Auburn’s season “back on top” is over, and Monday night the Tigers found out where 30 victories and and an SEC regular-season championship will get you: an elimination game on the home court of a team that lost nine more games than you did (coming into the NCAA tournament) and was seeded five spots lower that you.
Such is the nature of the women’s tournament that we still have to live with. The bracket is compromised from the start because of pre-determined sites. Schools do not earn home-court advantage because of their results in a year. They don’t “earn” home-court advantage at all. They buy it.
If their administration makes a successful bid, they have that advantage.
People used to bash the old system of having the top-16 seeds host because they said the early rounds were too predictable then. It was too hard for teams to win on others’ home courts. But a defense of that system is to look at a sport like the NFL, where you earn home-field advantage for the playoffs. Earn.
Earn, earn, earn, earn, earn, earn, earn.
That’s the key word here, in case you’re wondering: earn. Since the women’s tournament is not at a juncture yet where its early rounds can be neutral due to attendance issues, those first two rounds are going to be on teams’ home courts. At least under the old system, that meant what you did all season really mattered for more than just your seed. You were playing to earn the right to stay home.
It was something of great value that you had to EARN.
The old system won’t work because television needs these 16 sites picked in advance in order to get crews assigned, trucks in place and take care of all the many, many details (and financial obligations) that go with televising all 64 games.
Eight sites were tried – which meant more neutral games, but still not all – and the attendance dropped in those years, 2005-2008. So we went back to 16 predetermined sites, which was also the system used in 2003-2004. Before that, top four seeds hosted.
So … there’s a trade-off. The sport gets all the games on television, but it lives with situations like Monday’s.
This particular situation doesn’t have anything to do with if Rutgers got the right seed (7) or not … it did, based on the way the Scarlet Knights played this season.
The seed was not the problem. The issue was that because of predetermination, before even one game was played this season, Rutgers already had an advantage that previously had to be earned. All Rutgers had to do was get in the tournament to have that advantage.
Of course, that was enough of an adventure in and of itself for the Scarlet Knight this season. They had four players who’d been on the team in its 2007 Final Four season, three of them as starters. Yet, Rutgers seemed dominated by the issues it had with its incoming freshmen and their inexperience.
There’s really no logical reason there wasn’t a smoother transition period led by the veterans who had a ton of experience. But sometimes what seems logical doesn’t matter when the actuality of team/coach dynamics plays out in real time. For whatever reasons, the Scarlet Knights were a talented mess much of the season, and now they’ve cleaned up their act. Rutgers was finally starting to get it together this month, but that was too late to really bump up their seed.
Meanwhile, Auburn once was one of the best programs in women’s hoops, going to three consecutive Final Fours in 1988-90. But the program began to drift into the middle of the pack, and certainly in the last several years was more or less an afterthought. Not a terrible team, just not a real contender. When you thought of Auburn, it was more, “Remember when?”
Nell Fortner – who had bounced all over the place between the college game, the pro game, the Olympics, broadcasting – finally settled down at Auburn when Joe Ciampi retired. She took over in the 2004-2005 season and was able to bring in most of the best players in the state of Alabama, led by DeWanna Bonner and Whitney Boddie.
There are always twists and turns that any coach/program/fans will look back on and wonder, “What if?” Boddie, unfortunately, was academically ineligible for the second semester last season. With her, the Tigers might have gotten a better seed and stayed longer in the NCAA tournament.
As it was, the Tigers were a No. 11 and fell in the first round to No. 6 George Washington. So despite their 30 wins coming into this year’s NCAA tournament, this was not a postseason-tested group by any stretch. Nobody on the roster had played more than one NCAA tournament game.
Auburn had lost in the SEC tournament final to Vanderbilt, which came after the emotional high of beating Tennessee for a second time. So the Tigers certainly had shown some vulnerability coming into the NCAA tournament in Piscataway, N.J.
Then, in the second round, they hit Rutgers. Epiphanny Prince, Heather Zurich and Kia Vaughn took over. On this night, Rutgers was undoubtedly the better team and won 80-52.
You might look at the score and surmise that it shows that it made no difference where the game was played. And I would disagree. Rutgers might very well have won on a neutral court. The Scarlet Knights might even have won at Auburn. But in neither case do I think they would have blown the doors off the Tigers in the first 10 minutes of the game, essentially putting an end to things before they even started.
That’s where home-court advantage really makes a difference. People can say it shouldn’t, and that Auburn as a No. 2 should be able to win anywhere against any No. 7 seed. But this wasn’t just playing any road game. This was a group of seniors playing what they knew could be the last game of their careers – what, in fact, WAS the last game – on the home court of another team and that team’s loud and supportive fans.
To suggest that advantage for Rutgers was not a significant and game-changing part of this result is ignoring the obvious.
Auburn loses its senior core, and now the challenge for Fortner is to keep building on the energy and enthusiasm that this team generated.
