Nice twisted reasoning from ESPN Dook TV analyst Jay Bilas this morning on ESPN College GameDay this morning in the #1 seed debate.
Bilas opines that Duke is a #1 seed over UVA because Duke beat Virginia head-to-head. Which is a fair observation, though the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee doesn’t examine resumes on a head-to-head basis.
But, yeah, Duke did beat the Cavs head-to-head.
So then Bilas goes into how Wisconsin is a one seed even if the Badgers were to lose in the Big 10 Tournament to Maryland.
A theoretical Maryland win would give the Terps a season sweep over Wisconsin. Fellow Dookie Jay Williams pointed this out to Bilas, and asked Bilas if he’d still have Wisconsin on the one line with two losses to Maryland.
Bilas reiterated that he would, and defended the opinion, saying some teams are bad matchups, bringing up how Duke had lost twice to Notre Dame this season, and Duke is still a #1.
(In his mind, anyway.)
So let’s go with the tortured logic from Bilas here: Duke is ahead of Virginia because Duke beat Virginia head to head. Duke can lose twice to Notre Dame, a team Virginia beat in their only head-to-head matchup, and Virginia can go 3-0 against NC State and Miami, against whom Duke was 1-2 this year, because those are bad matchups for Duke.
Wisconsin can lose top players and lose to lowly Rutgers (a team Virginia held to 26 points in a November win), but as Bilas blathered on and on this morning, Virginia doesn’t look the same since Justin Anderson went down to injury. (Virginia went 8-1 without Anderson in the lineup, and won one of those games with Anderson and starting point guard London Perrantes on the bench for the last 15 minutes.)
Other teams get bad matchups and excuses for missing players. Virginia, being Virginia, gets no free pass.
Remember when Bilas seemed to make sense in his criticisms of the NCAA? He sold that high ground for unbridled enthusiasm for the ol’ alma mater.
– Column by Chris Graham
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