The Hoops HD Selection Committee – Thursday, March 13th

Tonight was our initial night of the Hoops HD Selection Committee meetings. After the meeting began, our first order of business was to name the 2025 Centenary and Stallings Award winners. The Citadel won their first Centenary Award and Miami won their first Stallings Award, meaning that both teams will be on the Selection Board for the entirety of the proceedings.

After that, a motion was made to take off all but one of the Under The Radar regular season champions that automatically appeared on the Under Consideration board – only Liberty survived the initial purge. When that was done, we began debating on which teams would be added to the at-large field.

In the first round of voting, each of the Committee members nominated 8 teams for consideration – the top 8 vote-getters were Mississippi St, UConn, Creighton, Illinois, Marquette, Kansas, Memphis, and Mizzou. We then ranked the teams 1 through 8 – the top four vote-getters that were added to the at-large board were Missouri, Illinois, and Memphis. There was a tie between Kansas and Marquette for the fourth spot; Kansas was added and Marquette became a carryover team along with Mississippi State, Creighton and UConn.

The next round of voting meant that we again nominated 8 teams individually. This time, the top 4 vote-getters for nomination were New Mexico, Baylor, West Virginia and Georgia. (There was actually a 5-way tie for 2nd place; Arkansas and Vandy missed the cut in this tiebreaker vote). The next group of eight teams was again ranked 1 through 8 and the next four at-large teams added were Marquette, Mississippi State, UConn and Creighton. The next four carryovers were Baylor, West Virginia, Georgia and New Mexico.

For the last round of voting, the top 4 vote-getters for nomination were Utah State, Indiana, Arkansas and Vanderbilt. After ranking the teams 1 through 8, the next four at-large teams added were New Mexico, Baylor, Georgia and Utah State. The three carryover teams for the next round of voting were Arkansas, Indiana and Vanderbilt; West Virginia moved back to Under Consideration since they could not carry over a second time.

Our work was done for the night – here is the updated board:

In the Under Consideration column, the teams highlighted in yellow have all been eliminated from their conference tournaments and cannot add anything further to their profiles. Also note that there are currently two contingency spots for the Big 12 and Big 10; there will be no bid thieves out of those conferences. The Big East could open up as well if UConn beats Villanova (which was in progress at the time this was posted).

Tomorrow, our main goal will be to begin seeding the top 8 lines of the NCAA Tournament field; we may also fill in any remaining at-large bids that open up tomorrow as well.