With all the league championships and last chance qualifiers decided on Saturday night, the CIS have announced the rankings for this weekend’s Canadian University Basketball championships.  Of course, this being sports run by a faceless committee (e.g. the BCS), fans and pundits were crying foul within minutes of the bracket being announced.

Here are the CIS Final 8 that will battle it out for national supremacy (and how they qualified):

1. Carleton Ravens (OUA Champion/Host)
2. Calgary Dinos (Canada West Champion)
3. UBC Thunderbirds (Canada West Second Place)
4. Western Mustangs(OUA Second Place)
5. Ottawa Gee-gees (OUA Third Place)
6. Dalhousie Tigers (AUS Champions)
7. Concordia Stingers (QSSF Champions)
8. St. Francis Xavier X-Men (Wild Card)

The biggest complaints are coming from the OUA.  The bracket has been loaded so that only one Ontario team will be able to make it to the finals.  It’s like the NCAA setting up the March Madness bracket so Duke and UNC meet in the Elite Eight or Sweet Sixteen.  Carleton rightfully holds down the #1 seed and will, in all likelihood, face a second round match-up against a team they have beaten twice this season.  Meanwhile, the lambs being led to another slaughter are the Mustangs and the Gee-gees who have both lost twice to the Ravens (Ottawa losing two regular-season games and Western losing a regular season game and the OUA finals).  No re-seeding means that there will be an all-Ontario semi-final that is likely to only be avoided because of the apocalypse.

So the big question now is should teams be seeded based on who might be the better team or what would make the better match-up?  Even that would bring up some debate because the last national rankings would seed the Final 8 as: Carleton, UBC, Ottawa, Western, Calgary, St. FX, Concordia and Dalhousie (who were unranked) rather than what the committee decided.  That gives a two tough first-round match-ups (Western/Calgary and Ottawa/St. FX) and likely two close semi-finals.  Should the rankings give favour to finishes in conference playoffs which would make the rankings closer to: Carleton, Calgary, Dalhousie, Concordia, UBC, Western, Ottawa, St. FX?  That basis would make every first round came a near gimme (except for Calgary/Ottawa which might be close).

Going by guessing the best match-ups is so subjective that it almost seems more unfair than loading the bracket so Ontario doesn’t own the final game.  Sure, upsets can happen at any given time in a one-loss elimination tournament but when a team like Carleton hasn’t lost in 24 straight games and UBC is contemplating entering their basketball team into the NCAA, there is obviously a major discrepancy in talent levels, even at the top end.  I don’t there could be a way to do it here that would make each match-up compelling.  You could match-up Dalhousie and Concordia for a best of the worst quarter-final but the semi-final would be a gimme for the other team.

I think the best way of setting up the brackets would be one of my earlier suggestions: Use the national rankings.  I’m not entirely sure that’s not what they do now except for picking 1 through 8.  In my version of the system, the media make their weekly CIS Top 10 picks and the teams are ranked accordingly with the wild card team being the highest team in the Top 10 not already qualified.  Although, if they really wanted to go radical, automatically qualify the conference champions and the host and fill the other spots with wild cards based on the CIS Top 10.  That way, the best of the best are invited for the final showdown.