Committee Forgiving Losses for Missing Key Players

[bballnut90]

I've never fully understood how this works or how the NCAA forgives/penalizes teams for losing games if they have key players missing, but I believe this does happen in most years. This season is going to be incredibly difficult to quantify missing players though. Most teams in the 6-20 range have had top players out in key games which likely contributed to their team losing. Worth noting, all of the top 5 teams (SC, Stanford, NC State, Baylor, Louisville) have been fortunate to keep healthy rosters all year, at least among starters.

If you look at the losses where key players were out (but who will be back for the NCAAs) it's going to be a hot mess for the NCAA to figure out how they want to handle these situations.

Losses that may be forgiven:
UCONN- losses to Georgia Tech, Oregon, Louisville and Villanova were without Bueckers. All other losses (aside from SC) were missing other contributors as well.

Iowa-losses to Michigan/Maryland were without McKenna Warnock

LSU-loss to Kentucky was without Alexis Morris

Iowa State-loss to Texas was without Ashley Joens

Indiana-losses to Nebraska and Michigan were without Mackenzie Holmes.

Michigan-Leigha Brown was out for Northwestern and Michigan State losses.

Maryland-Diamond Miller was out for losses to NC State, Stanford and South Carolina.

Kentucky-Dre Edwards was out for losses to DePaul, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss and Florida

Arizona-losses to Washington State, UCLA and Colorado were without Cate Reese. Loss to USC was without Shaina Pellington



All of these teams were missing their #1 or #2 player for key games. If you look at Arizona for example, they're 20-3 with healthy rosters...so do you just ignore those 4 losses to unranked teams? What about Kentucky who is 18-7 with Edwards playing and that wipes out almost all of their bad losses? And with UCONN, they've only had Bueckers for 1/3 of their games and have only played 2 ranked teams with her, so how does the committee assess how good UCONN is? Not an easy task for the committee this year.

 

[CTBballfan243]

The committee doesn’t forgive losses.

 

[sweetspot]

TT Exclusive: A conversation with a member of the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee

Oregon deputy athletic director Lisa Peterson provided insight on Maryland and the national scale just days before the postseason begins.

www.testudotimes.com

Looking at some of the criteria for at-large bids, availability of talent is one of them. How much is that factoring in this year, considering teams are playing certain games with certain players missing, not just Maryland, but obviously across the country?

That’s what makes it really challenging is because you see it, right. I don’t think that there are very many teams that you look at that don’t have maybe one or two games that people are missing, right, whether for whatever reason. And certainly that’s been like that in the past, there’s been injuries and things like that. But with COVID and all those things, it does make it a little bit different, and I think that’s what’s one of the more challenging things. Do you assume that if those players were available, that the outcome would be different, and it’s hard to not think that way, but it’s also, you can’t forget the fact that they didn’t win that game if that happened to be the case. I think that when we get to selections for the tournament, I think if somebody is not going to be back for the tournament, that could definitely have an impact. But hopeful that teams are getting people back. Obviously, there’s some injuries and things like that, which is normal, but hopeful that COVID doesn’t have a negative impact on all of that. We talk about it, we have conferences to tell us when people have missed, it’s definitely part of the conversation, for sure.

 

[LETTERL]

I've never fully understood how this works or how the NCAA forgives/penalizes teams for losing games if they have key players missing, but I believe this does happen in most years. This season is going to be incredibly difficult to quantify missing players though. Most teams in the 6-20 range have had top players out in key games which likely contributed to their team losing. Worth noting, all of the top 5 teams (SC, Stanford, NC State, Baylor, Louisville) have been fortunate to keep healthy rosters all year, at least among starters.

NC State was without Jada Boyd (last season's 6th Man of the Year in the ACC) in the opening game against South Carolina, and starter Kayla Jones played limited minutes as she recuperated from a knee injury.

Would we have won that game if KJ was able to play the whole game, and if Boyd's physicality was available to battle the Gamecock bigs? We'll never know.

 

[Gamecockfan77]

I've never fully understood how this works or how the NCAA forgives/penalizes teams for losing games if they have key players missing, but I believe this does happen in most years. This season is going to be incredibly difficult to quantify missing players though. Most teams in the 6-20 range have had top players out in key games which likely contributed to their team losing. Worth noting, all of the top 5 teams (SC, Stanford, NC State, Baylor, Louisville) have been fortunate to keep healthy rosters all year, at least among starters.

If you look at the losses where key players were out (but who will be back for the NCAAs) it's going to be a hot mess for the NCAA to figure out how they want to handle these situations.

Losses that may be forgiven:
UCONN- losses to Georgia Tech, Oregon, Louisville and Villanova were without Bueckers. All other losses (aside from SC) were missing other contributors as well.

Iowa-losses to Michigan/Maryland were without McKenna Warnock

LSU-loss to Kentucky was without Alexis Morris

Iowa State-loss to Texas was without Ashley Joens

Indiana-losses to Nebraska and Michigan were without Mackenzie Holmes.

Michigan-Leigha Brown was out for Northwestern and Michigan State losses.

Maryland-Diamond Miller was out for losses to NC State, Stanford and South Carolina.