It is the tough breaks of the game, though, that this season had to end in a perfect storm.
That is, perfectly awful for Auburn.
Wow. That’s an indictment. I’m just surprised because your analysis is usually more balanced. No references to all the times that Rutgers has been sent to other lower seeds’ home courts in previous tournaments? The “buying” part makes this all seem so seedy, but (a) doesn’t *someone* have to buy the rights under this system? and (b) won’t growing audiences for the game potentially produce mismatches where higher seeds play lower ones on their home courts no matter what? Until the earning system become viable, I’m not sure what is to be gained by pressing that point–as if every other team who has advanced to the S16 just from earning the location where they’ve played. And just one last thing: Rutgers has not always excelled on their home court, even though they have vocal fans, so it’s hard to say what part of Rutgers’ play could be attributed to home court advantages and what part could be attributed to coming together at the right time.
Here’s a compromise idea between earning home court advantage and needing to know sites in advance for TV: A month before the tournament, pick the top 8 teams to host. It’s not ideal, by any means, but it gives some advance notice for ESPN and gives teams a chance to earn home court advantage, albeit before the season is complete. That doesn’t guarantee those hosting teams a commensurate seed (or even a spot in the tournament); at the end of the season, the committee selects and seeds the teams independent of the hosting sites. So, you could still get a team hosting with a worse seed, but teams would have had the chance to earn hosting.
I think it would be easier to pick 8 teams early than 16, and I prefer the 8 site subregional concept personally, so I lean that way.
“So that all 64 games can be televised”
Yeah, but what quality of television are you getting?
For instance, unless you were an SDSU fan in either the DFW media market or South Dakota, you couldn’t watch SDSU dismantle TCU….
I mean, if TV is the reason for the years in advance determination of home-court advantage, then TV should do a far better job serving the fans than it has to date.
ESPN2 blacks out all its regional DirectTV/Dish feeds during NCAA games, ESPN360.com is available only in select areas, and there are no free video feeds on the NCAA website.
And getting the game on a pay-per-view basis is a total crapshoot.
So, in addition to the siting issues, there’s the issue of the total mess that ESPN is making of their -exclusive- broadcast rights.
They’re shafting higher seeds AND viewers!!
Sorry, but I’m not buying the pity party for Auburn. You talk about the bad start and how it wouldn’t have happened outside of the RAC, but Auburn was able to cut it to 10 in the second half with plenty of time remaining. Then Rutgers outscored them by 18 in the final 15 minutes or something like that. Blame that on the RAC or on Prince/Zurich/Vaughn or blame it on whatever you want, but the point is that the Tigers most certainly had their shot and it wasn’t completely over after the first few minutes. They could have realistically completed the comeback but they didn’t. As far as I’m concerned, that’s their fault, not the tournament’s for sending them to Piscataway. They didn’t come out ready to play and they didn’t do what they needed to do when they needed to do it like, say, Stanford did, when they absolutely demolished a SDSU team in San Diego that hadn’t lost on its home floor all season.
And, for what it’s worth, I think Rutgers is playing like a team that deserves a home court advantage. They might be a 7 seed but in reality, they’re probably more like a top 4 seed now that they’re finally figuring it out. With the roll they’re on and the way AU closed out the year after falling from the ranks of the unbeaten, I’m pretty sure Rutgers would’ve won that game no matter where it was played.
But the bigger issue here is the home court advantage being unfair. Yeah, it’s not ideal, but it’s the way it has to be. Like you said, 8 subregionals made attendance fall and it’s not logistically possible to go back to the old system and still keep all 64 games on TV. If we’re talking about growth of the game, which is the ultimate goal here, it either has to stay the way it is or we have to find a compromise like Sherri suggested.
Rich brings up a decent point, too. ESPN HAS to get better with their coverage. They claim that they have “whiparound coverage” for the non-participating team markets so that people can see “the best, most competitive action” or whatever, but that didn’t ring true last night when here in College Park, I was stuck with the Virginia/Cal game from start to finish, even while the Golden Bears were up double digits the entire second half. At the same time, Pitt/Gonzaga was going down to the wire in Seattle and the Zags just barely missed a chance to be the first 12 seed to reach the Sweet 16. Did I get one cut to that action? Did I even get one in-game update? Nope.
Amen, Rich!
For another example, Auburn got shafted by the predetermined sites system, while I — an Auburn fan — saw about 15 seconds of the game. If they had decided in March to play at Auburn and ESPN couldn’t show up, I’d have been no worse off, and Auburn would’ve been a lot better off. Auburn fans who live in AL would’ve seen the game because a regional broadcaster would’ve picked it up. Heck, I might even see the game under this scenario, if the enterprising regional broadcaster offered it for a price on the internet.
Heck, even Kim Mulkey couldn’t watch SDSU/TCU…and she was just down the street from the arena!
