Sunday, March 12, 2000
Committee strives for best brackets
The Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS — It's a basketball junkie's dream: A comfortable chair in front of the TV, a reliable remote, round-the-clock room service and no annoying telephone calls.
What more could the 10-member NCAA tournament selection committee ask for? Well, how about some assurance they won't be second-guessed after they announce the Division I pairings tonight?
That, of course, won't happen. It never does.
What will happen, as usual, is the selection of 35 at-large teams, the seeding of those teams and the 29 automatic conference qualifiers and the placement of all 64 in the four regional brackets.
The only difference this year is the selections will be made from a hotel room in Indianapolis — where the NCAA moved its headquarters last summer — instead of Kansas City, where it set up its Selection Sunday deliberations the previous 18 years.
“Every committee member takes this so seriously, and you want to make it right,” said Judy Rose, athletic director at North Carolina-Charlotte, one of four new members of the selection committee and the first woman to help pick the teams that will compete for the national title.
“I have watched more basketball games either in person or on television this year than I have ever probably watched in my life,” Rose said with a laugh. “I have joked with some folks and said, "You know, I'm turning into a man. I've got that remote control and I'm going from channel to channel.'”
The committee convened Thursday at the Westin Hotel, barely beyond 3-point range from the RCA Dome, where the Final Four will be played April 1-3.
Like sequestered jurors, the committee members were isolated from all distractions. No one could even call them without a special phone code.
“They did tell us to bring comfortable clothes because we're in there for the long haul,” Rose said.
The other new committee members are athletic directors Les Robinson of North Carolina State, Jim Livengood of Arizona and Gene Smith of Iowa State. All four rookies, along with a few of the returning committee members, participated in a mock selection last month to familiarize them selves with the process.
The committee's first task was on Thursday afternoon, selecting the 96 officials that will work the tournament. Picking the teams — many of which already had been determined through conference tournaments — was to begin on Friday, and committee members had until Friday night to submit two ballots, one listing 17 schools they felt should be in the tournament and the second listing all others they felt should at least be considered.
As the choices are made, the names are put on a series of 2-foot-by-4-foot boards in the meeting room.
“Once you get on the board, and if you get on the board on the first ballot, you're probably going to be in the tournament,” said Craig Thompson, commissioner of the Mountain West Conference and chairman of the selection committee.
Thompson, whose own conference champion does not get an automatic bid, said the committee considers many factors in determining the at-large bids, including the Sagarin and RPI ratings, a team's record against the top 20, the top 50, its road record, its opponents' records, its record in the past 10 games — even injuries and suspensions that could affect a team's performance.
“The "good' wins (against strong teams) certainly are the most important things you can have,” he said of teams on the bubble. “Bad losses could affect various teams, but it comes down to who you've played and who you've beaten.”
The automatic qualifiers didn't have to worry about that. Last year, for example, the No. 64 seed was Florida A&M, which got in with a 12-18 record because it won the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament. The Rattlers promptly lost their first-round game 99-58 to top-seeded Duke, the eventual NCAA runner-up to Connecticut.
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