March Madness 2015: Five biggest snubs from Selection Sunday

Mar 14, 2015; Hartford, CT, USA; Southern Methodist Mustangs forward Markus Kennedy (5) reacts after defeating the Temple Owls in the second half during the semifinal round of the American Conference Tournament at XL Center. SMU defeated Temple 69-56. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports /

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Mar 14, 2015; Hartford, CT, USA; Temple Owls guard Jesse Morgan (3) returns the ball against Southern Methodist Mustangs guard Ryan Manuel (1) and guard Sterling Brown (3) in the first half during the semifinal round of the American Conference Tournament at XL Center. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports /

Temple

Maybe a 77-52 beat-down of Kansas shouldn’t count for everything, but it’s a quality win which a lot of the teams who made the Tournament lacked and of the other teams which made the tournament as an 11 seed didn’t have anything close.

Add to that a 13-5 conference record, eight top-100 wins, a nice run in the AAC Tournament (beating Tourney team Cincinnati on the way) and an RPI of 34 and suddenly you should be wondering just how in the name of March Madness the Owls are home.

The truth is, Temple isn’t from a Power-5 league and also had an awful loss to Saint Joseph’s—not a team you want to lose to if you have NCAA aspirations. It could also be the mediocrity overall of the AAC, which is top-heavy with talent and bottom-heavy with weakness.

Then again, if it didn’t drag the RPI down, why should it keep them out of the conference? And why should they be punished for being brave enough to take on teams like Duke, Villanova and Kansas?

This is a huge issue I have with football by the way—you are never rewarded for testing yourself, especially early and if you lose, you are often punished.

Temple had a lot to offer the tournament, certainly more than Ole Miss, Indiana and Texas. But we’ll never know if they had enough talent to make noise in the tournament since the selection committee clearly favored the Power-5.

Temple had a very good season and should have been rewarded for it, but instead the Owls are going to be watching the tournament at home like the rest of us, hate-filling out their brackets and likely writing in ‘hit by meteor’ or ‘attacked by swarm of bees’ in some of the open slots.

Personally I think ‘attacked by swarm of bees’ will make a strong run to the Sweet 16.

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