INDIANAPOLIS — At NCAA headquarters, the basketball enthusiasts view Selection Sunday as Christmas morning.
This mock selection exercise would be akin to Thanksgiving.
“So let’s eat,” says David Worlock, the NCAA point man for this event.
And so it begins.
Twenty media types gathered for about 13 hours over two days in Indianapolis to earn degrees in bracketology.
Using results of games that ended Thursday and informed of projected conference tournament results (way to go, Colgate!), we select the participants, create a seed list of 1-68 and slot every team to create a bracket.
The real 10-person committee, made up of the likes of Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis, will spend five days creating the real bracket, which will be revealed March 15 (aka Selection Sunday).
They will follow a painstaking four-step process, outlined here:
Step 1: Report card
Bleacher Report’s Kerry Miller and I represent Stanford athletic director Bernard Muir, who will report on the MEAC, Southland and West Coast conferences.
All are likely “AQ” leagues — meaning that only the Automatic Qualifier (conference tournament champ) will get to dance. But we mention that Stephen F. Austin from the Southland and BYU and St. Mary’s from the WCC are worthy of at-large consideration.
The most intriguing leagues? The Atlantic-10, with a current four-way tie at the top, and the Big Ten, with a six-pack (Indiana, Ohio State, Michigan State, Iowa, Illinois, Purdue) of intrigue beyond sure things Wisconsin and Maryland.
“The Big Ten,” reports a mock committee member, “has a chance to be as messy as any league.”
Step 2: The nitty-gritty
We’ve whittled down the 333 eligible Division I teams, and now it’s time to construct a field. We vote via mouse click for our top eight among 45 teams “under consideration,” and a remarkable thing happens.
All 10 voters have the same top eight: Arizona, Duke, Gonzaga, Kansas, Kentucky, Villanova, Virginia and Wisconsin.
“We have history, folks,” Worlock says.
Determining the other at-larges will prove way more difficult. And tedious.
We use “team pages” to analyze the resumes, and the home, road and neutral-court factor is prominent. So is a team’s record against foes in the RPI 1-50, 51-100, 101-150, 151-200 and 200-plus. What doesn’t matter — conference record or conference RPI.
Kansas, despite four losses, actually has a higher RPI than undefeated Kentucky. Why? Because the Jayhawks have not played a single opponent with a bad (200-plus) RPI.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Worlock says.
Homing in on the Big Ten, Maryland (5-4 vs. RPI top 50) and Indiana (eight wins over RPI top 100 before Sunday’s victory over Minnesota) get early nods. Ohio State is solidly in despite having feasted on nine RPI 150-plus teams.
Iowa gets in thanks largely to a road victory over North Carolina and two-game sweep of Ohio State. (Remember, this was decided before Sunday’s loss to Northwestern.) The Hawkeyes got drubbed at Wisconsin on Jan. 20 and someone asks if that should be considered a bad loss.
“It was,” says Mike Tirico, who should know. He called it for ESPN.
Illinois and Michigan State will be considered for the final 3-5 spots. Purdue will not be, thanks to one mock committee member’s description of “pitiful home losses” to North Florida and Gardner-Webb, both outside the RPI top 150.
But fear not, Purdue fans: The Boilermakers have every chance to play their way into the real thing, thanks to upcoming games against Indiana, Ohio State, Michigan State and Illinois.
The final five in our field are Dayton, Illinois (“no bad losses”), Michigan State, UCLA, Oregon and “my” Stanford Cardinal. When Stanford was on a ballot, Miller and I were not permitted to participate.
The last to make it is Oregon, and the Ducks will only go if SMU (in either way) beats mediocre UConn in the final of the American conference tournament. In 2008, the committee prepared six brackets based on the results of Selection Sunday conference title games.
The first two out: BYU and St. John’s.
Step 3: Scrubbing
We’ve seeded the teams based on our 1-68 seed list, and now we’re going to revisit nearly every one. Should Wisconsin be No. 4 — the last No. 1 seed — ahead of Gonzaga, the top No. 2 seed?
This debate feels real, with committee members pointing out that Gonzaga’s lone loss came on the road, by three points, to a top-10 RPI team in Arizona. Plus the Zags have been blowing away their WCC foes by double digits.
“Wouldn’t Wisconsin do the same if they were in that league?” one committee member asks.
One committee member, though, insists that Gonzaga has better players (aka “the eye test) and wonders if the Zags should get credit for attempting to schedule hard (Memphis and UCLA were expected to be better).
Worlock says the scheduling intent “can come into play” and, as for the eye test, “this is why every one of us watches hundreds of games.”
We also wonder: Does a team get credit for “hanging with”‘ a tough opponent? And what’s more significant — a good win or a bad loss? (The answers to both: It’s up to each committee member.)
The Badgers ultimately win out because of their 5-1 record against the RPI top 50 (impressive that Wisconsin played and beat Oklahoma, Georgetown, Boise State and Green Bay in the nonconference) and the ugly 67-62 loss at Rutgers is mollified because of injuries — Frank Kaminsky was out with a concussion and point guard Traevon Jackson left with a foot injury after 26 minutes.
We keep scrubbing until we reach 19 and 20 on our seed list. Northern Iowa jumps Providence for the higher spot, with faux committee member Brian Hamilton of SI.com pointing out that the analytic KenPom.com rates both the Panthers’ offense and defense among the nation’s 30 most efficient.
“Plus,” as someone points out, “they killed Iowa.”
Step 4: Bracket buster
The NCAA software is so cool. Run a cursor over Kentucky, No. 1 on our seed list, and we learn the mileage distances to the four regional sites: Los Angeles (2,167), Houston (1,002), Cleveland (332) and Syracuse (662).
The best teams play closest to campus for the benefit of players and fans, but time zone is also a consideration. This also comes into play for sub-regional sites. (Arizona is actually closer to Omaha, Neb., than Portland, Ore., but of course the Wildcats would rather stay west.)
The overall consideration here is fairness. The committee wants the regions to be balanced (based on adding up the corresponding number next to each team on the seed list) and not force a highly seeded team like Gonzaga to have to travel to Charlotte, N.C., from Spokane, Wash.
The process debunks the conspiracy theories, such as: The NCAA committee loves Duke, so it gets an easier draw. The principles and emphasis on geography reveal how little leeway there is in bracketing 68 teams, and sometimes the process requires teams to go up or down one seed to complete the bracket.
We do have one opportunity to create a juicy matchup: Valparaiso is among the No. 13 seeds that can be chosen to face No. 4 Baylor. That would create a coaching clash of brothers — Bryce Drew versus Scott Drew.
We’re told that the real committee would never seek to do such a thing, but some of us are media types who realize there’s an entertainment component to all this.
Worlock shakes his head but complies.
“It’s your bracket,” he says.
It is, indeed. Now bring in the pros.
Twitter @TeddyGreenstein
