his three point shooting.”

Greg Anthony, “The problem with the zone is that it makes someone else the point guard who isn’t used to being the point-guard.”

Charles Barkley, “As you see on that play right there, the Indiana players are just standing around. They have to make themselves available when Zeller has the ball at the top of the key.”

Ah, there is nothing like zone defense. Say what you will about Syracuse’s 2-3 zone, but everyone always has an opinion. On paper Indiana looked like the perfect zone busters. They had great versatile forwards to attack the top of the zone. They were great in transition which should have allowed Zeller to attack before the zone was even set. And they shot 40% on threes on the season, which meant that even if they settled for threes, that was still a good shot.

Unfortunately, that three point shooting wasn’t nearly as good as marketed. Realistically, most of that three point shooting came in a standard man-to-man offense. It came because Zeller drew double teams in the paint which led to wide open shooters. It came because Yogi Ferrell drove into the paint and collapsed the defense leading to open kickouts. Those same plays weren’t there against Syracuse. And when they were there, they collapsed quickly. As Kenny Smith noted, Indiana really wasn’t prepared for Syracuse’s size.

Most importantly, as Greg Anthony noted, Indiana had to depend on someone else to initiate the offense. Indiana flashed Cody Zeller, Christian Watford, and Victor Oladipo to the top of the free throw line. All three players seemed like plausible zone busters. But no one was comfortable enough passing and attacking the zone from that position.

A month ago, on the same Verizon Center floor where the Sweet Sixteen was held, a Georgetown team with Otto Porter at the top of the key shredded the Syracuse zone. And unable to create turnovers, Syracuse struggled scoring only 39 points in the game. At that point Syracuse hit rock bottom. An Elite Eight run seemed like a joke at that point.

But Cody Zeller, Christian Watford, and Victor Oladipo were no Otto Porter. And thus Indiana compiled 11 turnovers in the first 13 minutes of the game, lost the points off turnover battle 12-2 at the half, and built a double digit deficit that they could not overcome.

Georgetown dominated Syracuse this season because they had the right player to beat it. Indiana looked helpless against Syracuse. Georgetown lost to an up-and-down high flying Florida Gulf Coast team. But is there any doubt that Indiana would have beat Florida Gulf Coast by 20 points and scored 90 points in an explosive up-and-down game? In basketball, match-ups can be everything. And while it seemed on paper the Hoosiers were the right team to beat Syracuse, when it actually came down to personnel and size, the Hoosiers were the exact wrong team.

Final Note #1: The scary thing about being a super-athlete is that your athleticism can get you hurt. Baye Mousa Keita jumped up in the air to block a Zeller shot and Zeller ended up completely under-cutting him. There was no foul on Zeller, in fact Keita was the one who committed the foul, but Keita landed on the floor and his forehead was busted wide open. The scary thing is, I’ve seen this happen to at least two other Syracuse players this year. Sometimes players don’t realize how high they can leap.

Final Note #2: Sideline reporters are largely pointless, but Rachel Nichols gets credit for her questioning of Jim Boeheim. “Is your tone in the locker room going to be praising the team or criticizing what they did wrong?” On paper, this may seem silly, but it was a deceptively insightful question. Boeheim smiled, Verne Lundquist laughed, and Boeheim concluded that when you are leading, you should probably praise the team.

Ohio St. does it again

In the first half, Aaron Craft showed some of his elusiveness in taking the ball to the basket for a few key lay-ups. But it wasn’t necessarily good strategy. As TBS special announcer Jay Wright noted at half-time, you don’t want to challenge Mark Lyons to a game of street-ball. And with Craft taking it to the basket, Mark Lyons responded with a series of drives himself. As great a defender as Craft has been, with Craft in foul trouble, Lyons seemed un-guardable for much of the first half.

But here is the thing about the Buckeyes. People tend to think that because Ohio St. relies so much on DeShaun Thomas for scoring, that there are a bunch of scrubs at the other positions. But that isn’t true at all. Basically everyone in Ohio St.’s lineup is a former Top 100 recruit. These are athletic players. And Ohio St. came back and took the lead because Ohio St.’s wing players were relentless in taking the ball to the basket. Those drives resulted in a dominance of points-in-the-paint. And it resulted in Ohio St. going to the free throw line time and time again. With 3:30 left in the game, Ohio St. was an incredibly dominant 21 of 23 at the free throw line. While Arizona was missing wide-open threes, Ohio St.’s ability to get easier shots was the difference in the ball game.

Still, I’ve said before that I love when players go out at their best. And if Arizona senior Mark Lyons’ career had to end, I’m glad he got one last moment. His driving bucket (and one) to tie the game with 25 seconds left was vintage Lyons. He was the ultimate closer this year.

