Bracket Buster or a Disaster for Mid-Majors?

So it’s Bracket Buster Saturday, as a group of mid-major conferences band together with ESPN to try to showcase teams that could make noise in the NCAA tournament, if only they can get in.

The format is an earnest one put forth by a group of conference commissioners, some with experience on the NCAA selection committee: Match contending mid-major teams against each other in late-season nonconference TV games and hope the recognition and the little bump in the RPI help.

The rather mixed result is 18 teams from seven conferences meeting in nine made-for-TV games, only five of which will be on ESPN or ESPN2, with the other four -- mostly of little appeal -- on pay-per-view.

“Each year there are teams on the outside looking in that feel they were unfairly treated and should be in the field,” said Missouri Valley Conference Commissioner Doug Elgin, a former member of the NCAA selection committee. “This at least gives us a chance to put a handful of teams on TV to get the exposure, and a real good byproduct of this concept is we’re scheduling games against people we should be playing.”

The ultimate problem, of course, is that the games we’d really like to see aren’t between mid-majors, but between mid-majors and middling teams from the major conferences -- not that the big boys would ever agree to it.

Just imagine this Bracket Buster game: Put a mid-major team up against one of those bubble teams that are barely .500 in the Big Ten, Atlantic Coast or Southeastern conferences and see what happens. (Just don’t expect troubled teams such as Alabama, Indiana or Michigan State to volunteer.)

Saturday’s marquee game for the inaugural Bracket Buster is Gonzaga against Tulsa at 9 p.m. on ESPN, which gets its appeal from the Bulldogs’ NCAA track record.

But Tulsa -- a preseason Top 25 team that has stumbled to a 14-8 record and No. 87 RPI -- can’t make a case for an at-large bid even with a victory in Spokane, Wash. And a loss would be a setback to Gonzaga (19-7, No. 46 RPI), which won’t earn much credit for winning either. (Still, the Bulldogs are in fairly good shape for an at-large berth even if they lose in the West Coast Conference tournament.)

The game that worked out closest to the spirit of the concept is Fresno State (19-5, No. 59 RPI) at 17th-ranked Creighton (23-3, No. 43 RPI.) at 1 p.m. on ESPN2.

Win, and Fresno will have a road victory over a top 25 team and a boost to its resume. Creighton, on the other hand, should be able to withstand a loss and still earn an at-large bid if needed, particularly because the Bluejays have a victory over Notre Dame.

Other games slated for ESPN2 are Wisconsin Milwaukee (21-5, No. 62 RPI) at Southern Illinois (18-5, No. 78 RPI), Hawaii (13-8, No. 98 RPI) at Kent State (18-5, No. 57 RPI) and Bowling Green (10-12, No. 163 RPI) at Illinois Chicago (16-7, No. 81 RPI).

The remaining field includes such teams as Illinois State (5-18) and Northern Iowa (8-15), which don’t need a showcase to get in. They need a miracle.

The only team that turned down the Bracket Buster format was Butler, the poster child for jilted mid-majors last season. The Bulldogs were left out of the NCAA field after a first-round loss in the Horizon League tournament despite a 25-5 record and a victory over Indiana.

Butler (19-4, No. 44 RPI) declined partly because the Bulldogs already had a game at Duke, where they proved they can lose to the Blue Devils by 20 in Cameron Indoor Stadium just like Wake Forest. (The Demon Deacons actually lost by 19.)

Coach Todd Lickliter and Athletic Director John Parry also were wary of turning the team’s attention from conference games just when they needed to be jockeying for seeding in the all-important Horizon League tournament. But that wasn’t all.

“The last thing, very bluntly, is our strong feeling and the feeling of our coach that these games really ought to be against middle-of-the-pack teams from a major conference,” Parry said.

“All this is doing is taking teams from our conferences, and knocking half out.”

That’s one concern, that the Bracket Buster games simply present an opportunity for the NCAA selection committee to eliminate the loser, even though there is a loser when Arizona and Kansas play too.

The other significant difficulty with the format is scheduling, because of the difficulty of picking the right teams in advance. (Teams and sites were selected before the season, with the actual pairings determined at midseason based on performance.)

But with so many in the field having disappointing seasons, the only chance of making the NCAA field is to win their conference tournament.

Not only does that make for disappointing programming, but for those teams, taking time out from their all-important conference season for a now-meaningless game is an inconvenience.

UC Santa Barbara is among the teams that looked like a contender for an at-large berth before the season began after making the NCAA tournament last season.

But the Gauchos are 13-10 overall, putting them out of at-large contention and desperate to hold onto the top seeding for the Big West Conference tournament.

Now they play 13-10 Detroit in a game that didn’t make ESPN or ESPN2.

“We went into it, obviously, with the idea we’d have a chance to play one of the top mid-major teams in the country and an opportunity for the national exposure of an ESPN game,” Coach Bob Williams said. “It didn’t work out that way.

“So would I like to have a league game Saturday and be able to give the team some time off? It would be awfully nice.... [But] we definitely don’t want to lose.”

ESPN, which signed up for the format after being approached by a group of conference commissioners, is committed for two more years.

No one is counting on a ratings bonanza.

“I think our expectations are pretty modest,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN’s director of college basketball programming. “I would stack how we do against how we normally do with games from these conferences. Probably a 0.2 or 0.3 on a national rating on ESPN. It’s nothing to crow about, but at the same time, it makes exceeding that benchmark pretty easy. If we turn a 0.2 into a 0.4, we have a 100% increase.”

The Western Athletic Conference is one of the winners as far as television goes.

“It’s easily the first time the WAC has had three nationally televised games in one day,” Commissioner Karl Benson said.

Benson, among the group that pitched the concept, will see the workings from both sides. He’s a member of the NCAA selection committee.

“I think the committee definitely will be tuned in Saturday,” Benson said.