Big East Tourney Format

[SoCalwarrior]

Reading the McNamara chat on Cracked Sidewalks I was reminded that the Big East joins the Ivy League as the only conference where every school is not guaranteed a spot in the conference tourney.  McNamara said that the exclusion of the bottom four teams was unavoidable.  I won't rage about this until MU is in the bottom four (hopefully never), but is it truly unavoidable to exclude four schools from experiencing a taste of March Madness?

[rocky_warrior]

I don't quite get the unavoidable part either.  You'd have to add 4 more games, and get rid of byes for everyone.  That doesn't sound so unreasonable to me.

You would have to extend it by one day though, 'cuz 8 games on the first day would be too much.

[ChicosBailBonds]

Definitely not unavoidable, but it would lengthen the tournament and require play-in games....if you're going to have a tournament all of them should be invited.

[NYWarrior]

the big complaint about having all teams in the tourney comes from the coaches and ADs......folks are rightly worried about wearing the league out before the NCAA tourney - imagine playing 5 games in 5 days to do that?   Add in the notion that the Big East does not want to play its conference title game on Selection Sunday  -- precisely because of the extra rest day.  The ADs won't move that either -- it was discussed a couple of years ago.

So, the math just doesnt add up -- too many teams, too few days to play

[SoCalwarrior]

MU made the NCAA Tourney just once in my five, (I took a year off to be a bookie ) years at Marquette.  But I remember going to all those conference tourneys which was the highlight of most of those seasons.  It just doesn't seem right that the fans and players of four Big East schools are excluded from this. 

[COS98]

the first round elimination of the 4 bottom teams (almost like play-in games).  That brings excitement to many teams the last couple weeks of the season.  Last year it went down to the last game for many of the final pairings as well as who got to participate.  Many of the last 4-6 teams were playing do or die to get to the Big Apple.  Four games in 4 days is a bear as is....ask Syracuse.

[Big Papi]

the big complaint about having all teams in the tourney comes from the coaches and ADs......folks are rightly worried about wearing the league out before the NCAA tourney - imagine playing 5 games in 5 days to do that?   Add in the notion that the Big East does not want to play its conference title game on Selection Sunday  -- precisely because of the extra rest day.  The ADs won't move that either -- it was discussed a couple of years ago.

So, the math just doesnt add up -- too many teams, too few days to play

Why would you have to play 5 games in 5 days.  Now this is far from ideal but you could have the bottom 8 teams in play-in games with the right to go to the Big Apple.  The four higher seeds of the 8 would play home games on a Monday(i.e. home teams would be the 9 through 12 seeds).   The winners would than be seeded against teams 5 through 8 and play on Thursday with the winners playing the top 4 seeds on Friday.  Semifinals on Saturday and finals on Sunday.  This is kind of how some of the lessor conferences do their conference tournys. 
This way no matter how bad your season, everyone gets a shot at going to MSG.  The top 4 teams get a huge advantage but getting in essence 2 byes and teams 5-8 also get an advantage of playing less games with 1 bye.  You could also push all the games up a day so that the Championship is still on a Saturday night.  Teams would just have to schedule their last regular season games so that they end on a Thursday/Friday if you want a Saturday night championship game.  Again not ideal but everyone gets a shot and your top teams do get rewarded with additional rest.