There was plenty of discourse over why certain conferences got so many bids for the NCAA Tournament and why others – namely the Big East – didn’t.
Providence head coach Kim English was asked for his thoughts after his team was among the Big East snubs on Selection Sunday and the first-year Friars coach didn’t hold back.
“I think the analytics are bulls–t,” English told reporters. “I think you could schedule bad teams in your non-league and beat the snot out of them and beat them by 50 and 60. I think coaching for so long has been a gentleman agreement. I mean you have a large lead at the end of the game for health reasons you take guys out, to get some other guys opportunities to play you take guys out.
“But right now might be a change in college basketball. We’re scheduling to beat teams by 40 and 50. [It] might be a thing to do, but when you get into this league, the analytics aren’t going to look very good in league. You’re playing against some really, really good coaches.”
UConn’s Dan Hurley also offered a similar opinion on the lack of Big East teams in the bracket on Sunday after mentioning the night before that the league deserved six bids.
“I think you’re probably just a little embarrassed for such a proud league,” Hurley told reporters. “It becomes one of those things where you’ll hear from the Selection Committee, they’ll talk about NET. But then, other teams in our league had better KenPoms, then we looked at neutral … the whole thing is kind of a shell game. It really comes down to what the committee values.”
Seton Hall, which beat UConn and Marquette, St. John’s, which beat Seton Hall twice and posted 90 points on UConn on Friday night, and Providence, which boasts wins over Wisconsin, Creighton and Marquette, were all bubble teams that got snubbed.
“I don’t understand how a Providence team can … have those quality wins and not get in,” Hurley continued. “How does Seton Hall do what they did in the second-rating conference in the country, win 13 games and not get in? How is St. John’s so far off of the cut-line to get in?”
The Friars finished the season with six wins over Quadrant 1 opponents and they were 57th in the NET rankings.
The KenPom rankings had Providence at 53rd.
English said that the analytics don’t always tell the full story and that there were “flaws in the system.”
The Providence coach acknowledged that his team had chances to boost themselves and let games during the regular season slip away from them.
“It’s what you earn,” English said. “If you don’t take care of those games you put yourself in a position to put your faith in someone else’s hands. That’s not where you want to be. It’s not where we’re going to be as a program. We want to be firmly in if we don’t take care of business in New York in the future.”
Providence could still very well earn an invite to the NIT, which will be announced later on Sunday night.