BS: VCU Rams Win CBI Basketball Tournie...

Subject: RE: BS: VCU Rams Win CBI Basketball Tournie...
From: Bobert
Date: 06 Apr 10 - 08:24 PM

Yeah, P-gator... VCU is a perennial 20 game winner... But unless a mid major wins out in their tournie then they ain't goin' to the dance... A 96 team field would sho nuff be fairer... And I also like the best of three... I'd like to see Butler and Duke duke (pun intended) it out a couple more times...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: VCU Rams Win CBI Basketball Tournie...
From: PoppaGator
Date: 06 Apr 10 - 05:09 PM

I am very intrigued by the 2-out-of-3 format for the final round.

Still, assuming that a NINETY-SIX team field for the NCAA is indeed gonna happen next year, I can't see how it could NOT immediately become the ONLY surviving tournament.

Of course, a #66 team should be a shoo-in if that's the way it's gonna be. (And any school that fails to make the cut will be, well, embarrassed...)

Subject: RE: BS: VCU Rams Win CBI Basketball Tournie...
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Apr 10 - 08:50 PM

Well, yeah... It was a small tournament of teams in the 20-win area that were passed over by the NCAA and the NIT...

The VCU Rams were ranked 66th on the RPI which should have put them as a 3 seed in the NIT but they didn't so much as get an invite...

Yeah, the CBI might not make it but, hey, with the politics of the NCAA and the NIT I think there is room for a third tournie... I like the idea of a best-of-3 final, too...

b~

Subject: RE: BS: VCU Rams Win CBI Basketball Tournie...
From: Arkie
Date: 05 Apr 10 - 06:52 PM

All I know I get from the internet which makes it a bit suspect. Though this does seem to be legit.

CBI

Subject: RE: BS: VCU Rams Win CBI Basketball Tournie...
From: PoppaGator
Date: 05 Apr 10 - 06:08 PM

I'm refreshing this ~ once! ~ just to see if Bobert, or anyone else, can tell me/us anything about this new little tournament just won by Virginia Commonwealth.

Was it brand-new in 2010, or perhaps founded one or two years earlier? Were all games played on one or the other team's home campus, or was there a predetermined site for each round, or for the final one or two rounds?

Just curious, I promise to let this discussion die a natural death next time, whether or not I get any answers...

Subject: RE: BS: VCU Rams Win CBI Basketball Tournie...
From: PoppaGator
Date: 02 Apr 10 - 02:58 PM

I don't recall ever hearing about the "College Basketball Tournament" before this year. No offense, haven't heard much about it this year, either.

I think it's pretty likely that the VCU Rams will go down in history as champions of the final CBT (which may or may not be the only CBT ~ I'm not sure), now that it looks like the NCAA behemoth tourney will be growing to 96 teams next year.

The venerable National Invitation Tournament (NIT), which is actually one year older than the NCAA championship, and was for years a more desirable and arguably more prestigious post-season destination for college hoops teams, will undoubtedly shut down if the NCAA expansion to 96 teams goes through. The fledgling CBT tournament is hardly likely to survive if the NIT can't make it.

I think the NCAA field was plenty large enough back when it stood at 32 teams ~ IF we believe that the object of the exercise was simply to determine a national champion. Every team that won its conference, large or small, had a chance to prove its worth, plus every unaffilliated team with a legitimate claim at "number-one" status. Sure, some excellent teams that finished second in their respective leagues didn't make the cut, but that's what the NIT was for: a team that got off to a slow start and failed to win its league could be frozen out of the NCAA's "official" championship, but win its way to the NIT's final rounds, played in the high temple of basketball, Madison Square Garden, and prove their worth to the world.

But, as we know, the NCAA basketball tournamment is not longer primarily concerned with determining a national champion. Thanks to the influence of TV money, and the terms of coaching contracts, it's no longer so much about which team wins the tournament, as it is about which teams get in.

So now we have a ridiculously watered-down field, featuring 48 additional teams with little chance of surviving the "opening" round (which will now become the second set of games after a newly added round of 32 "play-in" games), and essentially no chance at all of continuing to win and advance more than once or twice more. All this, so that their coaches' agents can argue that "he got our team into the tournament," and so that the NCAA can collect ad revenues for an additional couple of days of mostly-pretty-lousy televised games.

And in the meanwhile. of course, we get the death of the alternative tournament(s) that once provided a showcase for good solid up-and-coming teams that might well complete for the "real" championship the following year.

Why would anyone start a new college basketball post-season tourney in this era? Whether this CBI, or CBT, or whatever it is, is brand-new this year, or if it had already been founded a year or two earlier without my noticing, it was never going to do very well competing against the already-floundering NIT. If the NCAA expansion to double its current size goes through, as seems inevitable, any and all other competing tournaments are dead as doornails.

Subject: RE: BS: VCU Rams Win CBI Basketball Tournie...
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Apr 10 - 07:50 PM

Well, hurrrummmpppffftttt!!!

What??? Mid majors chopped liver, 'er what??? George Mason, also in VCU's conference went to the Final Four a few years back!!!

Grrrrrrrr..........

B;~)

Subject: BS: VCU Rams Win CBI Basketball Tournie...
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Apr 10 - 07:47 AM

Well, well, well...

A little redemption!!! Afetr being ranked 66th on the RPI and passed over by the NIT, the VCU Rams basketball team swept thru the College Basketball Tounament by beating St Louis last night 71-65 in St. Louis!!!

Yeah, okay... With VCU being my alma matta, I'll admit to be a homer but, hey...

B~