High Point head coach Flynn Clayman used his moment after Thursday’s Round of 64 upset over Wisconsin to fight for mid-major basketball.
A fired-up Clayman, whose 12th-seeded Panthers knocked off the No. 5 Badgers in Portland, pushed back on the idea that teams outside the power conferences do not deserve the benefit of the doubt because of their so-called weaker schedules.
“It looks pretty obvious to me that high-majors need to play mid-majors early in the season,” Clayman said in his on-court interview. “Because they said we didn’t play nobody. We played somebody now.”
Clayman also pointed to Miami (Ohio), which barely made the tournament despite going 31-1 before beating ACC foe SMU in the First Four to set up a matchup with Tennessee.
“Nobody would play us. Just like they wouldn’t play Miami (Ohio),” Clayman said. “But they gotta play us in this tournament.”
It’s an issue that comes up every March, as teams from conferences like the SEC and ACC often make it in or earn better seeds despite piling up far more losses than dominant mid-majors.
Clayman carried that frustration into his postgame press conference.
“It’s pretty obvious to me that something needs to be done about this non-conference scheduling,” Clayman said. “High Point and Miami (Ohio) are 2-0 in Quad 1 games. We couldn’t get games. They couldn’t get games. We won 22 of our last 23 games, and we didn’t move up one spot in the metrics. Not one.”
High Point won the Big South for the second straight year and went 30-4 in the regular season, earning the program’s second straight NCAA Tournament berth.
Last year, in the school’s first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance, the Panthers lost to Purdue in the first round as a No. 13 seed.