Todd asks:

Who wins the regular season title if Georgetown and Pittsburgh win their last game? What is the tiebreaker to determine top seed in the Big East Tournament?

The official tiebreaker rules are a bit confusing, so we’ll break it down for you here at BigEastHoops.com.

If the Hoyas and Panthers both win their last game, they’ll have the same regular season record at 13-3. The rules say we have to look next at head-to-head matchups. Here, they’re tied as well. Pittsburgh beat Georgetown on 1/13 and Georgetown beat Pittsburgh on 2/24.

Now it gets tricky. Basically, the rules say to see whether Pitt or Georgetown had a better showing against the better competition. Technically, this is what that means: we look down the Big East standings and consider Georgetown and Pittsburgh’s records versus the team (or teams) that occupy the next spot (and keep on proceeding if we still can’t break a tie). Let’s call that team(s) A. The rules to break a tie are:

1. If G’town and Pitt have both played the same number of games against A, the team with the better winning percentage prevails.
2. If G’town and Pitt have played a different number of games against A, the team with the better record prevails only if the team with the fewer number of games against A could not equal the same record as the team with more games against A if they played more games.
   • Example 1: Pitt is 0-2 vs. A, while Georgetown is 0-0 vs. A. Even though Georgetown has a better record against A, if they played two more games against A, they could end up at 0-2. So better record does not prevail here.
   • Example 2: Pitt is 2-1 vs. A, while Georgetown is 1-3 vs. A. Pitt has a better record vs. A, and even if Pitt played another game, they’d still end up with a better record. So better record does prevail here.

   If the tie still isn’t broken after this, we go through the whole thing again (going down the positions in the Big East standings), but just consider better record (2-0 beats 1-0) instead of the rules above, with the exception that no record (0-0) is not considered better than anything (0-1, for instance). After that…coin flip.

What does that mean for the games tonight, Saturday, and Sunday? If Louisville stays in third place (and they play Seton Hall, so I think they will), and Georgetown and Pitt both win on Saturday, Georgetown will have the tie breaker. Georgetown is 1-0 vs. Louisville, while Pittsburgh is 0-1 vs. Louisville — same number of games, better record prevails. Now, if Louisville loses to Seton Hall, it gets a lot more complicated….but it turns out that Georgetown will still have the tie breaker. Roughly, this occurs because Louisville needs to end up with the same record as Syracuse, since G’town and Pitt have the same record against Louisville and Syracuse combined (otherwise, G’town wins the tiebreaker due to Louisville, even if Louisvile ties with ND). But this requires Syracuse to beat Villanova, which leaves Marquette ahead of Villanova in the standings. Pitt lost to Marquette, while Georgetown beat them. QED.

These rules make sense, but honestly, I think there might be a loophole in here somewhere. It’s not easy making these rules watertight, and many leagues have weird playoff structures where losing a game can often get you ahead. Here are two interesting links if you’re interested in these phenomena:

1. Soccer team advanced in cup match by scoring against itself: Snopes, baby! Basically, the rule said that larger margin victories were better than smaller margin victories. Barbados needed a 2 goal victory, and were only up 1 goal at the time. It turned out that if a team won in overtime, the game would be scored as “2-0″. So Barbados ended up scoring a goal against themselves, winning the overtime and pulling off a 2-0 victory. Now that’s clutch.
2. All things considered: That’s right, I’m going NPR on your asses. It’s an audio transcript, with the following description:
   

   Fans looking for high-quality basketball may wish to avoid the game between the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies. It’s not the teams’ talent: Both teams are playoff-bound. But in a strange quirk of the NBA post-season, both the Clippers and Grizzlies stand to benefit from losing the game.

Categories: Commentary, Georgetown, donald, Pittsburgh