Lunardi: Want Cinderella back? Set an NCAA tournament eligibility floor

Any worthy data analyst would say, “Don’t draw serious conclusions from a 52-game sample.” Yet here we are, three rounds into another NCAA tournament, making sweeping conclusions about the state of college basketball.

The tournament, mind you, represents less than 1% of Division I men’s basketball games this season. Yet we debate: What happened to Cinderella?

Her demise isn’t exaggerated, but the blame is misplaced. You can’t have Cinderella at the Big Dance if there are fewer invitations to it. You can’t make her ride there unduly harsh. And you can’t make her dance with only big-uglies.

The very structure of the sport has been trending in this direction for far longer than we’d like to admit. It has been 20 years since George Mason became the first double-digit seed to reach the Final Four without the early-round home-court advantage its lone predecessor, LSU, benefited from in 1986, but the real significance of the 2006 tournament was its openness. That field featured four teams from the Missouri Valley Conference and two apiece from the Mountain West, Atlantic 10, WAC and Conference USA, amounting to seven at-large bids outside the so-called power conferences with an average seed of 8.1. These days, we’d have to combine the past two tournament fields to come up with seven at-large bids from non-power conferences, and they’d have an average seed of just 10.1.

In 2006, the power conferences were comprised of 72 schools. Now, that number is 79 (and counting) — and none of those programs moved up with the intention of losing out on NCAA bids to the likes of mid-majors. Conference realignment has done more to “shrink” the tournament field than any other factor, limiting the number of at-large bids for non-power programs.

The non-power conferences have to do a better job of positioning their best teams for the NCAA field, via both regular-season and conference tournament formatting. Tulsa, Dayton, Stephen F. Austin, Liberty and Belmont won a combined 124 games this season and weren’t even close to at-large consideration. And don’t forget that 31-1 Miami (Ohio) was at risk of not making the cut. This would not have been the case before the NCAA introduced the NET rankings in 2018, whose quadrant system values opponent strength in a way that works to the advantage of power conference teams.

The impact on seeding is arguably more damaging than the decline in non-power selections. Would the eighth-seeded Butler team that made a second straight run to the national championship game in 2011 even earn an at-large with its 21-9 regular-season record? What about Sister Jean and the 11-seed Loyola Chicago Ramblers, who were dangerously close to losing their conference tournament opener before making a run to the Final Four in 2018?

The primary reason I’ve been a proponent of NCAA tournament expansion is to counter the power conferences’ dominance of selection and seeding. The big boys aren’t giving up market share anytime soon, so the most agreeable path to a more balanced bracket is to give a little something to everyone. The first eight teams out of the tournament typically include three to four non-power members. Expansion is likely the only way to get them in.

Just as the prince was drawn to Cinderella, fans understand winning first. That’s why the viewing public is overwhelmingly opposed to power conference teams with mediocre records making the field. And since we can’t answer questions like whether Miami (Ohio) was really better than Auburn, we can reward teams that do more with less.

And the results support this approach. In the NET era, 20 power conference teams with sub-.500 league records have received at-large bids. Only eight managed to advance, posting a .355 winning percentage. Last year alone, six SEC teams with losing conference records made the tournament. Only one advanced.

On the other side of the coin, there have been 39 mid-major at-large teams in the NET era. More than half advanced (20), with an overall winning percentage of .400. So, as has been pointed out in this space for years, non-power at-large teams win more NCAA tournament games and advance decidedly more often than “middling majors” with losing conference records.

It’s almost like winning begets winning and losing begets losing. Imagine that.

Want more Cinderella teams? Set a tournament eligibility floor and give the spots we gain — an average of about three per year — to deserving mid-majors. Whether the field is 64, 68, 76 or 80 teams, make winning be what matters most.

After all, it’s why we keep score in the first place.