STARKVILLE — At approximately 3 p.m. Saturday, the fate of the Mississippi State University men’s basketball team had been sealed, according to the NCAA tournament selection chairman.
Well … sort of.
NCAA Committee Chairman Jeff Hathaway, who retired as director of athletics at the University of Connecticut but joined the Big East Conference as a consultant to keep his spot on the committee, said on CBS Saturday in a live interview at halftime of the Big Ten Conference semifinal game the committee had made its 37 at-large selections.
“We have selected the 37 at-large teams,” Hathaway said. “We will sub in others if some become (automatic qualifiers).”
The NCAA tournament field is made up of 31 automatic selections from the winners of each conference tournament and 37 at-large selections eligible from nearly all of the conference in Division I men’s college basketball. The Great West Conference doesn’t receive an automatic bid to the “Big Dance.”
An NCAA spokesperson confirmed Hathaway’s news Saturday night in a media conference call, but added this wasn’t “strange at all” because the committee has been working on the selection of teams since Wednesday, when it conducted its first round of voting in Indianapolis, Ind.
The 10-member committee started the week with a first ballot of how many teams should be in the field, regardless of whether they are an at-large selection or an automatic qualifier.
LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva, University of Oklahoma Athletics Director Joe Castiglione, Wake Forest University Athletics Director Ron Wellman, Utah State University Athletics Director Scott Barnes, Xavier Athletics Director Mike Bobinski, University of Texas at San Antonio Athletics Director Lynn Hickey, Southern Methodist University Athletics Director Steve Orsini, West Coast Conference Commissioner Jamie Zaninovich, and Big Sky Conference Commissioner Doug Fullerton are the other members of the committee. They aren’t paid for their work, and their positions are highly coveted, as conferences nominate candidates each year.
Once the field is set, the committee will work on a seed list and will rank the teams from 1 to 68. There are slots available to move teams in and out of this list based on results from late Saturday and today. The committee then will bracket the field and deal with a number of logistical problems, including geography. It also will attempt to avoid rematches, especially of conference opponents, in the first two rounds, unless the number of teams exceeds nine from one league, like
last year when 11 teams from the Big East Conference made the field.
Because the bracket needs to be done less than an hour after the Big Ten Conference tournament final is conducted, leaving all the at-large
selections until this morning wouldn’t give the committee enough time to make all the selections and to fax off the completed bracket to CBS for its 5 p.m. broadcast of its NCAA tournament selection show.
MSU team spokesperson Gregg Ellis said he didn’t know if the team planned to gather to watch the announcement of the NCAA tournament field or if it would be open to the public or the media.
It is likely a few of the 37 at-large selections on the committee’s list could be teams that earn automatic qualifier status today by winning their conference tournament, which means there could be additional at-large teams, or teams beyond the list of 37 Hathaway confirmed Saturday afternoon.
If MSU isn’t on the current list, it could be in a group of teams that is just outside that list. That means the teams that will play for the Big Ten Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference, and Southeastern Conference tournament championships today likely will be in the NCAA tournament, meaning those three spots will be subtracted from the list of 37 and will need to be replaced by three other schools.
MSU (21-11) has a Ratings Percentage Index of 74 and zero victories against teams with RPI rankings in the top 25. Last season, the University of Alabama at Birmingham had a RPI of 67 and earned a bid to the tournament. The fact that the Blazers were selected and played in the First Four round in Dayton, Ohio, was highly criticized by national pundits.
“On a given day, our guys have an opportunity to compete against anybody,” MSU coach Rick Stansbury said Thursday night after his team’s 71-61 loss to the University of Georgia in the SEC tournament. “Are we the best team in the country? No. But we’re darn sure one of the 68 best (teams), so we’ll see where it all shakes out in these next few days.”
ABC/ESPN college basketball analyst Jimmy Dykes defended MSU on Saturday while working as a color analyst for the SEC tournament semifinal games.
“I think they’re going to be OK when all is said and done,” Dykes said. “They have wins against Arizona, West Virginia, Detroit, the champions out of the Horizon, Tennessee, at Vanderbilt. Those are better wins than a lot of teams right now that are in that conversation in the last four in and first four out. What has the Pac-12 done this year that says it’s more than a one-bid league?”
ESPN bracket analyst Joe Lunardi had MSU as one of the final four teams in the field Saturday night, which would mean the Bulldogs would play in one of the First Four games in Dayton, Ohio.
“When you don’t just keep winning, you put yourself in position, you hope maybe some other people don’t do something or chance that someone else could slip,” Stansbury said.
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