South Carolina and Texas seem like two of the very best groups within the nation in ladies’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 information, 15-1, in Southeastern Convention play. South Carolina beat Texas in Columbia, then the Longhorns received revenge over the Gamecocks in Austin.
So, there was a tiebreaker protocol to observe 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 earlier than they provide approach to probability 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 just a few 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 the No. 14 seed, if crucial)
That’s it. And since South Carolina and Texas didn’t lose another SEC video games, the convention instantly moved to its third possibility, 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 practising? Was he practising for South Carolina to be heads up or Texas to be heads up?” Schaefer advised the AP. “I imply, why do it’s a must to follow for 2 hours? What are you making an attempt 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 numerous qualifiers and statistics that might’ve been used to find out the end result.
Right here’s just a few 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 in opposition to Quad 1 opponents (South Carolina wins)
- Successful proportion in opposition to the highest 100 groups within the NET (Texas wins)
As an alternative of doing all that math although, Sankey and the SEC did what they do greatest: 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. Ladies’s basketball followers tweeted in regards to the coin flip and speak radio hosts had rants about it.
Certainly, it simply means extra.
So, mission achieved, Mr. Sankey.
However when you actually need 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 traces on it.
After all, the favourite would’ve been Daybreak Staley.
Perhaps the coin flip turned out the way it was presupposed to in spite of everything.
