One big juggling act figuring out NCAA Tournament field

Posted February 12, 2010 10:00 pm

By Lindsey Willhite

INDIANAPOLIS - If Dan Guerrero didn't have a day job as UCLA's athletic director, he'd enjoy a life that sounds suspiciously like a college basketball junkie's dream.

As one of the 10 NCAA Tournament committee members for the Division I men's championship, the NCAA pays for Guerrero to have DirecTV and the Full Court package piped into his home.

On any given day during the regular season, Guerrero programs his DVR to record four or five games.

After closing out a hectic workday for UCLA, he sits in an easy chair (his trusty dog by his side) and crams for the most scrutinized final exam in sports. He learns the scores beforehand, so he knows when to turn off a blowout and when to focus on the second half of a barnburner.

Guerrero's life has been like this since November 2005, when he joined the committee. He probably could lull himself to sleep by reciting the nation's Top 100 RPI teams in order - and might hear Dick Vitale's voice narrating his dreams.

"The throttle's down the whole time," Guerrero says.

Four weeks from today, he will hit the elongated finish line that is March Madness.

As he closes out his mandated five-year term, Guerrero chairs the real NCAA Tournament committee that selects the 65-team field and reveals it to the world on March 14.

But Thursday he welcomed 18 media members and conference officials as they arrived at NCAA headquarters to mimic the bracketing process. While the real committee takes six days to build its beauty, our mock committee will get 25 hours.

We're going to inhale the same information, evaluate the same resumes, enjoy the same food, and experience similar headaches and fatigue.

The only difference? The committee members get $75 per diem for their services. We get a rare glimpse at the process, which might just be worth more.

"It's great to be the flies on the wall, if not the elephants in the room, if you will," Guerrero tells our gathering. "The information that you will have in front of you will be mind-numbing. You know there's a lot of parity this year, so the debate this year will be robust. In the end, you hope the picture is a masterpiece.

"You're now the elephants in the room."

Great. How do we avoid smelling like the guys who clean up after them?

