98 but it’s been set up at least 2 times I can remember since then, just either UK or Duke screws it up. 2001, and 2012. There have been others I’m sure
Duke does NOT always get the easiest bracket.
- Thread starter Saguaro Cat
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One thing that is indisputable, UK never gets a favorable draw..., and if you disagree, show me one year since they expanded from 24 teams, where we did.
Don't feel like explaining so I will just take the high road. SCREW DOOK AND THEIR RAT COACH TO HELL AND BACK!
Realllly tired of hearing about USCJR last year.. they got hot. They were dead to rights just a week prior to that and many thought they couldn't even make it past the first night. I'm not saying that it was purposely drawn up this way.. but that looked like a gimme game to almost EVERYONE.. USCjr decided to play to their full potential and made a run.
Don't forget, when the ACC already has a team ahead of Duke, Duke appears to get bumped UP a seed so they can properly place them. You won't find many scenarios where they move Duke DOWN a seed line.
Don't forget, when the ACC already has a team ahead of Duke, Duke appears to get bumped UP a seed so they can properly place them. You won't find many scenarios where they move Duke DOWN a seed line.
I've noted this before, and been attacked for daring to say it. The "Duke is always given an easy path" narrative is a myth.
But it's a myth our fans dearly want to believe, and facts be damned, there's no arguing with UK fans when it comes to their preferred narratives.
It's the national championship tournament. You are going to have to play some decent teams along the way regardless of who you are. All I know is, most years I look at their draw and wish we could swap with them. Can't complain this year because we craped our own bed with our regular season, but there have been plenty of years we have been absolutely disrespected by that committee while Duke seems to always get the benefit of doubt.
If we ever get a bracket like that and end up winning a title we had no business winning, will we put an asterisk by the number up in the rafters??
I’m pretty confident we won’t have to worry about that.
You can’t look at dukes bracket in a vacuum, you can justify any bracket by itself but when compared to the other three brackets that year it may very well be the easiest. I also agree with the poster stating that I would switch brackets wth Duke any year in the Calipari era and we probably would have multiple titles in that scenario.
Like anyone besides SC fans thought they would make it to that game...
Even SC fans had checked out that point. You never knew what you'd get with that team. When they played Kentucky or when they gave it 100%, they could beat anyone.. But if they just went through the motions like they did all year, and did that with Duke, Duke wins that game, easily.
Like anyone but South Carolina thought they'd go on the run they did. To the committee...they never dreamed Duke would lose to South Carolina.
Also, how about this quote on that video above, from a Kansas fan no less:
Shine 2 Cold 3 years ago
My opinion Andrew wiggins will be bust might be good byt never a star doesnt have a solid shot only athletic not great ball handler inly.move.i see him do is the spin in the paint on drives wont be a superstar my opinions we will see in 2 ,3 seasons im jabari fan but kansas is fav team
spelling aside, this dude could teach our resident Kansas dolts a thing or two.. He nailed what 99.999% missed.
Shine 2 Cold 3 years ago
My opinion Andrew wiggins will be bust might be good byt never a star doesnt have a solid shot only athletic not great ball handler inly.move.i see him do is the spin in the paint on drives wont be a superstar my opinions we will see in 2 ,3 seasons im jabari fan but kansas is fav team
spelling aside, this dude could teach our resident Kansas dolts a thing or two.. He nailed what 99.999% missed.
2017 being on this list is laughable. You can make a case for the others like you did. Last year, that's just simply not true.
Bracket Matrix isn't a mathematical model, it's a compilation of predictions. If Duke consistently gets the benefit of the doubt, and you're trying to predict where they'll be seeded, it would be stupid to think that the selection committee was suddenly going to go in the opposite direction, and have them lower than expected.
Duke was not a clear #1 in 2010 or 2015. In 2010, they won a weak ACC and had no really high quality OOC wins (and 2 losses). There was very much an argument to be made for West Virginia, and to make matters worse, the NCAA seeded Duke 3rd overall, ahead of a Syracuse team that had a better record in a much tougher conference. That pushed Syracuse into a much tougher region, and allowed Duke to avoid West Virginia, get a completely hobbled Purdue team as their 4, and get a disintegrating Villanova team as their 2.
Duke probably did deserve a 1 in 15, but you could certainly argue against it. Virginia won the ACC that year, ahead of Duke, and Duke also didn't win the ACC Tourney. They also got the benefit of the doubt over Wisconsin, which had a better record, but got put at the 4th spot and forced into the same region as Arizona. Then, they got Gonzaga as their 2. Deserving 1 seed or not, that's pretty much having every single thing fall your way.
I think 2015 was fair to them tho. There wasn't much separating Duke, Wisconsin and Virginia and Duke had beaten both of those teams in the regular season.
I think it just goes to illustrate that when it's all said and done, there's not much separating these teams.
I think the main reason so many of us scream about duke getting favorable brackets is because the committee seems to place teams in the bracket based on story line. in no way shape or form should we have been playing wisc in 2015 that should have been dukes match up plan and simple, we were undefeated and basically got the bracket of an overall number one seed so the tourney would have potential story lines. also duke has basically either won it or crapped the bed and the 2 years they have won in recent years they have gotten more then favorable brackets
Make no mistake about it, Duke got a cakewalk draw last year. ZERO blue bloods on their entire side of the bracket. Go back and look. Meanwhile, UK, UNCheat and UCLA were all in the same region. All three were top five teams. Explain that.
