NCAA Invites should go to best conference record

In a stretch from 2005 to 2007, Greg Jackson's Delaware State Hornets were the toast of the MEAC, winning 32 of a possible 36 league games over that two-year span. Yet they were never able to go dancing. That's because the NCAA mistakenly rewards teams for reeling off three or four consecutive wins in a conference tournament rather than handing out a bid to the NCAA tournament for a body of work compiled in more than three months. Makes no sense.

Delaware State University Hornets men's head basketball coach Greg Jackson.

"The NCAA needs to change it," Jackson said. "One team gets hot and all you've done is null and void." Sure, the NCAA recently implemented a rule in which any team that wins their regular-season title receives an automatic bid to the NIT. But what kid these days grows up with dreams of playing in the NIT? No one. Delaware State was 16-2 in league play in 2005-06 but watched a Hampton team that was 10-8 in conference action go to the NCAA tournament. The next season the Hornets finished with an identical mark yet this time it was Florida A&M and its 12-6 mark that wound up getting automatic inclusion via three wins in March.

It wasn't the only time that Florida A&M pulled the upset either. The Rattlers were 12-19 overall back in 1999 and pulled off the upset to win the league tournament and get into the Big Dance.

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