If you read the front page of D3hoops.com or read the Post Ups in the Men’s CCIW in the last week, you would have seen that the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin Presidents Council decided against the coach’s plan of adding a “play-in” game to the CCIW men’s basketball tournament. It is the latest decision in what has been a crazy process for the CCIW.
A few years ago, the CCIW didn’t even have a conference tournament to decide their champion – and thus who got the automatic qualifying spot in the NCAA Tournament. Who ever had the best record, or won the right thanks to a tie-breaker process, got the AQ. Then two years ago, a four-team tournament was added. Nothing wrong with that, many conferences have decided to not include everyone in the conference tournament. And there isn’t anything wrong with the 8-team format, except for the idea that was being proposed in the CCIW.
The idea presented to the Presidents Council was to have a four-team tournament, but that all eight teams would play in a game prior to decide which four teams would get the chance to play in the tournament. Yes, sounds like an 8-team tournament, but that play-in game would not be exempt from team’s schedules, as it normally is for any conference that has an 8-team tournament. Teams in the CCIW would have to count that game as part of their 25 games of the season, reducing the number of out-of-conference games by one. Doesn’t make much sense!
The ultimate reason the Presidents Council rejected the plan sounds like it was because it would have created two different formats for the men’s and women’s tournaments (women remain a four-team tournament and did no propose getting bigger). But maybe someone (like the coaches in the conference) saw the forest through the trees. Maybe they realized that unless everyone wanted an actual 8-team tournament, having a 4-team tournament with a special regular season finale game – seeding decided on the regular season results – to determine who gets to play in that 4-team tournament was a bit too much for anyone to BS their way around.
There are 39 AQ’s right now on the men’s side of the NCAA Tournament. Soon that number will be 40 or more. And while only one conference does not have a tournament to decide that AQ (UAA). And for those who do have tournaments, they make sense for those conferences and those programs. But, let’s not get crazy with those tournaments and plans. Stick to plans that make sense, not ones that punish and reward… all at the same time.