No Fortune For Below .500: Diggin' Deep for Dumb Pick With Pokes as Finalist

When will the Division I Committee and "impartial" media promoting leagues with which they have cozy business dealings realize a losing conference record probably should deny any team receiving an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament? In 27 of the last 32 years, the selection committee awarded at least one at-large berth to a squad with a sub-.500 mark in a top-caliber league. There was a high of three such clubs in 1991 when the committee pretty much simply wasted everyone's time.

A couple of self-absorbed ESPN experts projecting Oklahoma State to reach the Final Four flopped as much as OSU's Marcus Smart in doing their historical homework. In a "payback" pointing out a pitiful pick, magic-marker maven Digger Phelps, striving to secure soothsayer legend status via a run-on sentence before the network chose not to renew his contract, dug a grave for himself by "getting it done" bringing to the table a prediction the Cowboys (8-10 in Big 12 Conference) would become the first team with a losing league record advancing to the national championship game.

Since numbers never lie, the cold and hard facts are that Virginia '84 is the only team with a sub-.500 conference mark to reach the Final Four. Three years later, Louisiana State became the last at-large team with a losing league mark to reach a regional final.

Maryland (#5 in 1986 and #4 in 2004) earned the two best seeds for an at-large squad with a losing conference record. North Carolina State '05 is the only school in this sub.-500 category in the previous 12 years to advance to the Sweet 16. In the same span, a total of 13 mid-major regular-season champions earning at-large bids reached the Sweet 16 or beyond. This striking number of at-large mid-level success stories doesn't even include recent Final Four clubs such as Virginia Commonwealth '11 (fourth-place finisher in Atlantic 10) and Wichita State '13 (second in Missouri Valley). How much more evidence does the committee require to give the overachieving Belmonts and Green Bays of the world a closer look rather than issuing handouts to underachieving members of power alliances?

Iowa State '92 is the only school receiving an at-large bid despite losing all of its conference road games. The Cyclones, dropping their seven Big Eight road contests by an average margin of 14.4 points, compiled the worst league mark (5-9) among at-large teams until Florida State '98 (6-10 in ACC with three losses by more than 20 points).

A breakdown of conference recipients of basically unwarranted at-large bids include the ACC (15), Big Ten (seven), Big East (five), Big Eight/Big 12 (four), SEC (four) and Pacific-12 (one). After registering a 10-5 NCAA playoff mark from 1983 through 1987, teams in this suspect group went 19-31 since 1988. Oklahoma State, poking along with seven successive setbacks in one sorry stretch this season, joined the following list of underachieving power league losers given preferential treatment over more worthy mid-major conference members: