The Hoops HD Selection Committee – Thursday, March 14th

Tonight was the first night that the Hoops HD panel met via Zoom conference call to begin deliberations on who we feel should be in the 2024 NCAA Tournament. As we wrote earlier, one of our initial tasks was to hand out two annual awards: Mississippi Valley State won the Centenary Award for worst team in Division 1 (they beat out Detroit-Mercy for the award) and DePaul won the 2024 Stallings Award for worst power conference team in Division 1.

After a motion was made to remove all the lower-conference regular season champions from the Under Consideration board (except Appalachian State), our committee began debating on which teams were to be added to the at-large board. The first group of eight teams that were the top 8 vote-getters were Boise State, Washington State, San Diego State, Gonzaga, Nevada, Clemson, Wisconsin and Florida. Each member of our panel then ranked the teams one through eight; the top four teams (Gonzaga, San Diego State, Washington State and Clemson) were subsequently added to the tournament field. The remaining four teams were carryovers into the next round of at-large voting.

Before moving on to the next round of voting, a motion was passed to remove Butler, UNLV, Memphis and Virginia Tech from the Under Consideration board.

In the next round of voting, each committee member nominated eight teams to nominate for the field; the top four teams in this round were Florida Atlantic, Nebraska, Northwestern and Dayton. The next task was to rank these four teams and the four carryovers one through eight; this time Nevada, Wisconsin, Boise State and Florida were added to the tournament field. The last round of voting saw Colorado State, Texas, TCU and St. John’s added to the nomination board along with the four previous carryovers. In this round of ranking the teams 1-8, Texas, Northwestern, Dayton and Nebraska were added to the field. There were only three carryovers (TCU, Colorado State and St. John’s) at this stage; Florida Atlantic returned to Under Consideration after failing to advance to the at-large board for two consecutive rounds.

This completed our night of deliberations; tomorrow we will likely add at least four more at-large teams (plus any potential bids that may open up) into our field. We will also begin the task of seeding up to the top 8 lines on the Master Seed list. Also pay attention to the teams highlighted in orange on the Under Consideration board; these teams are still playing at the time this article posted to the website.