The Hoops HD Selection Committee – Thursday Night Update

Tonight was the first night of our Hoops HD Selection Committee meetings; this is when we begin selecting in earnest teams that we feel should belong in the NCAA Tournament field. But our first order of business was selecting our annual Centenary and Stallings Award winners (CLICK HERE for the story on the awards); the Centenary Award went to the Long Island University Sharks and the Stallings Award went to the Louisville Cardinals. They will remain on our selection board for the duration of our committee meetings. We also made a motion to remove the 14 regular-season champions off the Under Consideration board (at least the teams that did not receive at-large consideration otherwise).

Once that was done, we began debate on teams that we feel should have been included in the field. Each member submitted a list of their Top 8 teams to our chairman Chad Sherwood; after tabulating the results we ended up with 4 teams plus a 5-way tie for 5th place, so we ended up ranking the following 9 teams on the next vote: Memphis, West Virginia, Arkansas, Florida Atlantic, Auburn, USC, Boise State, Pittsburgh and Maryland. After ranking these 9 teams, we added Florida Atlantic, West Virginia, Arkansas and Maryland to our field. The four teams that were carryovers to the next round of voting were Memphis, Pittsburgh, Auburn, and USC; Boise State was returned to the Under Consideration board since they were ranked 9th in the voting.

We then debated for a second round and again submitted lists of 8 teams apiece to Chad; tiebreakers AGAIN dictated that we had to rank a group of 9 teams instead of the usual 8. This was because there were 5 teams (NC State, Penn State, Rutgers, Providence, Mississippi State) that received unanimous selection along with the previous 4 carryovers. In this round of voting where the teams were ranked 1-9, we added Memphis, Auburn, Pittsburgh and USC to the field. Providence, Mississippi State, Rutgers and NC State will carryover to the next round of selection; Penn State returned to the Under Consideration board since they were not in the top 4 teams of carryovers.

With the results of tonight’s games, we are assured of two more at-large spots opening up since bid thieves are no longer possible in the Big 12 and Big East conferences. Spots could potentially open up tomorrow night for the Big Ten, ACC, SEC and Pac-12 as long as potential bid thieves like Ohio State and Vanderbilt fail to advance any further.

Therefore, this is our selection board after tonight’s games:

When we meet tomorrow night, we will begin ranking the top 8 seed lines in the field; we will also fill up any further vacancies in the at-large field and potentially scrub off more teams from the Under Consideration board. (We also scrubbed off Villanova after their loss against Creighton; they will not appear in tomorrow night’s update)