The Big Sky's new tournament format.

[Gidal Kaiser]

http://missoulian.com/college/griz/big- ... 963f4.html According to the Missoulian, tournament expands to seven teams, league schedule will be 20 games & conference goes back to travel partners, with "lone wolf" Sac State still getting two games (but teams facing Sac State just getting one game per week).

[BLACKnBLUEnGOLD]

7 teams is just weird. If they're gonna expand, why not make it 8?

[WSUWILDCAT]

7 teams is just weird. If they're gonna expand, why not make it 8?

I agree, let the top 8 in and get rid of the first round bye.

[kmax]

I can almost guarantee that they are expanding to 7 instead of 8 for the same reason they have made all the other changes in the conference tourney format the the last decade plus, they want to give the regular season champ (and theoretically thus the highest nationally rated team) the highest chance of winning the conference tournament. They changed to 6 teams with two getting a bye to help the top two teams. They went away from predetermined championship sites and hold the tourney championship rounds at the regular season champ. All things to try and give an extra edge to the regular season champion. With the Big Sky being a one bid conference, it hurts the conference when a middle of the pack team gets hot and wins the tourney and gets the bid. Of course it is great for fans of that team, but it causes the conference to get a lower seed than likely would have with the top team winning the autobid. In big conferences you don't see this because half the teams make the NCAA tourney anyway. Top teams that have a bad game and don't win their conference tourney can still get top seeds in the bracket. But a low-major conference like the Big Sky has to do everything it can to try and assure it puts it's best foot forward with the one and only team it sends.

[John K]

I can almost guarantee that they are expanding to 7 instead of 8 for the same reason they have made all the other changes in the conference tourney format the the last decade plus, they want to give the regular season champ (and theoretically thus the highest nationally rated team) the highest chance of winning the conference tournament. They changed to 6 teams with two getting a bye to help the top two teams. They went away from predetermined championship sites and hold the tourney championship rounds at the regular season champ. All things to try and give an extra edge to the regular season champion. With the Big Sky being a one bid conference, it hurts the conference when a middle of the pack team gets hot and wins the tourney and gets the bid. Of course it is great for fans of that team, but it causes the conference to get a lower seed than likely would have with the top team winning the autobid. In big conferences you don't see this because half the teams make the NCAA tourney anyway. Top teams that have a bad game and don't win their conference tourney can still get top seeds in the bracket. But a low-major conference like the Big Sky has to do everything it can to try and assure it puts it's best foot forward with the one and only team it sends.

I think your analysis is spot on, and I agree with the powers that be on this issue. I think the BSC should do everything it can help their regular season champ win the tourney, which increases the league's chances for success n the NCAA tourney. Of course, that strategy can cut both ways for individual teams. It was great for MSU in 1986 when we won the tourney as a no.5 seed, and went to the Big Dance. But it sucked for MSU in 1987, when we won the regular season title, but got upset by the no. 8 seed in the 1st round of the tourney.

[ilovethecats]

I can almost guarantee that they are expanding to 7 instead of 8 for the same reason they have made all the other changes in the conference tourney format the the last decade plus, they want to give the regular season champ (and theoretically thus the highest nationally rated team) the highest chance of winning the conference tournament. They changed to 6 teams with two getting a bye to help the top two teams. They went away from predetermined championship sites and hold the tourney championship rounds at the regular season champ. All things to try and give an extra edge to the regular season champion. With the Big Sky being a one bid conference, it hurts the conference when a middle of the pack team gets hot and wins the tourney and gets the bid. Of course it is great for fans of that team, but it causes the conference to get a lower seed than likely would have with the top team winning the autobid. In big conferences you don't see this because half the teams make the NCAA tourney anyway. Top teams that have a bad game and don't win their conference tourney can still get top seeds in the bracket. But a low-major conference like the Big Sky has to do everything it can to try and assure it puts it's best foot forward with the one and only team it sends.

I think your analysis is spot on, and I agree with the powers that be on this issue. I think the BSC should do everything it can help their regular season champ win the tourney, which increases the league's chances for success n the NCAA tourney. Of course, that strategy can cut both ways for individual teams. It was great for MSU in 1986 when we won the tourney as a no.5 seed, and went to the Big Dance. But it sucked for MSU in 1987, when we won the regular season title, but got upset by the no. 8 seed in the 1st round of the tourney.

whoa whoa whoa......

you mean we were competitive in the 80's?!

[John K]

I can almost guarantee that they are expanding to 7 instead of 8 for the same reason they have made all the other changes in the conference tourney format the the last decade plus, they want to give the regular season champ (and theoretically thus the highest nationally rated team) the highest chance of winning the conference tournament. They changed to 6 teams with two getting a bye to help the top two teams. They went away from predetermined championship sites and hold the tourney championship rounds at the regular season champ. All things to try and give an extra edge to the regular season champion. With the Big Sky being a one bid conference, it hurts the conference when a middle of the pack team gets hot and wins the tourney and gets the bid. Of course it is great for fans of that team, but it causes the conference to get a lower seed than likely would have with the top team winning the autobid. In big conferences you don't see this because half the teams make the NCAA tourney anyway. Top teams that have a bad game and don't win their conference tourney can still get top seeds in the bracket. But a low-major conference like the Big Sky has to do everything it can to try and assure it puts it's best foot forward with the one and only team it sends.

