Black Sunday: Committee Screws the MAC.
From "1 Chance 2 Dance"
By Ray Mernagh

Miami coach Charlie Coles was having difficulty accepting the NCAA tournament committee's decision that his Redhawks didn't deserve an invite to the party. In fact, he was pissed off.

"What it says is that the committee has never, EVER respected our league," Coles said the day after the brackets containing only automatic bid winner Ohio were announced. Coles was preaching to the choir, as columnists nationwide were opining about the injustice done to the MAC - a historically tough mid-major league. Dick Vitale even managed some of his high-pitched screams as he waved his arms and defended the MAC's right to have more than one team represented in the Big Dance. Not even Vitale's opinion seemed to matter to the selection committee.

The committee's job is always difficult, but this time there was the unmistakable stench of foul play. This time, the numbers and measurements that always predicted tournament inclusion lied. And nobody seemed to have an acceptable answer to the question: why?

Joe Gergen from Newsday in Long Island, New York, thought the injustice was worth a column. Gergin, or more likely an editor, cleverly titled it "They should call it MAC, the knifed." Gergen wrote that the MAC was getting squeezed unfairly, noting that regular season champ Miami, tournament finalist Buffalo, Kent State and Akron all finished in the top 55 of the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI.) He noted that Kent State in 2000 and Miami in 2005 were the highest rated teams in the RPI index not to get bids, honing in on a recent trend to keep at-large berths away from the MAC. But it was even worse than that. Miami had an RPI of 29, while Buffalo, who lost the automatic bid on a tip at the buzzer, was at a robust 32. They were the only teams among the top 41 that didn't make the field of sixty-four.

Committee chairman Bob Bowlsby went as far as admitting that at one time there were "five-to-six MAC teams under surveillance (was the committee looking for criminal activity?) I think the MAC carved each other up a bit in the records. When we compared the teams to those with similar resumes, we just felt there were other institutions that had better bodies of work."

Bodies of work? Seven MAC teams finished with 18 or more wins. The MAC was rated ninth among all conferences. The Missouri Valley was rated eighth and got three bids. Conference USA was rated tenth and got four bids. The conference rating was one reason why Western Michigan coach Steve Hawkins thought for sure the MAC would have multiple bids in 2004-05. "The commissioner told us we needed to concentrate on finishing in the top-ten of the conference ratings because the regular season champ has never been left out in a conference that finished top-ten," said Hawkins, "well we did that, yet we still got only one team."

Hawkins even recalled the exact place he was when he heard that Miami and Buffalo had been left out. "That's how deep it hit," says Hawkins, "I was on the bus with the team headed to Milwaukee to play Marquette in the NIT when Scotty (Kuykendall, the former WMU SID) told me. I couldn't believe it. It's a freaking moving target and it isn't fair. One year we're told this, another year we're told that, but it never seems to matter."

Hawkins felt especially bad for Miami's Charlie Coles, because he knew the pride Coles took in winning the regular season title. He also knew that Coles had a history of advancing when his teams got into the field.

"It wasn't right," said Hawkins, "Miami and Buffalo deserved to be in that tournament. They both could've won a game or two."

Buffalo coach Reggie Witherspoon anticipated the snub when on March 10th, mere days before Selection Sunday, word came out that the RPI ratings were flawed throughout the season. "The RPI seemed to always matter until it would benefit us," said Witherspoon, "now all of a sudden it isn't right. Give me a break."

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Ray Mernagh is the publisher of hoopwise.com.