Tonight was our third night of committee meetings; this was our busiest night to date. We began the day with three at-large bids available; Ole Miss’s loss to Arkansas came as a relief to everyone on the bubble since a bid thief would no longer come out of the SEC. The Atlantic 10 was a different story since Dayton defeated Saint Louis on a last-second shot and could steal a bid on Selection Sunday with a win against VCU.
As for the voting itself, we had Mother Miami, Texas and VCU as carryover teams from the previous round of voting. We debated all of the teams Under Consideration; nobody ended up being motioned off of the Under Consideration board. After debate, each Committee member nominated six teams and submitted choices to Chad (our Chairman). The top four teams that were added to the nomination board were New Mexico, San Diego State, SMU and South Florida (in the event they lose to Wichita State in the American title game).
In the final round of voting, Mother Miami and VCU were voted into the at-large field; there was a tie between SMU and Texas for the final spot and the final contingency spot (in the event that the A-10 doesn’t result in a stolen bid). SMU got the guaranteed at-large spot and Texas ended up getting the contingency bid; Texas would move to the First Four Out in the event that Dayton wins the A-10 title. Our first four teams out ended up being San Diego State, South Florida (at-large), New Mexico and Florida State. Auburn would be the other team moving up in the event that South Florida wins the American.
Our next task was to continue seeding the field; we included teams that were still alive (i.e. Louisiana Tech, Toledo, UC-Irvine, Utah Valley) at the time of voting. We ended up seeding 73 teams at the time, but at the time of posting the list went down to 71 teams. It will ultimately become 68 teams once the Ivy League, A-10 and American championship games go final and we will have two contingency brackets – one for South Florida winning the autobid and one for Wichita State winning the auto bid.
Update (2:15 AM) – We added California Baptist to the field after an incredible finish in the WAC Championship. The Lancers hit a go-ahead 3-pointer with 30 seconds left; Utah Valley had a chance to tie the game in regulation and MISSED a dunk with 2.7 seconds on the clock. CBU ran out the clock for their first NCAA Division I Tournament bid.
We also did an initial scrub of the Master Seed List; click on the above graphic to see where things stood through games of Saturday night. We will meet at 2:30 PM later today to do a final scrub of the seed list and bracket the field based on what happens in this afternoon’s games. Keep an eye on our website for our final bracket as well as Jon Teitel’s final NCAA Tournament Bracket projection!
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