March Madness: What the NCAA men's tournament selection committee got right and wrong

March Madness: What the NCAA men's tournament selection committee got right and wrong: 

It’s as time-honored a Selection Sunday tradition as Charles Barkley picking Auburn to advance to the Final Four.

First the selection committee unveils the NCAA men's tournament bracket. Then the nitpicking and bellyaching begins.

This year’s committee did a respectable job of choosing which 68 teams belong in the field, but some of its seeding decisions were head-scratching to say the least. Below is a look at what the committee got right and what it got wrong:

What the committee got wrong: Only 3 Big East teams in the field

Conference affiliation, the NCAA is always quick to point out, is not part of the selection process. You don’t select conferences. You select teams.

That’s fine, I guess, but it still doesn’t feel right that the Big East, KenPom’s second-ranked conference in the sport this season, secured only three NCAA tournament bids. The conference that produced the overall No. 1 seed and two other top-three seeds sent one more team to the NCAA tournament than the Atlantic 10 did.

The most egregious snub was probably Seton Hall, which is the first team in the 45-year history of the Big East to finish five games above .500 in league play yet miss the NCAA tournament.

Seton Hall (20-12, 13-7) defeated both UConn and Marquette and won three out of five games against fellow bubble teams St. John’s and Providence. Predictive metrics hovering in the 60s hurt the Pirates, but this team could have — no, should have — replaced Virginia in the NCAA tournament

St. John’s and Providence also had a gripe, especially that they were not even among the committee’s last four teams out of the field. The Johnnies (20-13) lacked marquee wins other than a lone victory over Creighton, but they had the best KenPom ranking (25) and second-best NET ranking (32) of any non-NCAA tournament team. Providence was an NCAA tournament-caliber team before Bryce Hopkins’ January ACL tear and went on to beat Creighton twice even in his absence.

Again, the committee will tell you that it properly followed its process, that the tournament cutline just happened to fall right above where three of the Big East’s bubble teams stood. But there’s a reason this is only the second time in Big East history the league settled for just three bids. The Big East deserved better.

What the committee got right: The rest of the bubble

Shortly before midnight on Saturday, people in the selection committee room began sending out some telling tweets about the process of choosing the final at-large teams

“Been doing this since 2006,” NCAA media coordinator for March Madness David Wordlock wrote. “It's never been this hard for the committee.”

Added Iowa State athletic director and veteran committee member Jamie Pollard: “This year is harder than all my previous years combined.”

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