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2016 NCAA Tournament: Twitter reacts to Tulsa snagging bid over Monmouth, St. Bonaventure

It's just not fair, I tell you.

By Nicolas A. Lewis
Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

When it comes to teams getting snubbed, you can probably spin any argument in any direction you want to reach a goal, but it's always a little awkward when your presence in the tournament is a surprise to your own team. So, while I can certainly appreciate the pure joy of a moment like this...:

...I personally think it seems a little bit awkward when you compare it to something like this:

That's Golden Hurricane senior point guard Shaq Harrison, stating as recently as 15 hours ago that there was no way Tulsa would get into the tournament. And yet there they are, in as a #11 seed to face Michigan in a First Four matchup.

Some people disagreed slightly with this concept:

Some appealed to their favorite higher power for some justice or reason.

Even Dan Dakich was perplexed, which is saying something.

But this little nugget of knowledge is quite possibly my favorite:

Now, obviously, bracketologists are not the one who select the teams, otherwise, they would be called "the selection committee." That being said, they stake their reputation on being able to predict the field of 68 as accurately as they can, and it is rare for them to have either a large number of misses or a particular team that they miss very badly on.

Read that again; almost five dozen brackets from bracketologists around the country, and none of them had Tulsa in the tournament. That's rather glaring evidence that the committee dropped the ball if you ask me.

Who got jobbed the worst? Well, according to the Bracket Matrix, that would be St. Bonaventure, who was anywhere from an 8-seed to an 11-seed on 52 of those 59 brackets. If you want to take it a step further, St. Mary's was included on 38 of these 59 brackets, but instead, we got Vanderbilt who appeared on only 19 of them.

Things got even better when Little Caesar's corporate scape-goat Chet Wallaby Selection Committee scape-goat Joe Castiglione was brought on the air to explain the reasons why teams like St. Bonaventure, Monmouth and others were left out of the bracket.

I will cut him a little bit of slack for this tom-foolery because he is attempting to answer for the opinions of far more people than himself, but he did far more harm than good.

He essentially informed us that if you aren't from a power conference or The American, you need to be perfect in conference play if you want to get to the dance without an auto-bid. Except if you are a team with a tournament history like Wichita State or VCU.

Which creates interesting little data points like this one:

I don't care if they were the last team in the tournament because there were numerous more deserving candidates. I can't say I disagree with Mr. Glockner here:

Better luck next year to the MAAC, A-10 and all the other small leagues. Time to start focusing on going undefeated instead, I guess.

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