Everything seemed to be falling into place even before the NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee gathered in Indianapolis the first weekend of March to hammer out the tournament field.
Cincinnati, perched atop the polls, was a lock for the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Regional. Duke, still clicking along despite losing four players to the NBA draft, was a gimme No. 1 in the East. Stanford looked like a solid No. 1 in the West, and either Michigan State or Ohio State would come out of the Big Ten tournament as the No. 1 in the South.
But then Cincinnati center Kenyon Martin took a spill in Memphis. Stanford lost to Arizona. The NCAA lifted UCLA star JaRon Rush’s suspension. And Arkansas and St. Louis, seemingly destined for NIT oblivion, charged out of nowhere to win the Southeastern Conference and Conference USA tournaments, respectively, and earn automatic berths.
Faster than you can say “Valparaiso,” the brackets were in shambles.
“With the injuries, the suspensions, the tournament upsets, it was a phenomenal weekend,” said rookie chairman Craig Thompson, in his fifth year on the panel. “It seemed like every new game brought a new result that made us reconsider something we had just talked about. It was highly unusual.”
And highly controversial.
The committee handed No. 1 seeds to Duke in the East, Michigan State in the Midwest, Arizona in the West and Stanford in the South, then slotted the Bearcats No. 2 in the South.
Coach Bob Huggins took no consolation in being spared a weekend in Cleveland, where Cincinnati seemed headed as No. 1 in the Midwest.
“It’s ridiculous, totally ridiculous,” Huggins said. “We must be the first team in history to be No. 1 in the RPI and not get a No. 1 seed.”
Said Thompson, commissioner of the Mountain West Conference: “The Ratings Percentage Index is something that is very overrated.”
Bracketologists often try to sift the seeds in search of a message. This year the committee made it clear that it pays to play the big boys.
Strength of schedule was a big factor in selecting the top seeds, Thompson said, and it helped DePaul, Missouri and North Carolina sneak into the field while excluding Virginia, Vanderbilt, Villanova and Bowling Green. Tulsa, which leads the field with 29 wins, is only a seventh seed because it loaded up on the likes of Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Centenary.
“I was afraid I may have overscheduled,” North Carolina coach Bill Guthridge said.
But while the committee’s emphasis on strength of schedule was clear, its decision to seed Arizona ahead of Cincinnati seemed a contradiction.
Like the Bearcats, the Wildcats will be without their dominant center in the tournament. Thompson said Arizona notified the committee that back problems would keep Loren Woods out of action.
This came as a stunning injustice to Cincinnati, whose only losses before the Conference USA tournament had come in an upset by crosstown rival Xavier and by Temple, the second seed in the East.
“That’s a historical thing those guys just did,” Huggins said. “How do they know how good we’ll be without Kenyon?”
They don’t. But the committee does know how good Arizona can be without Woods. The Wildcats knocked off Stanford and destroyed UCLA with Woods in street clothes. “There was a test there,” Thompson said.
The Wildcats also lost to Oregon and Oregon State, but the committee finally decided, unanimously, that Arizona was less of a question mark than Cincinnati.
“When you lose a potential and probable player of the year, that’s going to affect your team,” Thompson said. “We did not have an opportunity, other than one 37-minute span in one game, to judge how Cincinnati would play without Martin. And it was very difficult because that was such an emotional period.”
It’s possible that the snub will inspire the Bearcats. It’s also possible that they will repeat their history of early wipeouts. That won’t be known until Cincinnati tips off with UNC-Wilmington on Friday in Nashville.
Until then, hoop-a-holics have plenty to quarrel about. Anyone filling out a bracket in the next few days will appreciate what the selection committee went through. The uncertainty may foretell a wild ride to the Final Four.
“It brings back into the perspective of the whole college basketball landscape how college basketball is just so competitive,” Thompson said. “It was a very difficult process this year.”
