March 14, 2010, at 6:12 pm
If you’re just tuning in, the Mississippi State Bulldogs are lobbying Congress to change the value of a minute to 59.9 seconds instead of 60. If it goes anything like the SEC championship game earlier today, MS State will once again, come up empty.
The poor Bulldogs were literally one-tenth of a second away from securing their second consecutive SEC tournament championship, when DeMarcus Cousins put back a John Wall miss that tied the game as time expired. You could tell that after that shot, Mississippi State had less than a 0% chance of pulling the game out in OT as every player was emotionally and physically exhausted. Without debating the logistics of the game, (Mississippi State should not have fouled in the end) I ask you, is one-tenth of a second enough reason to keep a team from the 2010 NCAA tournament?
To be fair … it’s a pretty loaded question. Should Mississippi State have won that game, they would have made the NCAA tournament as a 9 or 10 seed but the NCAA committee decided that one-tenth of a second was enough to keep them out of the tournament completely. In addition to the Bulldogs, Illinois and Virginia Tech probably feel a bit snubbed too, but I think their cases are slightly different. Let’s dive right into why I feel Mississippi State deserved in.
First, in order to put Mississippi State into the field, one team has to come out. Do me a favor and make a chomping motion with your hands … FLORIDA had no business of making the NCAA tournament, let alone getting in as a 10 seed. Baffles my mind that Florida could get such a high seed, meaning the committee respected the SEC but the team that beat Florida two days ago on a neutral court, THEN beat Vanderbilt the day after that gets left out. It’s not like this team was bad to begin with, they had the same conference record, better overall record and better SEC tournament seeding than Florida too.
Second, Mississippi State had a stronger non-conference schedule. (143rd vs. 184th) It’s not the greatest in the world but its one of the factors that the committee looks into and it favors the bulldogs (Of course I’m going to pick things that favor my argument!).
Third, Mississippi State finished the season with 6 wins in 10 games. Two of those games were OT losses to Kentucky, so again, while it’s not super impressive, it’s better than Florida. The Gators finished with 4 wins in 10 games, two of which were wins against Auburn. What else do you want?
In fairness to Florida, their argument would be that they won the high profile games, early in the season against Florida State and Michigan State but other than that, I truly do not understand the decision. Mississippi State came into the season as a ranked team and it appears that an opening game loss to Rider actually cost them a tournament birth. They always say you can’t lose your season in the first game but Mississippi State knows better. If sports teaches us anything, it’s that the better team doesn’t always win … and Mississippi State was clearly the better team.
