Thoughts on the Tourney: Let the Midmajor Backlash Begin!

I'm hitting a rough patch at work right now, so I've got little to no time. Quick thoughts on the tourney, though:

• I don't get all the mid-major love. Yeah, they've had a good tourney, landing 4-5 teams in the sweet sixteen, depending on your opinion of the A-10 conference (my opinion: Xavier is a "major" team playing in a midmajor conference). But 3 of the teams caught pretty big breaks on their way. Butler topped two weak midmajor teams (barely, I might add). Cornell drew two teams that were practically duplicates of each other, and happened to match up extremely well against that particular team profile. St. Mary's, the absolutely inexplicable sweet 16 entrant, beat a decent Richmond team and then a Villanova team that collapsed on itself about two weeks earlier (which nearly dropped a game to Robert Morris in the first round). Northern Iowa is the only team I would really call a "surprise", beating a decent UNLV team before shocking a lethargic Kansas squad. In the round of 16, St. Mary's and Cornell were absolutely crushed while Northern Iowa was nipped by an injury-laden Michigan State team. Even Butler, the midmajor darling, beat an injured Syracuse team lacking an inside presence that couldn't hit a three to save their lives before beating Kansas State team in the closing minutes, a Wildcat team that was coming off one day's rest after a 50 minute sprint against Xavier.
• So, in summary, a bunch of midmajors caught a bunch of breaks to advance deeper than expected. It's pretty simple reasoning, but that hasn't stopped the sportsmedia from ginning up the old "midmajors deserve more tournament births" meme. This has happened every few years for the past 15 years or so, just think back to 2006 when 3 midmajors (George Mason, Wichita St., and Bradley) made the sweet sixteen and the same story was plastered over newspapers across the country (of course, this time it's plastered on big-media hosted blogs, but I digress...).
• I realize that everyone loves a good underdog and in principle, I'm in favor of including as many deserving midmajors as possible. Thing is, the committee actually did a pretty good job of including midmajors this year. Yes, Florida and Minnesota were extremely weak teams, but can you name any midmajors that were more deserving? I can think of one, maybe: Dayton. That's it. The committee whiffs on one team while including UTEP, St. Mary's, San Diego St., Utah St., and Richmond. Not a bad job if you ask me, and I'm ignoring possibly more deserving teams from major conferences. As much as I slagged them, Virginia Tech had a good argument for getting in, probably better than Florida/Minnesota/St. Mary's/Richmond.
• I've read an article or two about the proposed 96-team tournament. A lot of the waffling from conference officials seems to revolve around whether the extra slots would go to midmajor teams or middle-tier major conference teams. My retort: who cares? Any of those teams might be capable of stringing a couple of wins together every couple of years, but none of them will be very good.
• The best argument I've read in favor of an expanded tournament is that it would allow for both regular season and conference tournament champions to play in the big dance. This is a pretty big deal for lower-rung conferences where a dominant team during the season can be suddenly left out 'cause they played one poor game in the conference tourney. Problem with this argument is Ken Pomeroy crunched the numbers, and it turns out that the conference tournament does a pretty good job of selecting the best team, with the added bonus of providing a good means of selecting a team when several are bunched together at the top of the standings.
• Back to the Final Four. Let's be clear, I like Butler: they play excellent fundamentals, they have a stats-oriented coach, and they have a lot of great individual stories. And I'll probably end up rooting for them when all is said and done. But, lost among all the Butler-love, they aren't really one of the best teams in the country and it's not particularly close. They are riding an incredible string of breaks and close victories. And they catch yet another break by drawing Michigan State in the semi-finals, another good but not top-shelf team (to be clear, an injury-free MSU team is probably a top-shelf team) that is riding their own streak of close victories and relatively easy opponents to the final four (when the best team you've played in four games is Maryland, yeah...Tom Izzo is a genius if you put stock into a superpower that forces higher seeds to lose right before you play them). Now, this is what is great about the tournament; catch a few breaks, seize a few opportunities and you find yourself playing in the Final Four. But let's not get caught up in the hype, this does not herald Butler's rise to the upper echelons of college basketball. They obviously appear to be in better shape long-term than say George Mason was in 2006, but let's not get carried away and expect them to duplicate this feat anytime soon.
• Finally, Butler's run is a painful reminder of Clemson's 2007 tourney draw. Uggh...think about the draw we could have had: #12 seed Villanova, #13 seed Siena, #1 Kansas, and #10 Davidson. Yeah, we probably get past Kansas 1 out of 10 times or something, but 3 out of 4 games against double-digit seeds to get to the final four? Can we travel back in time and pull the press after the first 10 minutes of the Villanova game?