NCAAB: Confusion and Hypocricy Headline Preseason Tournaments
By Nathan Giese
Each year, millions of fans all around the world gather together to enjoy the NCAA Tournament. From late March to early April, college basketball takes a firm hold on the attention of sports media and fans alike. It’s no secret that even the most casual of basketball fans enjoy watching March Madness unfold before their very eyes.
However, March is not when the tournaments begin. No, that comes in November with a number of preseason tournaments. Most fans know of the Maui Invitational, which routinely pits some of the best and under-appreciated teams against each other for nearly a week of quality games in Hawaii during the week of Thanksgiving. Maui gets a good chunk of the attention, but the madness doesn’t stop there. The madness doesn’t even start in March.
We’ve already witnessed the Champions Classic this season, featuring national powers Kentucky, Duke, Michigan State and Kansas. That’s just the tip of the iceberg known as college basketball’s preseason tournaments (a few of which occur deep within the regular season, so preseason may be a bit of a stretch).
In total, there are 30 “preseason tournaments”. Why the quotations? Because the definition of preseason and tournaments are used very loosely when these events are assembled. While most of these events, such as Maui, the Old Spice Classic and 2K Sports Classic are actual tournaments, there are those that are merely fancily named events that have no standing in being classified as a tournament. For example, the Global Sports Main Event takes place on campus sites from Nov. 8-22. Nearly two full weeks of this even which does not classify as a real tournament.
Attempting to make sense of these events is complicated and downright frustrating, but I’m going to give it a try anyway.
The Maui Invitational is the highlight of college basketball preseason tournaments, but the rest isn’t so pretty (photo: flickr.com/reidspice)
For argument’s sake, I’m going to use the South Dakota State Jackrabbits’ involvement with the 2013 Legends Classic. SDSU, while technically in the “tournament,” is merely a subregional team. What that means is that SDSU plays a team from a more prominent conference in a normal regular season game. In this case, the game is against Texas Tech in Lubbock.
So what happens if they win that game? Nothing. They do not advance in the tournament. Texas Tech automatically advances to the real tournament which takes place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Instead, if SDSU were to win that game, they continue their schedule to the subregional tournament. The subregional tournament features SDSU and three other schools (in this case Howard, Lehigh and Texas Southern), each of whom also played a team featured in the real Legends Classic tournament. In all, there is THE tournament and there’s the tournament within the tournament.
Confusing, isn’t it? Well if you weren’t confused before, let me further that experience. Texas Tech, Stanford, Houston and Pittsburgh all play in the tournament, win or lose against the other four schools, while the those other teams play in their own tournament on a campus site of one of those lower-level programs. SDSU is hosting this subregional tournament in Brookings, S.D. next week. Those four schools do actually compete in a tournament format, and is technically still part of the Legends Classic, but do SDSU, Lehigh, Howard or Texas Southern even have a chance at being featured in the more prominent, national televised tournament with a victory? Absolutely not and it’s a crying shame.
Drexel is the first victim of this type of tournament format. Drexel, part of the Preseason NIT, was placed into the tournament and traveled to Rutgers, the team that would actually take part of the real tournament at Madison Square Garden. Rutgers, being the higher profiled school, goes to New York while Drexel takes part in the subregional tournament. Unfortunately for the Dragons, they defeated Rutgers on the road Tuesday night 70-59. Drexel got the best of the Scarlett Knights in that game and is, overall, the better of the two teams. Their win will go unnoticed in these “tournaments” and unrewarded for defeating the more prominent school.
Of course, one must consider that a lot of time and money goes into planning and putting together these tournaments and they want to make as many teams in the country feel involved with them as possible but also want that drawing power of higher profile teams for television ratings and revenue. That’s awfully nice of them, but when the team that’s assigned to the subregional tournament wins, shouldn’t they at least be rewarded with something? Should they not have an opportunity to play their way into the actual tournament for a chance to be on national television? Sure, a non-conference road win against a high profile program looks good on a resume, but most of these mid-major teams involved in preseason tournaments won’t have the chance at an at-large bid. So in all, that road win could mean nothing but a extra number in the win column.
If you really look into it, there are very few teams in the country that have experienced success recently that are left out of these tournaments. Every one of these tournaments has these pre-tournament games and subregional tournaments. It’s nothing new to college basketball but the number of these events is astounding. Gotham Classic, Battle 4 Atlantis, Puerto Rico Tip-Off and five different ones that feature Global Sports in the name. Overkill is an appropriate word choice here.
I understand the desire to generate revenue off of these teams and feature them in higher level arenas or rarely used venues (Puerto Rico and Lake Buena Vista, Fla.) but if the subregional teams don’t even have a chance at the actual tournaments, nothing is being accomplished with them. Drexel is still playing in the lowly subregional as will any other team that beats the higher priority schools.
Preseason tournaments are unfair, confusing and just overall exhausting. But we’ll still watch. We do it for players, the teams and our own entertainment. It’s unfortunate how they often shape out this way, but that’s the sports world we live in.
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