Lunardi's Blind Spot

Continuing down this Duke - UConn thread, Joe Lunardi weighs in in Bracketology about UConn's non-conference SOS. In particular, he rips UConn (among others) for their light non-conference schedule. In UConn's case, it is the December "Tour of New England" I have written about before.

I am not sure if Lunardi's point is that the Selection Committee does things this way and he agrees with them or that the Selection Committee does things this way and he does not agree. I suspect it is the former because a) his schtick (Bracketology) requires him to anticipate the Committee and it helps if your biases are consistent with the Committee's and b) he just writes with such conviction on the subject.

So....

Duke sneaks past another conference opponent as UConn get set to play Syracuse tonight. Lunardi still gives the overall #1 seed to Duke and states "How close are UConn and Duke at this point? Both won at Indiana by exactly eight points." He clearly did not watch the two games. With Duke/Indiana, IU was actually up one with 6:40 left in the game and Duke's largest lead was around 10 points. With UConn/Indiana, Indiana got no closer then 6 and IU struggled to get back to the 8 point difference. But other then that, I guess the games were equal.

UConn has a tough schedule ahead: after Syracuse, they have a resurgent Seton Hall, two games against #4 'Nova, #10 West Virginia and Notre Dame. The chances of UConn winning all of these are small. Does that make them less worthy of a #1 seed?

I will again add that I think Duke (regardless of the strength of the ACC) and UConn are number 1 seeds at this point and am not sure EITHER Duke or UConn will cut down the nets in April, but come on Joe Lunardi you get paid to analyze not just read the box score and say "those teams are equal."