FanPost

Myth of the Double-Bye Curse

In the two years since the new 16-team Big East Tournament format, only one team who played on the first day made it to the quarterfinals: Cincinnati last year. They ended up playing 3rd seeded West Virginia who went on to win the tournament. So the only time the double-bye has ever resulted in one of the top four teams playing a team who's already played two games worked out in favor of the team receiving the double-bye. For the other seven games, the quarterfinals match-ups were the same as it would have been under the old 12-team format; the teams with a double-bye all played teams who had only played one game so far.

As far as I can tell the poor performance of teams receiving a double-bye is just a result of small sample size and the fact that anybody can beat anybody in the Big East.