NCAA Changes Men's Tournament Seeding Procedures to Balance the Top Two Seeds, and Improve First Four

The NCAA announced tweaks to the way teams will be bracketed going forward in the men’s tournament. Back when I attended the NCAA mock exercise last February, I noted some of the potential issues that I thought would develop, and predicted that the NCAA would need to change their rules when it came to the “First Four.”

That is one of the changes announced today. Up until now, the committee separately selected teams to be in the field, and then went through and “scrubbed” and re-seeded the teams based on debate and one-on-one comparisons between schools. The selection might take place earlier in the week, while the more in-depth debates would take place into Friday and Saturday. However, when it came to the First Four, the teams that were the last four selected in were automatically slotted, regardless of how they were later seeded by the committee.

The stated purpose of this rule during our mock exercise was to avoid the appearance of impropriety, where a coach would complain that they weren’t among the last four initially selected, but were later moved down.

However, the change will now allow the committee to re-scrub and seed all teams throughout the process, including the First Four. Take for example, if one of the final four teams in makes a run to a title game on Saturday night. Those additional results might bump them up, and avoid Dayton, when it would not have done so in the past.

The other big change is to the seeding process for the #2 seeds. There has been plenty of complaint and concern over competitive balance of regions versus geography. Last year, in fact, Wisconsin was much better off than Kansas by being moved out West, rather than staying in the Midwest with Kentucky.

The committee announced that would be a consideration going forward:

"While teams from the same conference will remain in separate regions, the committee may consider moving the team seeded fifth on the overall seed list out of its natural geographic area to avoid the best of the No. 2 seeds being placed in the same region as the top overall team. “This change doesn’t mean we are going to a true S-Curve but if we can achieve it, or come closer to having more competitive balance on the top two lines without compromising our existing principles and without putting a team at a great disadvantage, we will consider it,” said Castiglione."

I think the geographic thing controls a little too much, but this should at least allow the most balance up top, where the biggest differences lie.