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Finally, click here for this week’s can’t-miss Under The Radar Podcast
Last week, various members of the media that cover college basketball convened in New York to meet with the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee (colloquially known as the Selection Committee – click here to view the 10 members of the Committee) to go over the selection process for the 2016 NCAA Tournament. They got to simulate the deliberations and wade through pages of reports on teams that the Selection Committee goes through every March in Indianapolis. At the end of the week, the media came up with a mock bracket based on simulated results if the season were to end last week. They took into account what would happen if a team like Monmouth were to lose in the MAAC Tournament; there were also scenarios that involved Valparaiso and Chattanooga losing their conference tournaments as well. St. Bonaventure was selected as a team that would crash the party on Selection Sunday; based on their game against La Salle last night, their only way into the NCAA Tournament is via the golden ticket that the A-10 Tournament provides.
The cast and crew of Hoops HD have also simulated the selection process for over 10 years running (some colleagues longer than others); this also goes back to the days of other websites like CrimsonCast and Draft Express. The selection process actually begins on Wednesday during Championship Week; each committee member will submit a list of up to 36 teams that each person feels would make the NCAA Tournament no matter what happens during Championship Week. Committee members would also submit a list of other teams to be considered as well; these are your “bubble” teams. Since the NCAA Tournament consists of 68 teams, 32 spots are reserved for automatic bid winners (31 tournament champions plus the Ivy League regular season champion) and 36 at-large teams. Teams that have already won their conference tournaments up to that point are excluded from the first ballot; as an example last year, Gonzaga and Northern Iowa would not be on those lists since they already earned automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament. For a team to be considered a “first ballot” team in the NCAA Tournament, they must receive at least 8 out of 10 votes from the Selection Committee. Any other teams that receive at least 3 votes from Selection Committee members is placed on the “Under Consideration” board; this has also been referred to as the Cross-Country board by the Committee.
If you click here, scroll down to the attachment that shows the Under Consideration Board (which was what we had last season). On the left-hand side is a list of teams that had already won their conference tournaments up to that point. The second section includes the AT-LARGE field; teams that were listed 1-26 on the board all made it onto the board as part of the first ballot.
When our committee met for the first time on Thursday night, our first order of business was to add 10 more teams to the at-large board to get to a total of 36 at-large teams. If you look at the 3rd column labeled Under Consideration, this is the pool of teams from which the final at-large selections will be made. The Under Consideration board also includes teams who won their respective conferences in the regular season but failed to win their conference tournaments. Teams like Iona and St. Francis-Brooklyn were voted off the board because the committee felt their accomplishments didn’t merit at-large consideration; Murray State was a team that would remain under consideration during the selection process but would ultimately not get an NCAA Tournament bid. Each committee member would select the top 8 teams on the Under Consideration board; the top 8 vote-getters were debated among the committee. Committee members would not be allowed to vote on their own teams or teams from their own conference, but could supply information on said teams and conferences to the Committee for their consideration.
After the first wave of debates has taken place, each committee member (unless excluded otherwise) would rank those 8 teams in order of 1-8; the top 4 vote-getters would be added to the AT-LARGE field. This process took place on 3 occasions; we wound up adding 12 at-large teams to the board on Thursday night. However, since there were only 10 spots available, why did we vote for 12 teams? If you click here, you will see 2 spots in the AT-LARGE field marked “Big 12 +1” and “ACC +2“. This meant that as of Thursday night, the only teams remaining in the Big 12 and ACC Conference Tournaments were already on the AT-LARGE field. Since the conference champions would move from the AT-LARGE field to the AUTOMATIC BIDS side of the board, this opened up 2 additional spots in the field for Indiana and Purdue. Since the Big East also had its teams in the conference tournament already in the AT-LARGE field, this also opened up one more at-large spot that was not filled on Thursday night.
On Friday, there are two things that have to take place – more at-large teams need to be added to the field as spots from the SEC, Big 10 and Pac-12 conferences were not going to have a bid stolen in their respective conference tournaments. But more importantly, the seeding process begins for teams on the AUTOMATIC BID and AT-LARGE ledgers. Each committee member would submit their top 8 teams to the committee and then the top 8 teams would be ranked 1-8 after debating the merits of each individual team within the committee. The top 4 vote-getters would be added to the SEED LIST; click here to see the SEED LIST on the right-hand side of the board. The bottom 4 vote-getters would carry over and then each committee member would submit their next top 8 teams to the committee. The top 4 vote-getters were added to the previous 4 teams that carried over from the last step, each committee member would take the top 8 teams, debate them and rank them 1-8 as before. This process was repeated until we had the top 32 teams seeded in the field. Under this scenario, even a team like Xavier who was not on the first ballot last season could still get a higher seed as Championship Week unfolded; this was because of notable wins against Butler and Georgetown that strengthened what had been a bubblish resume. As it is, teams are rarely voted off of the board, but motions can be made to reconsider teams that don’t look as good and vote them off the AT-LARGE board and back to the UNDER CONSIDERATION board. Ole Miss and Texas were also promoted from the UNDER CONSIDERATION board to the AT-LARGE board on Friday night as well after the results of the day’s competition were complete.
On Saturday, as you can see by clicking here, the final AT-LARGE bids are added once it became apparent that the Atlantic 10 was also assured of not having a bid thief win the conference. Our committee also begins to plan for contingencies – one such scenario involved UConn winning the automatic bid out of the American conference (since they would not have earned an at-large bid); another scenario involved SMU winning the conference – Temple would have been our last at-large bid selected. This was just a coincidence; they would have ranked above Colorado State, UConn, Georgia and Illinois according to our committee. (UCLA was the 8th team out according to our committee, but that is another story.) The second contingency involved the Sun Belt championship; as of Saturday night, either Georgia State or Georgia Southern would earn the automatic bid since neither team could advance as an at-large selection. Therefore, we included UConn, Georgia State and Georgia Southern on our seed list deliberations. Throughout the day, the at-large list would begin to be “scrubbed” or adjusted as more results from the day’s games and further deliberations took place.
On Selection Sunday, further scrubbing of the seed list took place as results from the ACC, Atlantic 10 and Sun Belt championships went final. Once the seed list was finalized, two contingency brackets were prepared by the Committee. The first one here was the final bracket if UConn were to beat SMU and win the American; the second bracket here was our actual final bracket since SMU did defeat UConn instead. Our committee did not do an additional contingency for the Big 10 since we felt at the time that Virginia merited a 1-seed over Wisconsin, even if the Badgers were to win the Big 10 Championship that day.
That is a rough outline of what the real Selection Committee would go through during Championship Week; we look forward to meeting again in a couple of weeks via Skype/Google Hangouts in our own Hoops HD Universe. In the meantime, click here for a sampling of our Championship Week podcasts that will begin to air on February 29.
#MAACachusetts Forever!