Instant Bracket Thoughts

Working on the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Selection Committee is a thankless job. No matter how good a job you really do, there’s little chance of Billy Packer saying “nice work” in the requisite post-bracket interview. Some teams will always feel snubbed and the inclusion of others will always leave analysts scratching their heads. This happens every March even though, on the whole, the committee has done fairly well at organizing the NCAA Tournament in recent years.
But tonight, committee chair Craig Littlepage got the verbal beatdown he deserved from Packer and Jim Nantz. Littlepage’s committee did a horrendous job in nearly every aspect of the brackets this year. Their field of 65 is littered with hypocrisy, baffling seeds, more hypocrisy and Air Force.
Every bit of criticism going the committee’s way until Thursday (because, let’s face it, nobody’s going to care whether Missouri State got in once the Tournament tips-off) will be self-inflicted. They screwed up big-time.
Air Force? Seriously?
Some instant bracket thoughts:

* George Washington as an #8 seed is a joke. And not a "ha-ha" joke like the one about the Pope and Raquel Welch. I realize the Colonials strength of schedule was low, but an #8 seed? They lost two games! Arizona lost 12 and they’re also an 8. The committee probably wanted to send GW a message (as in, schedule some teams and actually look at a transcript or two) but dropping them to an #8 is like Tony Soprano ordering a hit on Bobby Bacala for getting him a capicola sandwich instead of one made with pancetta. It's a bit much. (Now that’s timely humor, folks.)

* How does Syracuse move from a bubble team to a #5 seed just by winning the Big East Tournament? I mean, that’s an impressive run they had, but can you really put 'Cuse ahead of Marquette and Georgetown, each of whom finished a full three games ahead of the Orange in the regular season? (And, by the way, when talking-up the résumé’s of Seton Hall and Cincinnati, beating Syracuse just isn’t that impressive. Just because they got hot this weekend doesn’t mean besting them in January, when they were terrible, is a great win.)

* Southern Illinois got the shaft with their #11 seed. But The Wolfman still plans to pick them to go to the Elite Eight like he did in 2003. (When the Saluki’s lost in the first-round.)

* Wake Forest might have had the most effect on the Tournament of any non-invitee this weekend. FSU went from in to out after losing to the underachieving Deacs and N.C. State dropped from a #5 or #6 seed to a #10 after their quarterfinal loss to Wake in the ACC Tournament. Way to go Skip Prosser! You might have a solid coaching career ahead of you yet!

* I’m no fan of Texas, but are we to believe they’re the worst #2 seed in the Tournament? One would think the committee would put that team (cough, Tennessee, cough, cough, Tennessee) in Duke’s bracket instead of putting, arguably, the best #2 seed in that position. That could be Ohio State, but they’re not with Memphis either, so I'm not quite getting this. (By the by, Tennessee isn't just the worst #2 seed, they'd be the worst #3 seed and the worst #4 seed as well. How they got a #2 is simply dumbfounding. It makes me think everybody on the committee stopped watching college basketball when the Olympics started.)

* Memphis isn’t making it to the Elite Eight. That’s a gut-feeling. Of course, I did have a capicola sandwich earlier, so it could be that.

* How are seven of the ten committee members from mid-major conferences, by the way? How did Digger Phelps let that happen?

* Kansas/Pittsburgh would be a great second-round game. But every time we look ahead to a great second-round game, one of those teams loses in the first round (ie, the much-anticipated, and never-matieralized, Syracuse/Michigan State match-up from last season).

* So Gonzaga goes out and schedules nearly every quality team in the NCAA this season and gets rewarded with a #3 seed? I suppose next year Mark Few will be forced to go ahead and play the Spurs if he wants to get anything higher.
It’s not the Bulldogs fault they play in the WCC, so why hold it against them? I mean, I realize Gonzaga is no Tennessee, but still! The Zags' seeding either means the committee does, indeed, look at past Tournament performance (which they always claim not to) or are incompetent hacks. I’m thinking it’s a little from column A and a little from column B. OK, more from column B.

* UCLA as a #2 seed is a joke. John Wooden’s 1968 team could have won the Pac-10 this year. Tennessee could have won the Pac-10 this year. Wait, now I'm getting carried away.

* Kentucky/UAB as the #8/#9 game in the East (again, I refuse to call the regions by their location. What purpose does this serve again?) further lets me know the committee thinks about past Tournaments when filling in their brackets. UAB, you’ll remember, beat Kentucky in the second round of the 2004 Tournament when the Wildcats were the #1 overall seed.

