Bitter Baltimoron

Since baseball introduced interleague play in 1997, no major professional American postseason offers too much of a surprise for its contestants. There are no rule changes to deal with and the teams competing are familiar with each others’ styles because they play each other annually. Every team in the American League now has plenty of experience with pitchers batting, and National League clubs have to use designated hitters for about nine games a year when playing in American League parks. AFC and NFC teams have played each other since the merger of 1970, and before then the Eastern and Western conference teams saw each other in the regular season. Basketball and hockey have always had open leagues, and even though the NHL has an unbalanced schedule now the teams competing in the postseason have some sort of experience against the players and style of the teams they’re playing against.

Due to the lack of games, plethora of teams, and conference play, NCAA sports are the place in the American arena for matchups of relative unknown styles. For the major programs, the first half of the season usually contains a couple of games against strong non-conference opponents and a bunch of filler games against local smaller schools. Once conference play kicks in, the teams that play each other every year will play each other up to three times before entering the NCAA tournament. Because in-conference games make up the bulk of the season, teams have to be built to play and win inside of their conference. A successful tournament team, however, has to be able to adapt and succeed against a variety of styles that they may have never seen inside of their particular conference.

Some teams are dominant within their conference, but continually lose in the NCAA tournament to teams that they appear to outmatch on paper. Focusing on the Big Ten, where the in-conference games are played at an unusually slow and grinding rate in comparison to the other BCS conferences, there is a large variance between the team that has dominated the conference over the past seven years and the teams’ success in the NCAA tournament. Since Bo Ryan became their coach seven years ago, Wisconsin has won the big ten three times and finished second twice. The farthest Wisconsin got as the Big Ten champion was the Sweet Sixteen, and when placing second in the conference, they only reached the second round of the national tournament. The Badgers have made the elite eight under Bo Ryan, and at times looked dominant when their shots were falling, but outranked athletic teams consistently have run them out of the tournament. Wisconsin can play in the Big Ten, and even dominate the league, but they have failed to show the versatility to make a legitimate run at the NCAA title.

Michigan State, however, is consistently a lethal threat who yearly provides upsets of teams that outseed them in the tournament. Tom Izzo’s Spartans have gone to the Elite Eight and Final Four in the last seven years, without ever representing the Big Ten as its champion. It’s true that the Spartans have lost their first game, and been upset before, but their in-conference records are usually 10-6 compared to Wisconsin’s dominant 13-3, 12-4 and last year’s 16-2 mark. Going back some to the four years when Michigan State was the dominant team in the Big Ten, the Spartans put on an incredible run through the tournament making three straight Final Fours and taking home a National Championship. In the five seasons when Izzo’s Spartans won at least 13 games in the Big Ten, they made four Final Fours. Ryan’s Badgers have won 13 games in the Big Ten twice, but only reached as far as the Sweet Sixteen in the process.

Michigan state’s teams always have a few athletic players who can play enough with the athletic players of an unseen ACC opponent to replicate their in-conference dominance on the national level. Bo Ryan’s Badgers haven’t had that player since Devin Harris went to the draft, and consistently lack an athletic threat to keep them in games when another team is running and playing out of the Big Ten’s mold.

During March Madness, we see teams who are used to playing particular styles for their final 18-20 games forced to switch gears in the national tournament, then learn and adapt to different tempos and defensive zones. The only professional sports competition that offers a similar situation is the UEFA Champions League competition (and UEFA cup, but for now I’ll ignore that as soccer’s equivalent to the NIT). The top teams of Europe spend an entire season competing in their respective countries, with their own referees and tempos, then play against each other in a competition that brings in foreign teams and styles, foreign referees and a new sense of tournament urgency that is lacking in the season-long pennant race that is league play.

Playing in a conference, or league, naturally leads to teams being built around the styles that work within the conference. For example, Big Ten basketball is historically a slow, half court game, where the ACC has more teams that like to run and play a more uptempo style. In the soccer world, the English league promotes methodical drives as opposed to the high speed styles of the Spanish league. It’s understood that referees in the English League are less likely to blow their whistles, where in the continental countries the slightest touch by a defender can draw the official’s eye. In a sport with such little scoring, one call can have a larger effect on the game than in any other sport. In this year’s Champions League Liverpool has advanced against what were supposed to be two superior opponents in Inter and Arsenal, however in both draws the English side used key flops to take advantage of the European whistles.

In the last four competitions Liverpool has both won the Champions League trophy and finished as a runner-up, consistently outperforming its Premiership brothern in international competition. Earlier in this season, while Liverpool was beating European teams in early Champions League games, they were struggling to obtain the fourth position in the Premier League to assure that they would return to the Champions League competition. In fact, Liverpool finished no higher than third in their domestic standings while making their recent runs at the International trophy. I believe it to be more than a fluke that Liverpool’s been successful where Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal have not been.