2015 - All that needs to be said is that there was only one power five conference champ on Duke's side of the bracket. That was a depleted Virginia team that was playing a beat up Anderson.
I pretty much agree, but again, they got EVERY benefit that year, same in 2010.
And some of it might be an ACC vs SEC thing, but it still ends in the same place. Plus, the ACC hasn't always been that great the last 20 years, yet Duke basically just has to win the league to be pretty much assured of a 1 seed. 2010, when the ACC absolutely sucked, is a perfect example of that.
Yeah in 2010 there was a lot of talk I remember about West Virginia being that 1 seed over Duke (tho I guess to be fair they did end up meeting and Duke dominated them). But yeah they probably got a favorable seed in that tournament.
I think two things are at play here
1) The conference strength (or well I should say the perception of conference strength).
2) Another reason is the simple fact that they seem to always play their first round games in their state. Which really isn't a Duke issue but an NCAA site issue I guess.
2010 - Jacksonville
2011 - Charlotte
2012 - Greensboro
2013 - Philadelphia
2014 - Raleigh
2015 - Charlotte
2016 - Providence (even as a 4 seed they got lucky in that this was a year we actually had good teams out West)
2017 - Greenville
2018 - Probably Charlotte
I think a lot of the benefit Duke receives in the tournament isn't necessarily favoritism but rather how the brackets are developed. It benefits them because of the above. They also get a bump because most years the ACC is pretty good and bracket rules obviously puts the good teams from the same conference into different brackets. Conversely, with the SEC stinking most years, we are moved from other SEC teams and as a result have a greater chance of getting tougher teams.
Not to mention the fact that there's a bunch of good teams outside our conference that are located close to us. We are always at a greater risk of playing a WVU, a UL, a Purdue, an Indiana than Duke is.
I don't think the NCAA intended this to be the case but it's a negative consequence of using location to determine brackets.
And 2015.
The problem is that's the only arena in the state that we can play at and Duke has like multiple options.
The issue is there are so many variables in the process of selecting and placing teams by the committee that i) it's really hard to prove or disprove any related point and ii) the committee is innoculated against charges of bias or favor. It's kind of like the argument about whether there are biased or crooked officials - there are hundreds of calls and no-calls in a game, and it only takes a handful of well placed calls in one direction to influence an outcome, and who could make a case based on a handful of calls that could go either way? It's the point Tim Donaghy makes. And it's why you're never able to convince people who say "prove it to me." Likewise, as we've heard from all the media members who participate in the mock draft they do or used to do, "it's so confusing! There are so many data points, so much information, it's impossible to think the Committee could act on a bias against or for one particular team." Maybe - other side of the coin is with all those moving parts, it would be pretty easy to hide a bias, too.......
The thing about that is when they talk in the mock bracket about things being confused it's largely discussing the portion of seeding.
And they are right. You get a bunch of people in a room and everyone has their own feelings on what should actually matter when ranking these teams. You don't really get the consistency that this process really should have.
When people talk about bias, they talk more about the bracketing and the matchups. The thing about that is that part is really really easy. Because at that point it's basically dictated by geography and rules. Very little human decision has to be made by this point.
Anyone can look at a seed list from the last 8 years and go 1 through 68 and understand why about 90% to 95% of the teams go to the places they go.
So IMO either one of two things are happening:
1) There is a bias and they favor teams over other teams. But the only way this happens is if they actually go back to the seed list and switch spots because it would be impossible to do this during the actual seeding. I find this highly unlikely. But people that believe in the bias, have to believe this
2) There is no bias. At least not in the actual bracketing and match up process. As with humans you'll always get some amount of bias in the actual seeding.
There is most definitely a bias. Jeez @The_Answer1313 you can't be serious?! This **** has been going on for the thirty + years I've been watching college ball.
A question worth pursuing might be: why were the bracket rules constructed how they were? If they seem to benefit certain teams or leagues, might that have been by design?
I'd have to check but I'm pretty sure Moses didn't bring those rules down from a mountaintop. Some group of men in a backroom got together and cooked them up.
It's a good question.
But given the amount of time it's taking them to get rid of stats like RPI, I'm not sure we'll see much of a change in the construction in the near future.
I always liked Cal's idea of letting the teams pick where they wanna be placed. I'm not entirely sure how that would work but I like it.
An easy thing to fix and I might be in the minority here but...........don't keep conferences separate. Why the hell can't Duke meet up with a North Carolina or a Virginia? Even the minor rule about avoiding regular season matchups. Why? What's the point?
Tho I suppose a downside to that would be that the brackets would become even more geographically related than they are now.
Tho I suppose a downside to that would be that the brackets would become even more geographically related than they are now.
This isn't an original thought, but how about seed the bracket 1-68 and let the chips fall where they may?
It would be the most fair thing. And most fans around the country couldn't care less if Clemson and Virginia are playing for the 3rd time. More than likely only locals would have seen the first 2 matchups.
I agree.
And even with that, you can still have the pod system. You can still have the top teams play the first two rounds close to home.
The only thing that would change in that scenario is you won't be guaranteed when it comes to regions. It's like you say, let the chips fall where they may.
I've always gone back to what this really is.........either you care about geography and unbalanced regions or you want fair and balanced regions without care to geography.
Judging from most fans, I think many want the latter. They'd rather the fair and balanced regions. I agree.
The one seeds would still get their preferred regions. If you aren't a one, tough luck.
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