Kentucky-Dre Edwards was out for losses to DePaul, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss and Florida

Arizona-losses to Washington State, UCLA and Colorado were without Cate Reese. Loss to USC was without Shaina Pellington



All of these teams were missing their #1 or #2 player for key games. If you look at Arizona for example, they're 20-3 with healthy rosters...so do you just ignore those 4 losses to unranked teams? What about Kentucky who is 18-7 with Edwards playing and that wipes out almost all of their bad losses? And with UCONN, they've only had Bueckers for 1/3 of their games and have only played 2 ranked teams with her, so how does the committee assess how good UCONN is? Not an easy task for the committee this year.

Most of the top teams haven't lost games when they had starters out.

I'm sure all of them have missed them here and there.

 

[Phil]

Is Reese expected back?

 

[TerpWomenFan]

Is Reese expected back?

You never know. But if you're talking about Angel Reese, she's very close to Diamond Miller who will be back for her senior year. Also, she is good friends with new recruit Lavender Briggs who will be there for two years. Also, her brother is at Maryland and is a rotation player and she is very supportive of him. No worries on Angel Reese.

 

[Plebe]

That’s what makes it really challenging is because you see it, right. I don’t think that there are very many teams that you look at that don’t have maybe one or two games that people are missing, right, whether for whatever reason. And certainly that’s been like that in the past, there’s been injuries and things like that. But with COVID and all those things, it does make it a little bit different, and I think that’s what’s one of the more challenging things. Do you assume that if those players were available, that the outcome would be different, and it’s hard to not think that way, but it’s also, you can’t forget the fact that they didn’t win that game if that happened to be the case. I think that when we get to selections for the tournament, I think if somebody is not going to be back for the tournament, that could definitely have an impact. But hopeful that teams are getting people back. Obviously, there’s some injuries and things like that, which is normal, but hopeful that COVID doesn’t have a negative impact on all of that. We talk about it, we have conferences to tell us when people have missed, it’s definitely part of the conversation, for sure.

LOL long on words and short on substance.

Summary: We talk about it and it's hard.

 

[sweetspot]

You never know. But if you're talking about Angel Reese, she's very close to Diamond Miller who will be back for her senior year. Also, she is good friends with new recruit Lavender Briggs who will be there for two years. Also, her brother is at Maryland and is a rotation player and she is very supportive of him. No worries on Angel Reese.

I think they were asking about Arizona's Cate Reese.

 

[triaddukefan]

Duke lost to State, VPI, Our Neighbors, Louisville, and Georgia Tech without our best Player... and our Coach for those last three games.

 

[CompSci87]

I think they were asking about Arizona's Cate Reese.

I believe Cate Reese is expected back from her injury in time for the NCAA tournament.

 

[Vowelguy]

Because of the volume of injuries and illnesses this year, I think it would be very hard to account for them all.
I would guess that it’s gonna to need to be pretty significant to be incorporated.

 

[JavaMan]

Well, at least the tournament won't be pushed back for two weeks because all parties can't come to a mutual agreement.

 

[mbr33ct]

This is probably a preemptive strike by the NCAA prior to brackets are revealed...meaning to probably expect the unexpected when team seeds and placements are revealed (more than the usual).

 

[BrianF]

LOL long on words and short on substance.

Summary: We talk about it and it's hard

" I think that when we get to selections for the tournament, I think if somebody is not going to be back for the tournament, that could definitely have an impact. "

That confirms what I've long believed. If you lose a key player for the tournament, you will be downgraded in seeding.

However, I've never seen an example of a team move up in seed because they got injured players back.

They seed on your record if you get players back, then down seed if you have players out.

 

[sun]

I posted about this topic yesterday in another BY thread:

I think that folks have taken the committee's consideration for injuries out of context.
I previously posted a Q&A reference where a committee member was asked if injuries are considered.
And IIRC it had to do with an injury at Colorado.
His answer was with respect to injured players being available for the tournament.
He did not mention that they would cancel or predict who would have won regular season games due to injuries at all.
He said to the effect that if there were a tie among teams that were on the bubble, that the committee could look at injuries to players that wouldn't be available for the tournament.
He said that generally they wouldn't want to discriminate against a team with a good record that now has a major injury to a star player.
But that it could be a consideration because player availability due to injury is a factor that the committee could consider.
This is only my recollection from a single answer or two that he stated in response to a specific question about if player injuries were considered by the committee.
But since then, posters here have greatly tried to expand the committee member's answer to include all loses during the season due to injuries for each and every team.
That wasn't the context of what I posted at all.
Perhaps folks are reading rules that I don't know about.
Maybe there's a catch all criterion that allows the committee to do whatever they want.
But I doubt that's the reality when the injury criterion is put into practice.
I think that the criterion is limited to injured player availability during the tournament only.
And I'm pretty sure that he said it could affect seeding, but generally not selection.

 

[DEpup]

Because of the volume of injuries and illnesses this year, I think it would be very hard to account for them all.
I would guess that it’s gonna to need to be pretty significant to be incorporated.

Maybe they just need to give the few teams with no injuries some penalty points....