Women Didn't Make It

[Doc]

The brackets are up and it looks like we get the winner of St Joe's versus Coppin State.  It says the location is TBD which worries me.  Most of the teams with byes are listed as the second-round host; only two schools aren't and of course we are one of them.  This makes me think we would/could open on the road. . .  the screwing of USF athletics has no bounds.

In any case, good luck to our girls.  St. Joe's BARELY escaped with a win against the Lady Billikens here in Saint Louis.  And SLU only won four conference games in the regular season.  Should we face St. Joes, I would expect to be heavily favored.  Don't know much about Coppin State's team.

[Guest Sprtsfn627]

The reason USF was left out is clear.  We lost to DePaul (whose coach Doug Bruno still holds much power in these tight races) and despite the nonsense these committees spew about not counting up bids from each conference, they were not about to give the Big East nine bids.  Stupid arithmetic.  A ninth team would have forced two Big East schools into the same "half-region" and the committee doesn't like that.

This is EXACTLY what Joe is talking about when he says the Big East is too big.  Not only is the conference very competitive in both men's and women's basketball, but the conference is huge, and regardless of the size, will only receive so many bids.  The committee simply will not give more than 8 bids.  The problem is, 8 bids in a 16 team conference is only 50%, which isn't always enough.

Personally, the way I see it, we were the women's version of Syracuse.  Of course, had we won a few more games and not been squarely on the bubble, we wouldn't be having this talk.  But I do feel we got screwed.

[Guest AstroBull]

No, because we recieved a bye in the first round, we will play them at the Sun Dome.  At least thats what I think.

[Brad]

Judy Southard, NCAA Committee Chair:

Q. I have a similar question about the University of South Florida. When you talk about the differentiating factors and the nine teams that were left on the board when you filled that last spot, was the University of South Florida one of those teams, and can you talk about what went into them not making the tournament?

JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, I don't want to sound like I'm repeating myself, but in some regards, the choices that we had in front of us, the teams were so closely so closely mirrored one another that we just really dealt with a really, really tough decision. There were some factors that we felt like we could sort out that, if you will, kind of began to slide South Florida out of the picture.

And I want to say this. They were, again, they were one of the teams that was on the board all the way down to the very last ballot. But they did go 2 10 against Top 50 teams, and we had several teams that went in ahead of them that did considerably better than that, and they went 5 11 against the Top 100. And just those two factors along whatever small differentiating factors that our various committee members may have picked out probably was what made it difficult for our committee to feel like they were one of the ones deserving for the bracket.

NCAASports.com

[crambone]

It's a shame, but I can see why we got left out as well.

=/

[JoeB]

5-11 versus Top 100 isn't tourney worthy in my book.  Hopefully we get a home NIT game though.