ohiovalleycat

Vanderbilt 2022-23 basketball feels like the student with a C- underclassman GPA who rallied to get their final GPA up to a B- in a bid to get to grad school. Unfortunately, they are competing against other teams for the final tourney spots who have B+ averages. Vanderbilt's NET score (81) is very weak, but they are deservedly on the bubble and could still get in based on non-computer ratings factors like the eye test.

The limited non-conference play severely restricts how well the committee can assess team strength of schedule, because you really can't tell how strong a conference really is. If a team is very good this year it could be they really are good, but it might also be they are very good against their conference and their conference could be weak or in-between. I think they should at consider picking the 4 teams for the playoff after the bowl games. What I am saying is let the conference champions revert to their conference champions' traditional bowl tie-in such as the SEC Champ going to the Sugar Bowl or the Rose Bowl taking the champs from the Big Ten and Pac 12. This would allow for at least one game against a top tier team from another conference for each team under consideration for the playoff. The bowl season as a whole, including a conference's middle-tier teams, would also build some meat into the strength of schedule metric. For those Independents or Group of Five teams that are doing well this year (ie. Cincinnati, BYU), it would be interesting to see how they match up against a Power 5 opponent before strongly considering them for a playoff position. Moving the CFP back might also help with making up some important intra-conference games. So I would say move the playoff for competitive reasons, but it don't have to be to February and they don't have to compete with the NFL. The NFL Playoffs are on Saturdays and Sundays in January. They could play CFP semifinals on a Friday and keep the championship on a Monday. For example, the semifinals could be on January 15 and the championship could be on January 25.