The Hoops HD Selection Committee – Friday Edition

Friday night was the second night that the Hoops HD Selection Committee met via Zoom conference call. There were two main tasks that were taken care of – the first was to fill out the remaining at-large spots that were able to be filled based on final games in the conference tournament games played on Friday. No bid thief was possible in the SEC, and a spot opened up in the A-10 when VCU was named one of the last three at-large teams along with Louisville and UCLA.

The second and more laborious task was to begin seeding the field. We ended up seeding the top eight lines – votes were done two lines at a time. Committee members ended up choosing their top 12 teams and the top 12 vote-getters were subsequently ranked 1 through 12. Afterwards, each subsequent round of voting ended up with each member choosing 12 teams and then the top 12 vote-getters would be ranked 1 through 12. Here is the board as of Friday night (late night Mountain West game nonwithstanding):

Noteworthy this year is that teams like Georgetown and Oregon State could “steal” automatic bids in the Big East and Pac-12, respectively – even though contingency teams have not been voted into the field yet. If Creighton and Colorado end up winning their respective conference tournaments, there will be two more at-large spots that will open up. The American is also a potential bid-thief conference with Cincinnati and Memphis still alive in that conference tournament.

Our other task will be to seed the remainder of the NCAA Tournament field and to do an initial scrub of the seed list to make corrections as the Committee sees fit. With Virginia and Kansas having to withdraw from their respective conference tournaments, we will also make adjustments as necessary should they (or any other team) announce that they will be unable to compete in the NCAA Tournament this season.