"Slicing the onion"Picture 50 basketball teams on a court at the same time - and they're all wearing shades of blue. It doesn't take long before they're so intermingled that it's difficult to sort one team from another without the keenest observation skills.That's a slightly exaggerated description of how tough it is for the NCAA Tournament committee to differentiate between its at-large teams under consideration for March Madness, particularly the closer you get to the unofficial "last four in, first four out" line.It's a painstaking process that the few NCAA staff members who get to be in the real tournament committee room refer to as "slicing the onion."Greg Shaheen, the NCAA's senior vice president for basketball and business strategies (he oversees the NCAA Tournament and the NCAA's contracts with CBS and ESPN), offers fair warning as we dive into this exercise: "You're going to feel like you're in the movie 'Groundhog Day,'#160;" the upbeat Shaheen says. "You're going to go over the same thing over and over and over again."Actually, it's easy to pick the first 20 or so at-large teams. On our opening ballot, where we're asked to recommend Division I teams as either an obvious at-large participant (AL) or someone to be put under consideration (C), we send 19 teams straight to the tournament.As Thursday afternoon turns to evening, we gradually vote 16 more teams into the at-large field. Illinois, which won at Wisconsin just two days before the mock bracket begins, gets in as the 31st at-large team.The Illinois discussion turns out to be one of the most robust of the day, which excites the camera crews from the NCAA and CBS College Sports who've been taping the process.Top CBS analyst Clark Kellogg likes their road wins over Wisconsin and Clemson. I throw out the fact I've seen the Illini play 15 times and there's a lot of bad to go with the good. Just 10 days before, I note, Illinois needed Demetri McCamey's last-second floater to beat Indiana at home.Other people don't like Illinois' bad losses to Utah and Bradley. In the end, the Illini make the field before I suspected they would.Not long after that, we hit the part of the process the Columbus Dispatch's Bill Rabinowitz (who joins me in portraying Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith on the mock committee) describes as sifting sand. At times we feel like we're stuck in quicksand.How many times can we compare Siena's resume to Florida's resume to South Florida's resume to UAB's resume to UTEP's resume to California's resume?When you're on the actual NCAA committee, of course, you stay focused to the point of exhaustion."When Syracuse didn't get in the tournament a few years ago (2007)," Shaheen says, "I would say we spent hours talking about it."We don't have hours to spend on each team. We must make quicker judgments.Should we reward Cal for its top-ranked strength of schedule? Or should we penalize the Golden Bears for beating zero Top 50 RPI teams?South Florida was swept by Notre Dame - a team on the "Under Consideration" list but never considered seriously - but the Bulls won at Georgetown. Which fact should carry more weight?Kellogg, who has done the mock bracket process once before, tells the committee his No. 1 criteria is road wins followed by Top 50 wins. As we near the imaginary cut line, we struggle to find difference-making criteria."Where are you going to start splitting these teams?" Kellogg says loudly in an audible sigh type of way. "Teams with 1 win over a Top 50 team?"Siena shows a 15-game winning streak and a 33 RPI (before Friday's loss at Niagara), but its best win all year appears to be Northeastern.How do you project the Saints as an NCAA team with such a lightweight resume? Can we note Siena retains four starters from last year's team that beat Ohio State in the NCAA's first round?During our committee-wide Siena discussion, nobody says nothin' about last year. Whew. We pass the audition."We were going to give a slap on the wrist," says NCAA Tournament associate director David Worlock, "for the first person who said, 'Remember what they did last year to Ohio State?' or 'Remember what they did to Vanderbilt two years ago?'#160;"History does not matter a whit to the NCAA Tournament committee - and yet the historical significance of their task can be crushing.The committee usually does its final at-large rankings on Saturday night. They don't know where the cut line will fall - that depends on how the conference tournaments shake out - but they know some of the teams on their final ballot of eight won't make the final field."It's very interesting to watch the emotions of the committee Saturday night," Shaheen says. "Saturday night is easily the most intense, because they're aware - it impacts lives of fans. Lives of fans and coaches and institutions in real ways."As a collective committee, our ranking of the final eight teams turns out thusly:1. Saint Mary's; 2. Charlotte; 3. USF; 4. Florida; 5. UAB; 6. UTEP; 7. Siena; 8. California.Shaheen's analysis of our secret ballots shows the decision to be nowhere close to a consensus.California gets votes ranging from first place to eighth. So does USF and Charlotte. Florida's range goes from 1 to 7. Siena's and Saint Mary's range from 2 to 8.In the end, thanks to Duke's mock victory over Virginia in the ACC title game, Duke shifts from the at-large pool to become the 31st and final automatic qualifier. Florida slides into the field as the 34th and final at-large team.Time to bracketThe committee uses the same draining "vote eight teams and then rank eight teams to get four selected teams" sifting process to seed the field from 1 to 65. The committee starts seeding on Thursday, but it can revisit the seeds at almost any time.For example, let's says the committee considers Villanova to be the No. 4 seed and Purdue the No. 5 seed as of Thursday, but Villanova goes on to lose its Big East semifinal on Friday, while Purdue wins the Big Ten tournament on Sunday. They can vote to reorder the seeds.Once the seeds are locked in, Shaheen stands in the front of the room with an empty bracket projected on the screen behind him.Starting with the No. 1 overall seed (Kansas), the committee decides where to place each team. As each school's turn comes, the NCAA computer automatically pops mileages on the projection screen so everyone knows the distance from the school's campus to each regional site.Since the Jayhawks are closest to St. Louis (290 miles), we make them the No. 1 seed in the Midwest regional. No. 2 Syracuse can't go to the East regional hosted at the Carrier Dome (no playing on your home floor), so we push them to Houston.As soon as we're finished slotting the first 16 teams (taking care to ensure the four Big Ten schools and the four Big East schools are spread into separate regionals), it's time to send them to subregional sites.Again, top-seeded Kansas gets first consideration. The Jayhawks are closest to Oklahoma City, so that's where they'll play the first weekend.Then it's time to fill out the rest of the bracket. The NCAA has software that flashes errors on the screen if the committee tries to schedule a regular-season rematch or a recent NCAA Tournament match.For example, we try to slot Belmont as the No. 15 seed in the Houston regional where Duke has the 2 seed. Oops! Duke edged Belmont in a controversial 2008 first-round game, and the computer points out our mistake. It'd be a great storyline to put them together again, but the committee doesn't care and won't allow it.Worlock admits he bought into the "storyline" conspiracy theory before joining the NCAA in 2006."As a basketball junkie, I certainly used to think, 'Oh, that's really cute, they have Pitt and UCLA playing in the second round,'#160;" Worlock said. "#160;'(Pitt coach) Jamie Dixon used to be Ben Howland's assistant (at Pitt). I see how they did that.'#160;"In point of fact, the NCAA has so many bracketing rules it must obey, it's easy to see why the committee has no time to engineer matchups.In 2007, I thought it was way too convenient that the NCAA had Illinois and Southern Illinois on a collision course for a second-round game in Columbus.Now I know it was purely coincidental - or at worst a result of the committee's desire to keep as many teams as possible close to home.At 2:30 p.m. Friday, we finish the bracket by locking in No. 17 seed Jackson State with No. 16 Lehigh for the opening-round game.There's no rejoicing, just relief, as the NCAA staff proofs the bracket for mistakes (such as asking BYU to play on a Sunday, which happened several years ago).While we wait, CBS Sports producer Steve Scheer, half of the team pretending to be Guerrero in this exercise, asks me what I think of this whole thing. I tell him I'd love to become the first journalist to earn a place on the real committee.Scheer, who has spent the last 10 Selection Sundays sitting outside the committee room waiting for the world's first glimpse at the bracket, nods knowingly at my idea."Get in line," he says.  Everything happens in foursAfter the NCAA committee decides its "no-brainer" at-large teams, it starts the endless balloting process to put the other at-large teams in order. (For the mock bracket committee, our initial ballot started us with 19 no-brainers and 53 teams "Under Consideration.")Step 1: Each committee member votes (secretly) for the top eight teams among those on the under-consideration list.(Northwestern, which lost at Iowa the night before the mock committee met, never made it beyond the under-consideration list).Step 2: The NCAA staff compiles the top eight vote-getters. Each committee member ranks those teams 1 through 8 secretly.Step 3: The NCAA staff compiles the vote. The top four get into the at-large field. The bottom four go into the "Holding for At-large" pen.Step 4: Repeat Step 1 to find eight new teams among those "Under Consideration."Step 5: The NCAA staff compiles the top four vote-getters. They join the four in the holding pen.Step 6: The committee members rank those eight teams secretly. The top four get into the at-large field.The committee repeats this dance until it has enough at-large teams to deal with all the possible conference tournament curveballs, then follows the same formula to figure out the seeds.By continually sifting in such a fine manner - like a handyman measuring twice and cutting once - the NCAA committee avoids hasty choices and rankings that might not stand up to close scrutiny.- Lindsey Willhite

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