BSC made an error in '07 playoff seeds
Published: Wednesday, March 5, 2008 12:35 a.m. MST
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OGDEN — While figuring out the tiebreakers for the 2008 Big Sky women's basketball tournament, conference officials discovered an error in how they seeded the 2007 tourney.
A year ago, Weber State was awarded the No. 3 seed and Northern Arizona was seeded No. 4 with identical 11-5 conference records.
That was in error but did not play a huge role in the tournament's outcome.
"The error did not keep a women's team out of the tournament, or affect who received a bye, but did affect the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds," the Big Sky said in a press release. "The error was a result of a misinterpretation of the Big Sky's tiebreaking procedure."
The Wildcats and NAU both won their opening round games, but the Lumberjacks had to face No. 1 seed Montana in the semifinals instead of No. 2 seed Idaho State.
Northern Arizona, though, upset the Grizzlies and advanced to the finals where it lost to ISU.
"I apologize for this," said Big Sky Conference Commissioner Doug Fullerton in the statement. "The tiebreaking procedure can be complex, even to those who interpret it.
"It went undiscovered until my staff found the error on Monday. It is understandable how this mistake occurred," Fullerton said. "We will take extra measures by adding clearer text and more examples of tiebreaking situations in the Conference Code."
The mistake went unnoticed until this week when the tiebreaking scenarios of a potential three-way tie for the fifth, sixth and seventh spots in this year's tournament seeds were discussed. A similar three-way tie occurred last season, and should have been resolved by breaking the tie based on head-to-head competition amongst the tied teams before moving to the records against teams in descending order.
