The Hoops HD Committee Report: Friday, March 10

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Friday marked the 2nd night of the Hoops HD Selection Committee meetings – tonight was largely devoted to two major tasks: building the top 8 seed lines and also adding 4 more at-large teams to the field. 3 more spots opened up tonight thanks to results in the Big 10, Big 12 and Pac 12 conferences.

However, since those results came in later in the night, our first order of business was to discuss the teams that would be on the top seed lines. While the NCAA Selection Committee usually goes one seed line at a time (requiring votes to add 8 teams at a time and rank them 1 through 8), our committee went 2 seed lines at a time which required votes to add 12 teams and rank them 1 through 12. After the first 2 lines were seeded and ranked, there would be 4 carryover teams and individual members would then add 8 further teams to discuss and rank. We repeated the process 2 more times until we had the top 6 seed lines established.

It was at this point that we discussed which teams should be selected for the next 4 at-large spots that were guaranteed to open up. Those four teams were Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Providence and VCU. Middle Tennessee was considered as an at-large, but they did not make it in during this round of balloting. If they beat Marshall tomorrow, it will be a moot point since they will be an automatic-bid winner. If they lose to Marshall, then they are still under consideration (for now) along with 11 other teams on the board. It is possible for 3 more spots to open up from the SEC, American and Atlantic 10 conferences. However, since Dayton lost today, we will have a contingency A-10 team (either Rhode Island or Davidson) on our Master Seed List tomorrow night along with teams from the Ivy and Sun Belt conferences that play their championships on Sunday. If Kentucky loses to Alabama and either SMU or Cincinnati lose tomorrow, we will also consider contingency teams like Alabama, UConn and Central Florida as well. If VCU loses tomorrow and both SMU and Cincy lose in the American, we will have bid thieves out of those 2 conferences.

Our last order of business tonight was building the 7th and 8th seed lines in the Master Seed List. You can see the complete board below:

Tomorrow night, we will add the remaining at-large sports that open up (if any), plan for any contingencies and seed the remaining teams into the Master Seed List. We will also do an initial scrub of the seed list based on results from tomorrow’s conference championship games.