Hoops HD Mock Committee Report – Saturday, March 12

Click here for Jon Teitel’s interview with UNC-Wilmington G Craig Ponder and also click here for his interview with Fresno State (and former UNC-Wilmington/Richmond/DePaul head coach) assistant coach Jerry Wainwright

Finally, click here for Jon’s latest forecast of guessing the Selection Committee’s bracket through Saturday’s games.

We at HoopsHD have finished our 3rd day of deliberations – we began the night by doing a further scrubbing of the Under Consideration board. Besides the honorary selections of Chicago State and Grand Canyon, the only teams that remained were VCU, Temple, Syracuse, Monmouth, St. Bonaventure, South Carolina, San Diego State (following a loss in the Mountain West championship to Fresno State), St. Mary’s, Vanderbilt, Arkansas-Little Rock (assuming they were to lose to Louisiana-Monroe in the Sun Belt championship), Valparaiso and Hofstra. After the first round of debates, we voted on 3 more at-large teams (since we were guaranteed a bid would open up out of the SEC) – VCU, Temple and South Carolina. The VCU inclusion meant that a spot in the Atlantic 10 was guaranteed to open up; this meant that the only contingency pick needed would be in the American conference since the Sun Belt was not deemed worthy to get 2 bids in the event of a UL-Monroe win/Arkansas-Little Rock loss. Monmouth was voted as the last team into the field and St. Bonaventure was voted as a contingency team in the event that UConn wins the American championship against Memphis.

Our next order of business was to complete the rest of the master seed list; teams seeded 33 through 72 were added to the field since the WAC and Big West championship games were in progress. After New Mexico State and Long Beach State were eliminated, we were left with a master seed list of 70 teams that included the contingency picks of St. Bonaventure and Arkansas-Little Rock/Louisiana Monroe. After the seed list was completed, committee member Joby Fortson (author of the HoopsHD Nitty Gritty Rankings – click here to view his rankings) began to strongly debate the merits (or lack thereof) of South Carolina’s inclusion into the field; a motion was also made to reconsider St. Bonaventure and Syracuse as well. Chad Sherwood (our committee chair) had us rank the teams 1 through 3 after more debate took place on the aforementioned teams. As a result of this vote, Syracuse was added to our First Four, St. Bonaventure remained as our contingency team and South Carolina was voted off the seed list. It took 8 votes for this motion to be allowed to take place.

Our third and final major task of the night was to do our initial scrub of the seed list (see the bracket below):

The 1-line was adjusted to include North Carolina and Oregon after they both won their conference championships (and respective doubles with the regular season titles). Villanova and Xavier both moved down a seed line, but the biggest winner tonight was Seton Hall. Not only did their wins over Xavier result in both the Wildcats and Musketeers moving down, it vaulted the Pirates into protected seed territory! Also take note that all of the teams that were Under Consideration were moved to the NIT/other postseason board; only the regular season champions highlighted in red are guaranteed inclusion into the NIT. The other teams listed don’t necessarily have to go to the NIT but could be invited to the CBI, CIT or even the new Vegas 16 that debuts this season. The fact that the teams added up to 32 is purely coincidental; it was not the job of our committee to dictate to the NIT who should be selected since they have a separate process of their own.

More scrubbing of the master seed list will take place in the Sunday meeting to account for championships in the Atlantic 10, Sun Belt, SEC, Big 10 and the American. We will do 2 contingency brackets once the first wave of games go final; this will be due largely to whether UConn wins and St. Bonaventure gets into the field OR if Memphis wins the American and steals the bid from the Bonnies. Be on the lookout for those brackets at about 4:30 to 5 PM before the actual bracket is unveiled following the completion of the Big 10 and American championships.