The numbers failed; madness inevitably prevails

The madness prevailed. The numbers did not. Can we please disband the math department now? Yet, this process wasn’t a complete waste of 10 hours my professors will never get back. It reveals things about the tournament that transcend any one college basketball season.

How does a team like St. Peter’s, the 124th ranked DI team, beat Kentucky (fifth-ranked) and Murray State (deceivingly highly ranked at 21) back to back? The answer is kind of obvious and can serve as an explanation for any upset by a non-power conference team.

St. Peter’s played Fairfield, Quinnipiac and Monmouth in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament Monmouth, ranked 144th, is the best team St. Peter’s played in the week leading up to the NCAA tournament. Kentucky lost to Tennessee in the second round of the Southeastern Conference tournament after beating Vanderbilt by six the day before.

The difference between these schedules is obvious, and a six point loss to a 19-17 team you beat by 12 in the regular season is as good an indicator of burnout as it comes. The fact of the matter is that burnout from playing at the level necessary to be competitive in the SEC virtually eliminates any advantage Kentucky might enjoy from the fact that St. Peter’s has to play up a level for one game.

This phenomenon explains Iowa’s early exit even better than it does St. Peter’s continued success. Iowa won the Big 10 tournament, defeating Northwestern by almost 40 (I think Illinois only needs eight DI basketball teams) before knocking down fellow tournament competitors Rutgers and Indiana.

They lost to Richmond in the first round, who played four games in four days in the Atlantic 10 conference tournament.

Richmond played Rhode Island, VCU and Dayton before defeating Davidson by two in the conference championship. Despite all being good, and even great, programs in their own right, how many of them could’ve won the Big 10 tournament? Davidson (the best team Richmond faced in the A10 tournament) fell in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Michigan State, the seventh-best team in the Big 10.

Queue “you should be scared of picking the Missouri Valley champion over the third best team in this season’s best conference,” a great fallacy of our time, second only to free and fair elections. Every year we fail to take the conference tournaments for the equalizers they are.

Winning a basketball game is not about spending 12 times as much as your opponent. There’s a basketball court behind every blade of grass in this country, and a talented ball player to accompany each and every one of them. Whether we like it or not, the same things that can win a basketball game for Kentucky can win a basketball game for St. Peter’s.