* Utah St. missed a game-winning layup at the buzzer last night against Nevada that would have put them into the NCAA Tournament.
I have three rules in life: 1) Never trust a hippie. 2) Always pass to the left. 3) Whenever you miss a game-winning layup at the buzzer last night against Nevada, you deserve to play in the NIT.

* Oh, where to begin with Air Force. (Deep breath…) If, as Craig Littlepage would have you believe, strength of schedule is the end all, be all, of the selection committee’s criteria, then how do the Falcons, they of the TWO-HUNDRED-AND-SIXTY-SEVENTH RANKED NON-CONFERENCE SOS, get into the Tournament? Gonzaga gets a #3 seed because their SOS was #105. GW gets an #8 seed because their NCSOS was #323. FSU doesn’t make it at all (not that I’m complaining, they should have beat Wake if they wanted to get in) because of their equally low NCSOS. But Air Force gets a pass? Let me, if you will, run down Air Force’s non-conference opponents: Northern Arizona, Miami, Washington (bonus points), Colorado Colo. Springs (huh?), Western State, Arkansas Pine-Bluff, Texas Pan-American, Northern Colorado, St. Mary’s, Lamar, George Tech and IUPUI Fort Wayne. That looks more like a list of schools Britney Spears could get into and less than that of a Tournament-worthy team. Sure, Air Force won their last six regular season games, but they lost in the quarters of their conference tournament to a team that didn’t even make the Tournament (Wyoming). The only explanation for their inclusion is the following... No. There’s no explanation for this.

* I’m glad George Mason got in, but hasn’t Hofstra beaten them twice in the past 20 days?

* Tennessee might have been a #2 seed back in mid-February. But they’ve lost four of their last six including a stinker to a stinker (in the SEC Tournament vs. South Carolina). How in the name of Bruce Pearl’s sweat glands does that make them a #2 seed while Gonzaga is a #3? Or UNC? Or Iowa. Or Boston College, Kansas, LSU and Illinois. Or the Barbazon School of Modeling? What, just because Tennessee beat an equally-overrated Florida team twice they get a #2? Did Zack Morris secretly go to Tennessee and thusly downloaded a Bo Revere song filled with subliminal messages about the Vols greatness onto Littlepage’s iPod? Was the committee looking at the AP preseason football rankings when they assigned Tennessee a #2? Could they just not get "Rocky Top" out of their heads?

* Continuing evidence that the selection committee’s relationship with strength of schedule is the Pamela and Tommy Lee of college sports: Arizona as an #8 seed.
The Wildcats, for lack of a better term, suck my ass. They’ve lost to Houston, Oregon, Oregon State and USC and have only Kansas and Virginia on their list of impressive non-conference wins. Virginia, you may remember, is NIT-bound and that win against Kansas came in October, when the Jayhawks weren't very good at all.
'Zona has exactly two wins against the RPI top 50 to go with seven losses. They feasted on bottom-feeders, winning 11 of their 19 games against teams ranked #101 and below in the RPI. But, Arizona’s non-conference SOS was ranked #1. That they didn’t beat any good teams in that #1 rated schedule (except Kansas who, again, lost to many teams early in the season) doesn’t seem to matter. I think I’m more baffled about this one than Air Force because nobody is talking about it. But then I remember Tennessee got a #2 seed and I'm torn once again.

* Nevada/Montana should be a fun game. For The Unabomber. Actually, it really should, but I’m a sucker for Unabomber jokes.

* Ohio State looks ripe for an upset. Why, you ask? Watch Thad Matta’s reaction after Indiana blew their chance to win their Big Ten semifinal match-up against the Buckeyes. He and his coaches celebrated like they had won the National Championship. And any team that celebrates that exuberantly for a win in the Big Ten semifinal on a non-buzzer beater clearly has low expectations for the future.

* Man, I'm excited. I thought the absence of Wake Forest would minimize my enthusiasm for the Tournament, but now I'm saved from devoting one full day of Tournament-play to my hatred of Skip Prosser and can concentrate on all the madness instead. With only three "great" teams in the Tournament this could be one of the more unpredictable March's in recent memory.

Come back all week for wall-to-window (I get claustrophobic if I’m in a room with all walls) coverage of the NCAA Tournament:
Tomorrow: Even More Bracket Thoughts
Tuesday: Bracket Tips (How To Fill Out A Bracket)
Wednesday: Just When You Thought I Couldn’t Have Any More Thoughts About The Brackets, BAM! There They Are!
Thursday: Full NCAA Tournament Predictions
Friday: Day One Recap