LaQuinton Ross nailed Ohio St.’s second buzzer-beating three of the tournament and the Buckeyes advanced, but Arizona has nothing to hang its head about in shame. And as the Arizona’s forwards begin to mature into dominant forces, Arizona will absolutely be back in the Sweet Sixteen or beyond next season.

Quick thoughts:

-Much like Ohio St., Marquette dominated Miami by getting more easy shots. But the news that Shane Larkin was sick and hadn’t slept the previous night, dampened some of the enthusiasm for the upset.

-Sadly most people had probably gone to bed by the time they showed him, but I hope people don’t forget the heartwarming story of La Salle guard Ramon Galloway’s father. His father is blind and still attends his son’s games in person. He either listens to a radio for the play-by-play or depends on a friend or relative to provide play-by-play for him. But he loves to attend in person for the thrill of the sound of the crowd and the sneakers on the floor. It is a heartwarming story and one of many for a La Salle team that probably didn’t get enough love for what they accomplished in this tournament. After VCU went First Four to Final Four, First Four to Sweet Sixteen seems rather pedestrian. But it is a feat that may not be accomplished anytime soon.

Expected Wins Field of 64

Once again I list the expected wins in the tournament according to the Pomeroy Rankings. Two of the teams with the Top 5 highest expectations fell Thursday.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the NCAA selection process. It does not require legislation to make it better. It does not require a tweak of some BCS formula. The people on the committee have the power to improve the process at any point. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees about what should be changed about the process. Here are four improvements I typically see mentioned:

1. Stop using the RPI as an organizational tool – Support 95%.

While I think almost everyone believes there are flaws using the RPI as an organizational tool (and I will point this year’s flaws below), one big issue we have not considered is what would replace the RPI. The problem is that there is not a consensus about how to rank teams. As of Monday, Middle Tennessee had a Pomeroy Ranking of 31. But Sagarin Predictor ranked Middle Tennessee 48th because Sagarin’s measure caps margin-of-victory. ESPN’s BPI which use a similar cap had the Blue Raiders at 46.

But the NCAA probably wouldn’t consider any of these measures when ranking teams because they all include margin-of-victory. And the NCAA has expressed that it does not want to encourage teams to run up the score. In college football, a sport where there is far less information and margin-of-victory is critical to accurately rank teams, the NCAA won’t use it. So in fact, we should expect that if the NCAA replaced the RPI with something, it would be a metric like Sagarin’s ELO Chess. As of Monday, ELO Chess had Middle Tennessee ranked 59th in the country. 

I believe that we should eliminate the RPI, because almost any of the established ranking systems would be an improvement. But replacing the RPI won’t completely eliminate this complaint. There will always be some ambiguity about how to measure quality wins.

2. Stop giving teams so much credit for close wins and penalizing them for close losses. – Support 25%.

I’m certain on Selection Sunday we will hear someone complain about how Florida is criminally under-seeded, and how New Mexico is criminally over-seeded. And Ken Pomeroy has expressed this the most eloquently when he has said the NCAA committee’s goal is supposed to be to pick and seed the “Best” teams.

But I think a lot of people view the mandate differently. I would argue the vast majority of college basketball experts believe teams should be selected and seeded based on what they have accomplished, not how impressive they were in victory. To put it bluntly, the question is “who did you beat” not “by how much?”

No one believes that Arizona should be given the Pac-12 title this year because they had the best season-long margin-of-victory numbers. No one believes you should take the co-Big East title away from Marquette because they won more close games than Louisville and Georgetown. You play to win the game. (Even Pomeroy has admitted that he enjoys following conference races even if they may not crown the “best” team.)

John Gasaway has argued for selecting teams based on accomplishment, and seeding teams based on quality (re: margin-of-victory.) And while I completely respect this viewpoint, I think this is far from the consensus. To win a national title (or to get to the Final Four for most teams), you have to over-achieve. No one should be favored to win 6 consecutive games (and few should be favored to win 4 consecutive games) in March. The odds are simply stacked against that. But I would argue that some teams over-achieve in the regular season, and some teams over-achieve in the post-season. Even if Marquette has over-achieved in Big East play relative to their ability, I think this should earn them an easier path in the NCAA tournament. To rank them as a 6-seed because their Pomeroy Ranking is 24^th, when they won the Big East regular season title and beat a number of quality teams along the way, seems wrong to me.

The logical counter-argument is that by ignoring margin-of-victory, we often punish good teams by giving them less favorable tournament draws. But at this point, I would say the popular support favors basing things on “who you beat”, even if that isn’t the perfect measure of who is best.

3. Stop using Non-Conference Strength-of-Schedule as a criteria. – Support 30%

Every year the committee tends to leave out one bubble team because that team has a weak non-conference schedule. And some people have argued that this is dumb since this has nothing to do with picking the “Best” teams for the field.

