Time to rethink seeding for conference tournaments?

As University of Kentucky col­lege bas­ket­ball fans gear up for the NCAA tour­na­ment, they find them­selves in a sit­u­a­tion that has become all too famil­iar over the past five sea­sons: their team has yet again failed to claim a cham­pi­onship in the Southeastern Conference tour­na­ment. In fact, UK (seed­ed as the sec­ond high­est par­tic­i­pant in the tour­na­ment) lost its first game, to Texas A&M (seed­ed num­ber seven.)

This year, UK fans have a con­so­la­tion to this recur­ring dis­ap­point­ment: of the five “pow­er con­fer­ences,” not one tour­na­ment was won by the high­est-seed­ed team. Many teams who were expect­ed to secure top seeds in the NCAA tour­na­ment suf­fered shock­ing defeats in their respec­tive con­fer­ence tourneys.

The emer­gence of new par­i­ty in NCAA Division I bas­ket­ball can be attrib­uted to a con­flu­ence of fac­tors: increased tele­vi­sion cov­er­age of even so-called “mid-major” and “low-major” pro­grams, the trans­fer por­tal, and the intro­duc­tion of name, image, and like­ness (NIL) mon­ey for col­lege ath­letes. The fact that this the­o­ry holds true — with more par­i­ty than ever wit­nessed this year dur­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son — is a tes­ta­ment to its validity.

Another fac­tor that appears to have worked against Kentucky and oth­er high seeds in con­fer­ence tour­na­ments like the SEC’s is the for­mat of the contests.

Like some oth­er con­fer­ences, the SEC seeks to reward teams that fin­ish high­er in the stand­ings with ear­ly “byes,” allow­ing them to rest and pre­pare while teams fin­ish­ing low­er in the stand­ings must play one anoth­er for the right to face the high­er-seed­ed teams. In the SEC, the top four fin­ish­ers (includ­ing Kentucky this year) receive “dou­ble byes,” mean­ing they sit out the first two rounds of the tournament.

The top four seeds get extra rest and the priv­i­lege of need­ing only two vic­to­ries to reach the cham­pi­onship game, while the rest of the league must win three or four games to get there. On con­sec­u­tive days — leav­ing lit­tle time to pre­pare for the next opponent.

In the­o­ry, this makes per­fect sense. It should give the high­er seeds an advan­tage, right?

It cer­tain­ly didn’t work out that way this year! Of the SEC’s top four seed­ed teams — Tennessee, Kentucky, Auburn, and Alabama — only Auburn (the fourth seed) made it to the final game. They defeat­ed Florida to claim the con­fer­ence tour­na­ment title and the auto­mat­ic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Some coach­es and observers have not­ed that sit­ting out the first or sec­ond round may iron­i­cal­ly be a dis­ad­van­tage. One argu­ment for this view­point is the fact that too much time off the court can cause play­ers to get rusty. Kentucky, for exam­ple, had been idle for near­ly a week when they took the court against Texas A&M Friday night, while the Aggies had played the pre­vi­ous night.

I think the argu­ment has mer­it. And the SEC had a chance to try out a bet­ter sys­tem next year, although it failed to do so.

The SEC is adding two teams that defect­ed from the Big 12: Oklahoma and Texas. With the addi­tion of these two new­com­ers, the 2025 SEC tour­na­ment will include a con­ve­nient 16 teams. This would have been the per­fect chance to try out the same seed­ing sys­tem the NCAA uses to seed the four region­al divi­sions of its cham­pi­onship tournament. 

In that sys­tem, 16 teams par­tic­i­pate in each of the four region­al tour­neys. (Never mind the four “play-in” games that were added to accom­mo­date new auto­mat­ic con­fer­ence qual­i­fiers in 2011.)

Those 16 teams are seed­ed by the selec­tion com­mit­tee and are paired up to reward the high­er-seed­ed teams. The first round pits the top seed against the 16^th seed, the sec­ond against the 15^th, third against the 14^th, and so on.

Consider an alter­nate SEC tour­na­ment where all teams play every round (no byes,) and the seed­ing fol­lows the NCAA format. 

If that were done this year, Tennessee would have played Missouri, and Kentucky would have played Vanderbilt in the open­ing round. There is lit­tle doubt both UK and UT would have won those open­ing-round games and shak­en off any “jit­ters” before hav­ing to face tougher competition.

I think this suf­fi­cient­ly rewards the top-seed­ed teams for per­form­ing the best dur­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son while remov­ing any pos­si­ble dis­ad­van­tage of sit­ting out the first two rounds.

As I said, next year, the SEC will have 16 teams—a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for a new for­mat. However, the 2025 tour­ney will con­tin­ue the cur­rent for­mat, only adding two more games to accom­mo­date the new schools join­ing the conference.

From the SEC web­site: “All 16 teams will com­pete in a sin­gle-elim­i­na­tion for­mat, con­sis­tent with the cur­rent for­mat but with two addi­tion­al games. The top four seed­ed teams will con­tin­ue to receive a bye through the first two rounds of the tournament.”

I won­der how many coach­es and admin­is­tra­tors of the tra­di­tion­al con­fer­ence pow­ers were in favor of this. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I would at least like to see an alter­nate for­mat tried out.

I sup­pose all this depends on the goal—to crown the most deserv­ing cham­pi­on (make it fair­er) or to have the most excit­ing tour­na­ment (the cur­rent sys­tem is working).