LUBBOCK — As much as she enjoys watching basketball games on television, Baylor coach Kim Mulkey didn’t want to take in another Lady Bears game on the tube.
Mulkey rejoined her team Monday at practice after being released from the hospital following what doctors believe what a reaction to medication she was taking after kidney stone surgery. She plans to coach the second-seeded Lady Bears against seventh-seeded South Dakota State today, “unless something unforeseen happens again,” she said.
After checking in to Lubbock’s University Medical Center Sunday morning, Mulkey was forced to watch Baylor’s 87-82 overtime victory over UT-San Antonio on TV from her hospital room. That task proved gut-wrenching enough for the coach, but what would have been even more agonizing would have been not watching.
Prior to the game, Mulkey was worried that ESPN2 wouldn’t show the Baylor-UTSA game, because the network was showing LSU against Wisconsin-Green Bay instead of the other Lubbock matchup, TCU versus South Dakota State.
“I was a nervous wreck that I wasn’t going to pick the game up, and then they switched over, and I watched it,” Mulkey said. “I was very proud. It was a very emotional day yesterday for our basketball team and our coaches, and I thought San Antonio played very, very well. For us to hang in there and win the basketball game doesn’t surprise me because we’ve been through a lot this year off the floor, and we seem to have found ways to win basketball games.” …
http://www.wacotrib.com/sports/content/sports/college/2009/03/24/03242009wacbuwomen.html?imw=Y
If ESPN can cope with the men’s NIT being at un-predetermined sites, why not the women’s NCAA?
A few follow-ups:
1) San Francisco made the Sweet 16 as a 12 in 1996. I was going off the broadcast of Pitt/Gonzaga last night which said the Zags were trying to be the first 12 in the Sweet 16 ever.
2) After having gone to Utah/Maryland tonight, I can say that that kind of atmosphere is GOOD for women’s college basketball. Yeah, it’s on Maryland’s home court, but it’s simply unbelievable to see how popular the game has become here and how in to it everyone gets. I would argue that the alumni and other non-student fans who go to women’s basketball games get in to it more than the alumni and non-student fans who go to men’s games.
It’s certainly a much better and healthier atmosphere for the game than, say, Baylor and South Dakota State in front of a United Spirit Arena that’s maybe 1/5 full. And that’s with one of the teams being sort-of local.
On the other hand, I’m this close to saying “screw it, let’s play it on neutral courts, attendance and growth be damned” because I’m getting tired of hearing people complaining about it and mocking it. The latest culprit: Ryan Burr on College Gameday on ESPN.
3) Credit to ESPN for improving coverage tonight. They switched me from LSU/Louisville to Baylor/SDSU after the Cardinals got up by double digits and the Bears and Jackrabbits were tied late. They also did a live look in of Iowa State/Ball State at one point. And to answer Scamp’s inquiry, there’s a huge difference between doing 16 or 8 games a day and 64 in three weeks (NCAA tourney) and doing one or two games a day (NIT)
How poorly was the SDSU-Baylor game officiated?? There were at least a dozen abvious calls that went in Baylor’s favor and a lot of no calls that SDSU didn’t get the beifit of. SDSU should have won by at least 10 pts. if the officiating was even, as it was it came down to a last second shot. The BEST team was not allowed to win! Is this because of home court??, or almost home court? I don’t know, but even the anouncers kept talking about how the officials weren’t calling the game correctly.
I feel for the SDSU players and coaching staff. The team outplayed Baylor for over 39 minutes. Congratulations to them on a season that ended too soon.
I believe Coach Mulky used the injury substitution to her advantage, rather than out of actual need. I watched the Baylor bench as Rachel Allison’s substitute sank the 2 free throws. Rachel Allison jumped up and down reopeadedly on her “hurt” knee.
Yes, Rutgers benefited from home court, but I think this article is overstating it. The crowd at the RAC was less than 4,000, and yes it was partisan and loud at times, but I agree that a #2 seed should be able to win in an environment like that.
A few years ago I saw New Mexico win tournament games at The Pit, their home court, a close-in arena packed with more than 8,000 rabid Lobos fans. (They made it to the Sweet 16.) Now THAT’S an intimidating environment, and the rival teams seems rattled by it.
(And speaking of New Mexico, it was chosen to first & second round tourney games this season, but their team didn’t make the NCAA cut. So while a team’s home court may be picked to host, that doesn’t guarantee the team will make it in.)
Rutgers definitely was up and down this season. Yes, they have several players from the 2007 season, but they have only two seniors this year and one of them (Heather Zurich), though a starter, is not usually a big scorer (she had a great game against Auburn, however).
What Rutgers had in 2007 and last year was two great seniors, Essence Carson and Matee Ajavon, who ended up being two of the top players in the WNBA draft. Rutgers is a much different team this year without them.