L'ville, Cincy and Marquette labelled "mid-major"

49ers Basketball Forum 🏀
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Interesting perspective, this is on espn.com. Peter Tiernan’s article on recent NCAA trends.

3. The incredible shrinking mid-major pool has bottomed out Speaking of conference affiliation, where have all the dangerous mid-major schools gone? (This year, the answer's easy: Big East.) The 2005 tourney involved only 10 mid-major teams, easily the lowest number of the 64-team era ... and down from a high of 23 teams in 1993. Meanwhile, small conferences fielded a record 23 teams, six more than their previous high. We've already touched on how the number of small conference teams has an inverse relationship to the number of upsets. But as of late, even the mid-major schools that get into the tourney aren't making much noise.

The fact is, neither the mid-majors nor the small conferences are performing well enough in the tourney to warrant taking slots from the big six conferences. Of the three seven-year periods of the modern tourney, mid-majors have performed the worst in the most recent period. Not only is their winning percentage the lowest (.438 during 1999-2005 compared to a high of .456 during 1985-1991), but they’re performing the worst against seed expectations, winning only 85 games when their average ninth seed says they should win 90. The same goes for the small conferences. In the first seven years of the modern tourney, they won about one in six games (.163 winning percentage). Since 1999, they’ve won less than one in 10 (.096). And they’ve also posted the worst performance against seed expectations, winning just 13 games when their average 14 seed dictates that they should have won 19.

There’s no reason why the selection committee shouldn’t include more teams from the big six conferences. The big six are winning more often than ever (343-210, .620 percentage) and have exceeded seed expectations by more wins (11), despite being saddled with their highest average seed (5.1) of the three seven-year periods in the modern era. It will be interesting to see whether the absorption of old mid-major powerhouses such as Louisville, Cincinnati and Marquette will resolve or aggravate this issue. If the selection committee holds the line of big six tourney qualifiers at the historical average of about 30, the problem likely will worsen. If they accommodate more big six teams, look for a more competitive and unpredictable tourney.

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Well, since Cincy, UofL, and Marquette were NOT mid-major, not sure I follow this guy’s point. With all the talk of the Missouri Valley getting 4-5 teams in the Big Dance, I definitely don’t understand his logic!

BTW, UofL is fighting just to make the Big East tourney. Geez! :rolleyes:

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:rolleyes: .

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I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about but it is still funny. It’s a shame he omitted memphis. I also imagine he also has us classified in the same category.

Who volunteers to send that to our Cincy friends?

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I’m sick of the label “mid-major.” It is overused by basketball analysts and everyone seems to have a different definition of what it actually means. If I never hear that term again it will be too soon… next on the chopping block: “parity.”

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I agree MaxP, the term is overused so much that it doesn’t make any real sense. Everyone has their own definition (as this guy obviously does).
To me, I think of mid-major as a team in a smaller-ish conference that doesn’t traditionally get more than 1 bid.

I understand the authors point that traditional “power” conferences have supplied most of the Final Fours in recent years, but to say blindly say that Cincy, et al. are mid-major - and that the PAC-10 or SEC this year isn’t - seems odd. Anyway, just found it interesting.

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The Pac-10 this year is only slightly better than the A10 this year… and that’s pretty bad

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I follow this guys logic somewhat. He’s calling any non-BCS conference that’s a powerhouse a mid-major. What other people would call a mid-major, he’s referring to as a small conference school. Because conferences like the A-10 and C-USA were top-10 conferences, but not a BCS conference, those conferences per his own definition is mid-major. The next question is, where does he draw the line between mid-major and small conference, the Sun Belt?

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[QUOTE=austinniner;156044]…He’s calling any non-BCS conference that’s a powerhouse a mid-major…[/QUOTE]

I also get tired of “experts” that use football classifications to help them label basketball programs. That seems to be what he’s doing.

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Ask UConn, Pittsburgh and some others if Marquette is mid-major -> Crean has taken a page out Bobby’s book with Novak. Marquette may be the hottest team in the country right now.