All Teams Not Equal in NCAA Tournament

The myth of the NCAA basketball tournament is that all 64 teams have a chance when the ball goes up in the opening round. The reality is something else again.

Yes, there are upsets. Richmond and Rhode Island in 1988 are Southwest Missouri State and Austin Peay in 1987, Cleveland State and Arkansas-Little Rock in 1986. But there is little doubt that when the NCAA Tournament Committee sets up the field, schools from the rich and powerful conferences are put in the best position to advance, and to win.

Consider this year’s draw: The 16 bottom-seeded teams all come from conferences that received only one bid--an automatic one--into the field. Only two schools from a one-bid conference, Loyola Marymount and Xavier, were seeded higher than 13th. Loyola, with the nation’s highest-scoring offense and longest winning streak, was seeded 10th in the West; Xavier with a 26-3 mark, was No. 11 in the Midwest.

“There is no question that teams like ours are caught in a Catch-22 situation,” said North Carolina A&T; Coach Don Corbett. “We can’t get a higher seed because we’ve never won in the NCAA. But it’s very hard for us to win because when you’re a low seed, you play a very high seed, a very tough team.”

Given that A&T; plays in a weak league and has an 0-7 record in the NCAA tournament, its spot as a No. 14 seed in the East can be justified, in spite of a 26-2 regular season record. But other teams from non-name leagues that have won games in the tournament have not been rewarded with improved future seedings.

Take Richmond, for example. The Spiders come out of the Colonial Athletic Assn., a league few people outside of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina know anything about. And yet, in the 1980s, the CAA has produced teams like James Madison, which beat Georgetown one year and Ohio State the next; Navy, which beat LSU in 1985 and reached the final eight in 1986, and Richmond, which beat Auburn in 1984 and now has beaten Indiana and Georgia Tech this year.

In 1986, when it finished second to the 30-5 Navy team, Richmond became the first CAA team to receive an at-large bid to the tournament. It even received a No. 11 seed, losing a tough first-round game to sixth-seeded St. Joseph’s.

“I thought then that we had made a breakthrough because of what the league had accomplished,” Coach Dick Tarrant said. “I was really surprised when we were seeded so low this year.”

This year, Richmond was 24-6 in the regular season. It won at Georgia Tech and at Arizona State (early when ASU was playing well) and played North Carolina to the wire. It also beat teams National Invitational Tournament teams like Virginia Commonwealth and Old Dominion. And yet, the Spiders were seeded 13th.

“Strength of schedule has become really important the last few years,” said ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan, who was on the basketball committee for six years. “More and more the committee looks at who you’ve played as much as anything.”

That was done to discourage teams from padding their schedules with patsies to get 20 wins. But the trend may have gone too far. Richmond certainly played a respectable schedule. And yet, in spite of its record, it was seeded well below teams like Maryland (No. 7); Georgetown (No. 8); Louisiana State (No. 9) and St. John’s (No. 11). All four had mediocre records but had beaten some strong teams and, apparently just as important, had lost to strong teams.

If you play in a big-name league, you will play big-name teams. Even if you lose to those teams--St. John’s lost eight of its last 11 pre-tournament games--you still will be seeded higher than the schools from the smaller conferences.

And yet, for several years now, schools from smaller conference have proven they merit more consideration. This year there is more proof. Murray State beat North Carolina State and scared Kansas to death; Richmond pulled its upset and Rhode Island beat Missouri and Syracuse.

The Rams play in a middle-size league, the Atlantic Ten. They were 26-6, three of their losses to top-ranked Temple. And yet, only four at large-schools were seeded lower than they were.

But Rhode Island has succeeded. Richmond has done it. Murray State has done it. Southern, the 15th-seed in the Southeast, played second-seeded Kentucky almost even for 30 minutes.

But it seems unlikely that such performances will have that much influence on the committee in future years. One reason is television.

CBS pays the NCAA $55.1 million a year for the right to televise and run the tournament. It is clearly in the network’s best interest to have the marquee teams and the more visible coaches and players. It doesn’t help ratings to have Murray State knocking N.C. State and Jim Valvano out of the tournament; Richmond eliminating Indiana and Bob Knight or Rhode Island sending Derrick Chievious and Missouri packing.

The members of the selection committee know the network would prefer attractive matchups of colorful coaches and players. The Southerns, North Carolina A&Ts; and Murray States of the world just don’t fit that profile. As far as the NCAA and the network are concerned, the sooner they are home watching on TV rather than playing on TV, the better.

And yet, when a new team does emerge, it makes for a terrific story. Over the weekend, CBS spent a lot of time talking about Rhode Island and its star player, Tom Garrick, whose blind father comes to all URI’s games, and has his other sons sitting next to him describing the action down on the court.

Still, it is a steep ladder the small schools have to climb.