BracketBuster Reactions

Here are the TV matchups, sorted by Away Team RPI as of right now (RPI Source = Statsheet.com):

Away	Home	A RPI	H RPI	A Rank	H Rank
Saint Mary's	Murray State	25	37	1	2
Wichita State	Davidson	32	69	2	7
Long Beach Stat	Creighton	33	18	3	1
Northern Iowa	Virginia Common	55	89	4	11
Akron	Oral Roberts	57	51	5	3
Nevada	Iona	62	58	6	4
Drexel	Cleveland State	88	59	7	5
Drake	New Mexico Stat	92	94	8	13
Buffalo	South Dakota St	96	66	9	6
Valparaiso	Loyola Marymoun	117	106	11	16
Asheville	Ohio	130	70	14	8
Old Dominion	Missouri State	132	78	15	9
Texas-Arlington	Weber State	140	93	17	12

I'd be pretty irate if I was a Creighton fan right now, for three reasons:

REASON #1:  CREIGHTON IS BETTER THAN MURRAY STATE AND GOT LEFT OUT OF THE PREMIERE GAME

"But Murray State is AP#9 and Creighton is only AP#13!  Murray State is better!"  OK, let me respond to that ill advised position by pulling the blinders off.  I'm pretty convinced that the voters are not even watching Murray State games... it's truly that goose egg on the right side of the hyphen that is the only reason Murray State is in the Top 25.

If you look at things from an overall resume perspective,  I can make a fairly convincing case that AP #13 Creighton is better than AP #9 Murray State, and it's not even close:

• Murray State is really 18-0 and not 21-0.  I'm sorry, Harris Stowe, Tennessee Temple, and Alaska Anchorage are not D-1 teams.  I usually don't mind that a school throws a D-2 opponent on their schedule at the beginning of the season to tune up, but holy cow -- three?  Creighton is 20-2, a legit 20-2.
• RPI Top 100:  Murray State 3-0, Creighton 6-2 
• RPI 151+: Murray State 14-0, Creighton 7-0
• Murray State worthwhile wins: Memphis, Dayton, Southern Miss
• Creighton worthwhile wins:  San Diego State, Nebraska, Northwestern, Missouri State, Wichita State, Missouri State, Drake

If you're literate, you just read that Creighton has played five more games against Top 100 teams and have won three more.  They have played half as many bottom feeders and have built wins against really quality teams.  I shouldn't come off as so harsh because mid majors are in a system that makes it difficult to schedule games against quality teams.  But, when we have a mid major that is the most deserving to shine, I struggle to see why it makes sense to not reward them.

Ultimately, this is the classic desire to paint a "feel good" story instead of actually looking and seeing that Murray State has played three good opponents this year.  There's probably a few teams on that list above that would go 18-0 (see above on the three games I subtracted) with Murray State's schedule.  Ultimately, because of the fact that the MVC is a damn good league and they have multiple teams at the top, Creighton gets the hose.  It's embarassing.

REASON #2:  THE MVC IS GOOD

Because the MVC is so good, Creighton doesn't even match up with the next best team in this event (Wichita State) because they'll probably end up playing them three times already this year.  So for those keeping score at home, that's already another tier that Creighton has slid down.

REASON #3:  THE SCHEDULE JOBBING

Despite being the best team in this event, Creighton got stuck with the 10PM Eastern game -- the latest time slot.  So, if this game goes into overtime and has a fair amount of stoppages, it very well could butt up against midnight central time.  Hard to believe that they got stuck with the late start.  I'd be irate.

Other MVC Teams have some pretty fair gripes:


SHOCKER WHAT???

Wichita State fans can't be too happy either.  They're essentially paired up in a "You win, you gain nothing -- you lose, you lose a lot" matchup with Davidson.  Why not Oral Roberts?  Why not Iona?  Where did Davidson come from here?  I'll admit that their win at Kansas was absolutely fascinating, but they've accomplished nothing past that.  It's quite likely that if they knock off Wichita State (assuming the Shockers stay on a run), Davidson catapults themselves into the bubble conversation.  On the flip side, if Wichita State takes care of business, it's quite unlikely this win really helps them out that much due to Davidson's incredibly lackluster resume past one win.  Oral Roberts would have made more sense here to me.  Heck even Cleveland State would have been better.

HATE THE DRAKE

New Mexico State will be a great matchup for the Bulldogs.  Any Top 100 RPI team that we get matched up with is fantastic.  Plus, we're on TV, who can complain?  Well, if we're a top 10 road team (which we are), I think we actually can complain a bit.  Why not Davidson, Ohio, VCU?  Those were probably the teams more towards what we deserved to play.  I'm not going to say that we aren't liable to lay a stinker on the road.  We've proved that more than enough times.  But what happens if Drake rattles off five in a row and has grandiose dreams of post-season tournaments?  Having the opportunity to play a better opponent would help that cause tremendously.

GET OFF MY TUBE YOU DAMN TREES

Indiana State gets left off of TV.  They struggle a bit from the UNI profile of having such a strong non-conference resume and then just laying a goose egg once conference season rolled around.  Still, I find it hard to believe that UT-Arlington is more deserving.

THE LAST WORD

Bottom line:  UNI gets a matchup that has a fun storyline, and the rest of the MVC gets jobbed in one form or the other.  The MVC better be getting an exhorbitant amount of revenue from the TV contract for this.  If not, why are we even in this thing?

Theory:  BracketBuster Pairings are All About the Storylines that they can create

• Murray State:  ESPN wants to talk about the unbeaten streak, even though it's not horrendously impressive (Drake's 21 games in a row was much more impressive, BOOM eat that Racers).
• Both UNI and VCU are squared off against one another so focus can be on recent tournament success.
• Davidson was elevated to relive the Steph Curry days ("Remember the Curry days!!?!??!?") and to promote their only quality win ("This Davidson team is dangerous, they beat Kansas" and not "They just got beat by Samford, who you probably hear that and think is a single person, but no it's just a horrendous D-1 basketball program")

If they were about the best basketball matchups, I'd argue it should go:

• St. Mary's @ Creighton
• Wichita State @ Murray State
• Long Beach State @ Oral Roberts
• Northern Iowa @ Davidson
• Drake @ Ohio
• Drexel @ Missouri State
• Indiana State @ VCU

Probably all of those should be televised, along with a few other matchups.