Monday 5 March 2007

Weekend Articles; more Seedings & Wild Card comments

We're a little tardy with this link however Neate Sager provides another well-done recap of the OUA East final in his "Out of Left Field" blog which for those who haven't yet bookmarked for daily overall sports updates should strongly consider doing so Ravens Rolling to Halifax; Victoria loss should give Gee-Gees the Wild Card

Mary Caton from the Windsor Star reports on Windsor's win over McMaster on Saturday night Lancers Cement Place at CIS Championships As well, the Star provides a photo gallery from the game Lancers Photo Gallery Bill Malley reports in the Hamilton Spectator on Windsor's victory over the Marauders on Saturday Mac Done in by Ex

James Mirtle from the Globe and Mail provides a quick update of CIS Hoops, both men's and women's, in this morning's edition and alludes to a possible choice for the men's wild card berth Globe and Mail Hoops Roundup

Vancouver Sun article on UBC basketball (subscription needed) UBC Pulls Off Basketball Double Also, Vancouver Province reports on UBC's victory over Brandon on Saturday night UBC Takes Title with victory over Number One Brandon

Rarely does the CIS get coverage in the Toronto Star so we need to acknowledge this coverage when we can. There is a short article on yesterday's York Lions women's victory over McMaster York Lions cruise to OUA basketball title

CIS FINAL EIGHT MEN'S SEEDINGS & WILD CARD DISCUSSION There is still some uncertainty at least from this end as to whether or not there are some pre-determined seedings for the CIS Final Eight men's brackets. In the last few years when 10 teams made the tournament, seedings rules stipulated that each of the four conference champions (Canada West, OUA, QSSF and AUS) were guaranteed at least a Top 4 ranking at the Nationals. Presumably the reason for this was to guarantee that those teams did not have to participate in a first round game and not have to win 4 games in 4 days for the championship - reward for winning your conference. With the move back to 8 teams, this stipulation may not exist any longer. We will do our research early this week to confirm this for sure. However, if the Top 4 stipulation does NOT exist and if teams from the same conference CAN play each other in the first round, then suggesting that Brandon is seeded #5 for one loss to UBC is harsh. Assuming teams can be seeded according to merit alone, right now Brandon should easily be a Top 4 seed. There are still results from Quebec and AUS to consider, however if Concordia does not win the "Q" and there are no seedings restrictions, this would potentially vault Brandon's seed even higher. We will endeveour to clarify all this at some point today and then when we know the rules for sure will publish our current view of what the draw could look like.

1 comment:

andrewt said...

On the subject of tournament seeding I'd agree that it would be a harsh judgment to drop a team from 1st to 5th based on one loss if I didn't think the top ranking was a very generous assessment of Brandon in the first place. They somehow were vaulted from the 8th to 1st during the month of January, a month where their greatest accomplishment was beating a team ranked no higher than 4th. The proof will be in Halifax. The Bobcat scores would indicate that this team is more of what we have seen in the past - not much defense and lots of offense against weak defensive teams. Brutus is conspiring and this Cat won't make it much past the ides of March. They will lose their final 4 game.