4 key takeaways from the NCAA Tournament selection committee's top 16 reveal
For the first time, the NCAA selection committee revealed its current top 16 teams (slotted by region) Saturday on CBS. The actual order may already be rendered moot by the time you read this given how many games there are Saturday, but I still found it to be informative.
Some key takeaways:
* No criteria matters more than RPI Top 50 wins. People who aren’t familiar with the committee’s process tend to focus on the wrong factors – for example, a team’s conference record or one bad loss in December. I’ve always found the committee values big wins more than anything, and that proved true again.
No. 6 overall team/No. 2 seed Florida State (8-1 vs. Top 50) and No. 13 overall team/No. 4 seed Butler (7-2) both fared better with the committee than they rank in the AP and coaches polls. Despite gaudy overall records, Wisconsin (2-3) and Cincinnati (3-2) were left out entirely. There’s a common thread with all.
https://twitter.com/MarchMadnessTV/status/830486131108110336
* The entire Big Ten is suffering. No Big Ten team made the committee’s Top 16. (The one team I missed in my latest Bracket Watch was Purdue, which I had as No. 4 seed.) The league did not fare well in non-conference play, which is dragging down everyone’s RPI ranking, which in turn limits opportunities to rack up those all-important Top 50 wins.
Purdue (5-3 vs. Top 50) is the notable exception, so I thought we’d see the Boilermakers in there, but perhaps losses to Nebraska and Iowa hurt the Boilers. They can’t be too far out. And the good news for Wisconsin is it has four Top 50 games ahead of it, including two (Northwestern and Maryland) over the next eight days.
* Gonzaga can’t get much higher. The undefeated ‘Zags checked in as the fourth No. 1 seed, and we can safely say if they do win out between now and Selection Sunday they’ll remain on that top line. Chairman Mark Hollis said there was clear separation between the 1s and the 2s.
But with Saint Mary’s on Saturday its only quality opponent remaining, Gonzaga is going to have a tough time catching Villanova/Kansas/Baylor, which play Top 50 foes seemingly every other night. And should the ‘Zags trip up even once, it will leave them vulnerable to being passed by an ACC team like North Carolina or potentially the Pac-12 champ.
* Arizona will want to pass Oregon. Hollis did a nice job taking viewers through the process by which the committee places teams in their respective regions. In particular, you saw how closely they adhere to geographic preference.
With that in mind, the fact that Oregon is the committee’s No. 8 team and Arizona its No. 9 team was a pretty key distinction. It allowed the Ducks to be placed in the West regional, being played this year in San Jose, while the Wildcats got shipped to Kansas City. By rule, both teams can’t be placed in the same region if they’re both on the top four lines.
