Sweet 16 Question-Marq v WV?

I was just analyzing the bracket and I came up with a question: how can 2 conference mates meet as early as the Sweet 16? I thought that was an issue only if the BEast got 9 teams in, which they didn't this season. keeping apart teams that have already played in the current season for as long as possible is one of the best rules of the Tourney; with only 8 teams from a conference this wouldn't have to happen until the Elite 8...anyone have any insights??

TheHofferette said:

I was just analyzing the bracket and I came up with a question: how can 2 conference mates meet as early as the Sweet 16? I thought that was an issue only if the BEast got 9 teams in, which they didn't this season. keeping apart teams that have already played in the current season for as long as possible is one of the best rules of the Tourney; with only 8 teams from a conference this wouldn't have to happen until the Elite 8...anyone have any insights??

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big east has what, 16 teams. Let them play in the first round, who cares. If they are going to have that many teams in a one sport conf. the NCAA should not go out of there way to make sure IF they all win they will not meet each other until the final 8.

TheHofferette said:

I was just analyzing the bracket and I came up with a question: how can 2 conference mates meet as early as the Sweet 16? I thought that was an issue only if the BEast got 9 teams in, which they didn't this season. keeping apart teams that have already played in the current season for as long as possible is one of the best rules of the Tourney; with only 8 teams from a conference this wouldn't have to happen until the Elite 8...anyone have any insights??

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Technically they could keep them separated, but then you may start really skewing the desired seedings... Chairman Guerrero said, "The committee did everything that they could to separate those teams as much as possible. Once you get into the bracketing scenario, it can be pretty complicated. We tried to match up teams that only played once during the regular season, and in essence that's where we ended up."

Nova and ND (2 and 6, respectively in the South) are in the same situation as WVU and Marquette in the East... Nova and Marquette would have been more of an issue -- as they played eachother twice... MU and WVU played only once.

dlw4gophers said:

big east has what, 16 teams. Let them play in the first round, who cares. If they are going to have that many teams in a one sport conf. the NCAA should not go out of there way to make sure IF they all win they will not meet each other until the final 8.

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(their vs there) Why are you so concerned with the Big East? It's a flat out great basketball conference that has 50% of its teams in the tourney and another 5 also participating in the post season. 13/16 still playing isn't a bad percentage. Yes, the BEast has 16 teams - how many does the Big Ten have? Ten? No? Strange. (then again, some of the schools in the Big **EAST** aren't quite what I'd call east...).

I didn't even notice Nova v ND! so much for my "in-depth" analysis of the bracket anyway, I wonder why this year it happened this season, I don't recall same conference teams being set up to meet this early in past years. although I guess if the bracket plays out the way the Committee seeds it, the 2s should meet the 3s, not the 6s....hmm. thanks, Warrior for the Chairman's thoughts...I hadn't heard him say that!

As mentioned above, they valued keeping the seeds what they thought they should be over the "one team in the same group of 8" rule and ended up with SU #1, WVU #2, Nova #2, G'town #3, Pitt #3, and then Marquette and ND at #6 and Louisville at #9. At those seeds, you have six teams that had to be put in the same 8-team part of the regions & obviously you can't put six into four without some overlap. If the committee had made Marquette and ND 8 or 9 seeds where they would've fit in without anyone batting an eye, then it all could've worked out.