South Carolina and Texas appear to be two of the very best groups within the nation in girls’s faculty basketball. Every are within the high 5 of the newest AP Ballot, every have paths to safe No. 1 seeds within the NCAA Match, and each rank extremely nationally in offensive and defensive metrics.
However the Gamecocks and Longhorns ended the common season with an identical data, 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 comply with in figuring out who would get the No. 1 total seed within the SEC Match, which begins in Greenville, S.C., later this week. Some conferences have a number of steps and metrics to get by earlier than they offer option to probability and destiny to find out the seeding. The ACC, for instance, has 5 tie-breaking eventualities it makes use of for soccer. The Massive Ten has a couple 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 document of the 2 groups versus the No. 1 seed (and continuing by the No. 14 seed, if needed)
That’s it. And since South Carolina and Texas didn’t lose another 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 practising? Was he practising 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 making an attempt to get completed?”
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 lots of qualifiers and statistics that would’ve been used to find out the result.
Right here’s a couple of eventualities the SEC might’ve used to determine this factor out as a substitute:
- General document (Texas wins)
- Margin of victory (South Carolina wins)
- Report in opposition to Quad 1 opponents (South Carolina wins)
- Profitable share in opposition to 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 greatest: they made everybody listen. 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 discuss radio hosts had rants about it.
Certainly, it simply means extra.
So, mission completed, Mr. Sankey.
However when you actually need to drive up the rankings subsequent time, don’t simply accept a coin flip. Give us a free throw contest or recreation of HORSE between the coaches of the 2 groups tied on the high. Let on-line sportbooks run betting strains on it.
After all, the favourite would’ve been Daybreak Staley.
Perhaps the coin flip turned out the way it was speculated to in spite of everything.