I think your analysis is spot on, and I agree with the powers that be on this issue. I think the BSC should do everything it can help their regular season champ win the tourney, which increases the league's chances for success n the NCAA tourney. Of course, that strategy can cut both ways for individual teams. It was great for MSU in 1986 when we won the tourney as a no.5 seed, and went to the Big Dance. But it sucked for MSU in 1987, when we won the regular season title, but got upset by the no. 8 seed in the 1st round of the tourney.

whoa whoa whoa......

you mean we were competitive in the 80's?!

I know....that must have been "Bizarro World".

[jagur1]

Regular season will actually count for something now.

[kmax]

Regular season will actually count for something now.

6 of 9: 66% of teams make it
7 of 11: 63% of teams make it

Not much difference there really.

[GrizinWashington]

Regular season will actually count for something now.

6 of 9: 66% of teams make it
7 of 11: 63% of teams make it

Not much difference there really.

There is a larger advantage to the regular season champion, however, as they're the only team who gets a bye. The 2 seed has to play the opening round, where now they get an auto-advance into the semis. I don't know if that was what Jag was referencing or not, but it was the first thing that I thought of.

[kmax]

A couple thoughts in addition to what I wrote above about the 7 team tournament that stand out to me about the changes.

The expansion will necessitate a 20-game regular-season league schedule for basketball.....Division I teams are limited to 29 regular-season games....When you add in a BracketBuster game plus a return game from the previous season's BracketBuster weekend, that leaves schools with just seven nonconference games to schedule.

While I completely understand there are several reasons for doing this (it's tough to get non-conf games, better to have a balanced conference schedule, etc.) I am really concerned with what this is going to do to the Big Sky's already poor conference rating. The only way to improve something like conference RPI is to win non-conf games. With so few chances out of conference, this could be problematic even if we have a strong team in the Big Sky make it into the NCAA tourney.

Because of four added league games, the Big Sky slate will begin on Monday, Dec. 17.

This has problem written all over it. We finally made it out of the recurring issue of one of the Cat/Griz matchups being during the home schools Christmas break. Even more likely now to have that happen with the conference schedule starting earlier. Even without that, having so many of the conference games while students are gone is really going to nullify home court advantage (I know, I know, Cats don't have one anyway but humor me here).

The Big Sky will return to a "lone wolf" schedule next season with travel partners. The partners will be Montana and Montana State, Eastern Washington and Portland State, Northern Colorado and North Dakota, Idaho State and Weber State, and Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. In the week that travel partners are scheduled to play each other, they'll also face the "lone wolf," Sacramento State.

While I am happy that the league is going back to the travel partners route there are still a couple of brutal trips here. Used to be the NAU/Sac roadtrip was terrible rough...seems the UND/UNC roadtrip replaces that and isn't much better other than the altitude difference isn't quite so drastic. Also, with Sac being the lone wolf the week that MSU/UM play @ Sac is going to be a tough one. People talked about the difficulties for the women this year in going to ISU on Thursday and coming back to play the Griz (and the Griz having to go to ISU on the next Tuesday). So next year replace that trip to ISU with a trip all the way to Sac...yikes.

[kmax]

Regular season will actually count for something now.

6 of 9: 66% of teams make it
7 of 11: 63% of teams make it

Not much difference there really.

There is a larger advantage to the regular season champion, however, as they're the only team who gets a bye. The 2 seed has to play the opening round, where now they get an auto-advance into the semis. I don't know if that was what Jag was referencing or not, but it was the first thing that I thought of.

Fair enough, that I would completely agree with.

[John K]

Regular season will actually count for something now.

6 of 9: 66% of teams make it
7 of 11: 63% of teams make it

Not much difference there really.

I have mixed feelings about the new format. On the one hand, I like that now only the regular season champ will get a bye in the first round. On the other hand, if you're not going to let everyone into the tourney, then I sort of feel that only about 50% of the teams should make it (5 or 6 in this case). There's something about being allowed to compete for a championship, when you didn't even finish in the top half during the regular season, that doesn't seem quite right to me. I know most people would probably prefer an even number of teams in the tourney, but again with 5 teams, only the top seed gets a first round bye, and I like that.

And what would you think about not having the top seed host the semi-finals and finals? If the host team loses in the semis, it destroys the attendance for the championship game. Is there any good reason for not having the higher seed host each game? That would be a nice reward for the no. 2 seed in the semi-finals. I know there would be some logistical issues, with teams having such short notice to prepare for hosting a game. But is there any reason they couldn't spread the tourney out over a few more days, to help alleviate that? And only one or two games would be impacted by this change, the semi-final game not involving the no. 1 seed, and the championship game if the no. 1 seed lost in the semis.