South Carolina and Texas seem like two of one of the best groups within the nation in girls’s faculty basketball. Every are within the high 5 of the most recent AP Ballot, every have paths to safe No. 1 seeds within the NCAA Event, and each rank extremely nationally in offensive and defensive metrics.
However the Gamecocks and Longhorns ended the common season with similar data, 15-1, in Southeastern Convention play. South Carolina beat Texas in Columbia, then the Longhorns obtained revenge over the Gamecocks in Austin.
So, there was a tiebreaker protocol to comply with in figuring out who would get the No. 1 total seed within the SEC Event, which begins in Greenville, S.C., later this week. Some conferences have a number of steps and metrics to get by means of earlier than they provide option to likelihood and destiny to find out the seeding. The ACC, for instance, has 5 tie-breaking situations it makes use of for soccer. The Large Ten has a number of parameters laid out for its basketball tournaments too.
In the meantime, the SEC has only a two-step course of within the occasion of a two-team tie atop the standings:
- Head-to-head outcomes
- Win-loss file of the 2 groups versus the No. 1 seed (and continuing by means of the No. 14 seed, if obligatory)
That’s it. And since South Carolina and Texas didn’t lose every other SEC video games, the convention instantly moved to its third choice, which was:
Sure, actually. Right here’s the way it performed out on Sunday:
Predictably, South Carolina celebrated whereas Texas felt robbed. Particularly, Longhorns coach Vic Schaefer was miffed by SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey’s declare that he practiced the coin flip for 2 hours.
“So what was he working towards? Was he working towards for South Carolina to be heads up or Texas to be heads up?” Schaefer instructed the AP. “I imply, why do it’s a must to follow for 2 hours? What are you attempting to get achieved?”
Utilizing a coin flip to find out the No. 1 total seed in a Energy 4 convention match in 2025 feels lazy, on the very least. There are various qualifiers and statistics that would’ve been used to find out the end result.
Right here’s a number of situations the SEC may’ve used to determine this factor out as a substitute:
- General file (Texas wins)
- Margin of victory (South Carolina wins)
- Document towards Quad 1 opponents (South Carolina wins)
- Profitable proportion towards the highest 100 groups within the NET (Texas wins)
As a substitute of doing all that math although, Sankey and the SEC did what they do finest: they made everybody concentrate. They turned a easy coin flip right into a tv spectacle. For a couple of minutes on Sunday, the SEC commanded consideration. Girls’s basketball followers tweeted in regards to the coin flip and discuss radio hosts had rants about it.
Certainly, it simply means extra.
So, mission achieved, Mr. Sankey.
However for those who actually wish to drive up the scores subsequent time, don’t simply accept a coin flip. Give us a free throw contest or sport of HORSE between the coaches of the 2 groups tied on the high. Let on-line sportbooks run betting strains on it.
In fact, the favourite would’ve been Daybreak Staley.
Possibly the coin flip turned out the way it was imagined to in spite of everything.
