Analyzing the near misses of the NCAA Tournament

There are plenty of teams with a beef about not getting into the NCAA Tournament this year as there are every year.

I can tell you the teams from my alma mater have no reason to complain that they weren't invited to the four letter tournament.

I'm talking about Creighton and Illinois State of course.

Neither of these teams had any wins to speak of outside of conference play and the Missouri Valley as a whole wasn't looked upon as a top-tier conference anyway.

First we'll start with the Blue Jays case.

I definitely think they should have got in over Arizona because the Pac-10 was down this year and Arizona shouldn't have been in last year, either.

But Creighton really had nobody to blame but itself and had a winnable game to get into the conference tournament final and blew it.

On top of that, the 73-49 loss to the Redbirds in the semi-finals was a blowout.

For the most part, the Blue Jays handled business through their mild schedule taking out Dayton at-home, George Mason at-home and New Mexico at-home.

At-home is the key phrase here. Even worse? Only Dayton turned into an NCAA Tournament team.

Those solid wins were almost negated with road losses to Arkansas-Little Rock and Nebraska. Not that either of those teams were as bad as usual this year but there simply aren't any road wins to speak of and those two games should have been locks.

Other than that, seven other non-conference games were basically worthless wins. Two of the wins, Fresno State and DePaul, didn't mean anything then and mean less now. The other five teams were "cupcake" games.

Honestly, the Blue Jays were hampered by their BracketBuster pairing of George Mason, as it didn't really help send them over the top but ultimately, had they kept it close with the Redbirds they would have been in the NCAA Tournament.

Now onto the case of the very team that knocked Creighton out of the dance, Illinois State.

Remember when everyone was slobbering over the Redbirds' 14-game win streak to start the season? Lunatics thought this team would run the table and go undefeated to the NCAA Tournament.

Whoops...

Illinois State went on to lose seven regular season MVC games, a crucial BracketBuster game and the MVC Tournament final against Northern Iowa.

There isn't anything wrong with those losses except for the BracketBuster game when Niagara laid a 14-point beatdown on the Redbirds.

That pretty much sealed their fate because third place in the MVC without even a moderately respectable non-conference win makes you the poster child for getting "screwed" due to poor scheduling.

On the other hand, the team everyone is mad at for making the tournament has five, count em', five wins against NCAA Tournament teams including Southern California, UCLA, Washington, Kansas and Gonzaga.

Go ahead and be mad at Arizona but it had the quality wins it needed and the fan support to secure a bid.