Sunday, February 12, 2017

2/13 TOP 16 BREAKDOWN

Something horrific just happened when I tried to bracket my S-Curve.  Here's how the teams were initially placed, based on geographic preference:

EAST 31
1) Villanova  (1)
2) Louisville (6)
3) Kentucky (11)
4) West Virginia (13)

WEST 40
1) Gonzaga (4)
2) Oregon (8)
3) Virginia (12)
4) Butler (16)

SOUTH 32
1) Baylor (3)
2) North Carolina (5)
3) Florida (10)
4) UCLA (14)

MIDWEST 33
1) Kansas (2)
2) Florida St (7)
3) Arizona (9)
4) Duke (15)

Obviously there's the horrific west regional.  What's the problem?
1) The 2 line has 3 ACC teams and Oregon.
2) The 3 line has Virginia.  Therefore, we already know Virginia has to be away from the ACC teams, and must share a regional with Oregon.
3) However, Virginia and Oregon are both the worst teams on their seed line.  Therefore, we need to pair them with a strong 1 seed.
4) However, geographic preference says Oregon has to be in the west region.  To do anything else would be to screw over an ACC team.

So I had to choice but to move Oregon and Virginia to another region and screw over an ACC team or three.  However, I can't place them in the midwest with Kansas.  See, West Virginia is the #13 team and can't be in that region....#14 UCLA conflicts with Oregon....which would leave either #15 or #16.  That means the midwest bracket would automatically be too weak, with no way to fix it.

In the end, I had to place the Oregon/Virginia duo in the East with Villanova.  Placing them in the south with Baylor wouldn't fix the balance issue since Baylor is #3 overall - I needed to pair this duo with Villanova to avoid imbalance.

This left the following when everyone else got placed:

EAST 34
1) Villanova (1)
2) Oregon (8)
3) Virginia (12)
4) West Virginia (13)

WEST 36
1) Gonzaga (4)
2) Florida St (7)
3) Arizona (9)
4) Butler (16)

SOUTH 33
1) Baylor (3)
2) North Carolina (5)
3) Florida (10)
4) Duke (15)

MIDWEST 33
1) Kansas (2)
2) Louisville (6)
3) Kentucky (11)
4) UCLA (14)

The end result:
1) Oregon, despite being a higher seed than Arizona, gets sent to the east region...while Arizona gets to play in the west.
2) Florida St gets sent all the way across the country to the west regional
3) Virginia, despite being the 4th best ACC team, gets the cushion of the east regional

This is a good example of a clusterbleep forced by all the ACC teams at the top.  I bet the selection committee tries to break them up across seed lines, just to avoid situations like these.

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