I tend to endorse this criteria because I want to see more marquee non-conference games. But I agree this is an imprecise tool to encourage non-conference scheduling. You can’t punish the most egregious teams (like Indiana) without destroying the integrity of the tournament. And many teams screw up in making their non-conference schedule. When Georgetown scheduled UCLA, Texas, and Tennessee this year, they had every reason to expect that they were putting together one of the tougher non-conference schedule in the country. But when all three of these teams under-achieved relative to preseason expectations (due mostly to suspensions and injuries), it seems silly to claim that Georgetown’s non-conference scheduling was weak.

There is a legitimate argument to be made for including this criteria in the process. When teams from non-elite conferences have weak non-conference schedules, they can be almost impossible to evaluate. This year St. Mary’s falls in that category. I have no doubt that after dominating the WCC that St. Mary’s has a solid team this year. But since their non-conference schedule didn’t include enough Top 100 teams, we have very little information with which to evaluate the Gaels.

(Note: We can look at their margin-of-victory in those non-conference cupcake games, but based on 1 and 2 above, I don’t see the NCAA moving in that direction. And if you aren’t emphasizing margin-of-victory, wins over teams ranked 101+ in the rankings are almost useless in evaluating teams.)

Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough information in St. Mary’s profile, and the committee is therefore very reluctant to put a team like St. Mary’s in the field. Now, this doesn’t explain why teams like Virginia or Iowa would be excluded based on this criteria, (since we have more information on these teams.) But I suspect there is an equity concern. You don’t just want to single out smaller conference teams for not scheduling tough enough, and so the committee punishes teams in all conferences, big or small.

This seems like quite a stretch to justify using NCSOS as a criteria. And there probably are better ways to encourage teams to create tougher schedules. But for now, I don’t see the popular support to abandon this criteria.

4. Include more small conference teams, exclude teams with losing conference records –Support – 45%

I don’t think there is anyone out there who is not impressed with Middle Tennessee’s 19-1 regular season record. I think we would all like to see great seasons rewarded. No one really wants to see some middling major conference team make the tournament.

But the middling major conference teams are really who generate the eyeballs and revenue for the NCAA. You know the point about how congress has a 7 percent approval rating overall, but most voters give 60% approval ratings to their own congressman? This is a bit of the dilemma with including more small conference teams. While we collectively, all might prefer Middle Tennessee to say Minnesota or Cincinnati, the folks in Minnesota and Cincinnati sure don’t feel that way. And I guarantee those schools bring in more revenue and have more clout in developing the NCAA selection process than the small schools.

I also think we need to think hard about what it means to have a great season. Middle Tennessee’s season was unquestionably special. But Minnesota’s was pretty special too. They beat Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan St., and all of those are great teams. Should Minnesota really be punished because the Big Ten happened to have one of the deepest leagues in the past 10 years? How would Minnesota have fared in Conference-USA this season, considering how they dominated Memphis on a neutral floor?

I think I’m in the camp that says that teams with losing conference records shouldn’t get at-large bids. But I don’t think we should over-state wins and losses when evaluating teams either. As noted earlier, by almost any ranking system other than Pomeroy, Middle Tennessee is at best a bubble team.

I also think that UConn’s NCAA title run from a few years ago says we shouldn’t overlook teams from great leagues that have mediocre records.

Remove the RPI as an Organizational Tool

What would happen if we used the consensus of the Computer Rankings instead of the RPI as an organizational tool? How would that change the definition of a Top 50 win this year?

I include both Sagarin measures in the table because they are independent evaluation systems. Denver is a little sketchy to include on this list, because only Kenpom.com really loves them, but I include them anyway. 

Now, what would happen if we used the computer rankings definition of a Top 50 win instead of the RPI rankings definition. It turns out that 80 teams would gain or lose a Top 50 victory. But the most impacted teams are as follows:

St. Louis and Xavier would each lose three Top 50 wins from their resume. And New Mexico, UNLV, Memphis and Charlotte would each lose two Top 50 wins from their resume.

Meanwhile, Indiana, Pittsburgh, Missouri, Minnesota, Kansas St., Iowa St., Colorado, Oklahoma, Providence and USC would each gain two Top 50 wins on their resume.

A lot of these teams are on the bubble, and I think they would be thrilled to have another Top 50 win. Would anybody be even remotely concerned about Minnesota’s late season swoon if they had two more Top 50 wins to their name? Wouldn’t Iowa St. be a more obvious pick with two more top 50 wins on their ledger? Using the RPI as an organizational tool has very real costs.

Of course, as stated at the top, the committee can make these adjustments on the fly, and notice that beating Baylor, Virginia, and Iowa is an accomplishment this year. But given the huge amount of information they have to process, I would not count on it. The time to replace the RPI as an organizational tool is now.