Tonight was the third and busiest day of the Hoops HD Selection Committee meetings (via Skype conference call). Our first major task was selecting the final at-large and contingency spots for the field. We actually began this task with a motion from our chairman Chad Sherwood where the Bonnies were removed from the at-large board and placed back Under Consideration. This vote received the necessary 8 votes from our committee to pass. Given that Cincinnati beat Memphis earlier today, this assured an at-large spot opening up in the field. However, Davidson’s win over St. Bonaventure meant that a contingency bid would be required in the Atlantic 10.
Once Oregon was motioned off the Under Consideration board, there was a long debate among the remaining teams Under Consideration. Each committee member ended up voting for 5 teams via secret ballot and the top 5 vote-getters were added to remaining carryover teams from Friday (i.e. Louisville, Saint Mary’s, and Marquette). We then ranked the group of 8 teams from one through eight. The top 4 teams voted in order were Oklahoma State, Louisville, St. Bonaventure (contingent upon Arizona winning the Pac-12 title) and Marquette (contingent upon Rhode Island winning the A-10 title). The first four teams out were USC (assuming a loss to Arizona, which ultimately did happen), Saint Mary’s, Baylor and Arizona State.
Our next major task was to begin seeding the remaining teams into the field – this included teams that were still playing as of Saturday night. Teams like Western Kentucky, Eastern Washington, Southeastern Louisiana, Grand Canyon and the Big West runner-up were removed after their losses on Saturday night. We ended up with a seed list that includes 71 teams to account for Davidson as well as both Ivy and Sun Belt teams that have their championship games tomorrow.
Our final task for the night was to do an initial scrubbing of the master seed list. Motions needed to be seconded by at least one member to be considered and required a simple majority vote to pass. One of the motions that was passed was to swap Marquette and St. Bonaventure – we named St. Bonaventure as the A-10 contingency team in place of Marquette. This means that the Bonnies will be the last at-large team in the field if Rhode Island wins tomorrow, but it means they will be the first team out if Davidson wins the A-10 title tomorrow.
Below is our selection board as of Saturday night:
Tomorrow will be the final day of our selection meetings – we will scrub the master seed list one more time to account for championship games in the Ivy, Sun Belt, A-10 and SEC Tournaments. There may be contingency brackets to account for A-10 and American results, but we will keep you posted if that does happen.