COLLEGE BASKETBALL : Behind Closed Doors, Wheat Is Separated From the Chaff

The busiest answering machine in America? Are you kidding? Nobody’s phone will ring more often Monday than the one belonging to Jim Delaney, chairman of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee.

A probable sampling:

“Jimbo, just wanted to thank you and the fellas for squeezing us into the tourney. We’ll do you proud, we promise.”

Or. . . .

“Are you nuts? We finish 23-6, win our conference, beat North Dakota Fashion Institute and KinderCare College during the regular season , and yet you ace us out of the big show? It was the loss to Bob’s Bait and Tackle School, wasn’t it? Hey, Larry, Moe and Curly could have done a better job with that committee, pal. Phooey on your big-city power ratings; our kids deserved a chance to meet Billy Packer.”

Poor Delaney. Poor anyone who has to serve on the selection committee, especially this season. We exaggerate only a little when we suggest that the nine members of the committee are, at least until Monday, the most powerful men in college basketball. We also exaggerate only slightly when we say they might be the most tormented.

During the next four days, the committee will be virtually sequestered in a downtown Kansas City hotel, allowed out of a meeting room only for meals and an occasional nap. The daily work schedule will begin at 7 a.m. and end, if all goes well, 18 or 19 hours later. The members will bicker. They will compromise. They will break hearts. And when they are done issuing those precious 64 tournament invitations, March Madness officially will begin.

What is it like behind those closed doors? Well, committee member Roy Kramer, Southeastern Conference commissioner, already is joking--we think--about becoming a Maalox addict by Sunday’s end.

“This year will perhaps be as difficult a year as I’ve seen on the committee due to the enormous amount of parity in many conferences,” said Kramer, who is making his fifth appearance as a selector. “It is a weekend that requires an enormous amount of work.”

Former committee chairman Cedric Dempsey, Arizona’s athletic director, also makes no secret of the pressures involved when deciding the fate of tournament candidates. Of course, Dempsey is the same person who once bought a satellite dish for his mountain home, the better to keep track of potential postseason teams.

“Oh, we’d see the light of day, but we’d never know how cold it was outside,” he said of the hotel marathons. “We’d go in on Thursday night and come out on Sunday afternoon. I can remember we lived on two floors, sometimes on just one. We had a room where we slept, a room where we met and a room where we ate. It was a stressful two or three days.”

There’s a reason for that. Each of those 64 bids comes attached with all sorts of prerequisites. There is the money, of course. There is the prestige. There is the television exposure, which can translate into recruiting successes. And there is the tournament itself, almost always the best three weeks in college sports.

Dempsey always knew when tournament time was approaching because his mailbox would overflow with reminders from assorted conferences and teams, all asking for the committee’s consideration. Other conference commissioners or university athletic directors simply would call Dempsey and begin their lobbying efforts. Subtle, it wasn’t.

“I’d get a lot of calls from friends,” he said. “I guess everybody became your friend, right? They just wanted to make sure I had information that would strengthen their positions.”

The first 30 bids are easy: They go automatically to designated conference or conference tournament winners. The remaining 34 invitations, as well as determining the rankings in each regional, create all the tension. Kramer said about 85 teams will be considered for those at-large bids. And Dempsey added that it isn’t uncommon for the committee to spend nearly 18 hours determining the final six tournament entries, so heated is the debate.

As usual, there is a coaches’ advisory committee, sort of a scout team for the selection committee, which provides more detailed observations and impressions about specific teams. Also available are reams of statistics, rankings and schedules. If anything, the committee might sometimes suffer from information overload.

There are rules, too. A committee member has to leave the room if a conflict of interest arises. For instance, Dempsey was excused when Arizona was mentioned. Kramer will exit when a Southeastern Conference school is considered. Secret ballots, requiring a six- or seven-vote margin of victory, are also the norm. And even then, after the committee has picked the field of 64, it isn’t unusual for changes to be made.

So you want to be a selection committee member, eh? (And if you don’t, well, just humor us.) Then you’ll need an official selection checklist. According to Dempsey and Kramer, the committee chooses teams based on the following:

--Won-lost record. Kramer said the cutoff point used to be 19 victories; now it is 17.

--NCAA power ratings index. This looks at a team’s strength of schedule. Twenty victories in one conference might not mean as much as 18 in another. Also, the committee is big on a team’s nonconference schedule (Easy? Challenging?).

--Good victories, good losses. A good victory comes on the road or against a ranked opponent. Or if you’re really lucky, on the road against a ranked opponent. A good loss, said Dempsey, is USC’s two-point defeat by Arizona at Tucson. There is also such a thing as a bad loss, which means an upset.

--How you finish. The committee loves to see teams peaking for the tournament. The last eight to 10 games on the schedule are especially critical.

One fallacy. According to Dempsey, the committee couldn’t care less about tournament history. Meaning this: All things being equal, a frequent NCAA invitee has no advantage over a first-time candidate. Why don’t we believe that?

The hardest selection committee chore of all? The seedings.

“It probably takes every bit as long (as the selection process),” Kramer said.

Here’s why: The committee wants each regional to be equal in strength and to keep teams in their natural geographic location. Fat chance. Solomon would weep if faced with the same dilemma.

Using all of its assembled computer printouts, information and recommendations, the committee starts assigning teams a seeding and a region. Since our guess is as good as anyone’s, here’s what we’d do with the top four seedings in each region:

WEST--Nevada Las Vegas, North Carolina, Arizona, Utah.

Our reasoning: You satisfy the committee’s criterion about geography, you give North Carolina a No. 2 seeding as a reward for finishing second in the nation’s toughest conference and you set up a marquee matchup between UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian and North Carolina Coach Dean Smith. The tournament deserves a twist like this.

MIDWEST--Ohio State, Kansas, New Mexico State, Southeastern Conference No. 2 entry (Louisiana State or Alabama).

Our reasoning: Ohio State and Kansas seem natural choices here. The selection committee hesitates to keep New Mexico State out West because of Big West foe UNLV.

SOUTHEAST--Duke, Arkansas, Mississippi State, Oklahoma State.

Our reasoning: Duke gets to stay home because of its Atlantic Coast Conference title and two regular-season victories over North Carolina. Arkansas drops to a No. 2 seeding after its loss to Texas. Mississippi State stays in the South, and Eddie Sutton, happier than ever, gladly takes what his Oklahoma State Cowboys are given.

EAST--Syracuse, Indiana, Seton Hall, Nebraska.

Our reasoning: A tough call. Indiana still might get the No. 1 seeding, but we’ll take a chance with the puzzling yet talented Orangemen, the Big East Conference champions. Seton Hall earns a well-deserved seeding over St. John’s. Nebraska is shipped East, but gets a seeding for its trouble.

Other possibilities: Booting the SEC entry out of the Midwest mix and replacing it with East Tennessee State. Also, placing North Carolina as the No. 2-seeded team in the Midwest and switching Kansas to the West.

Seven teams are ineligible for postseason play because of NCAA sanctions. Illinois and Kentucky would have been guaranteed invitations; Missouri and Robert Morris probably would have sneaked in, and Maryland would have been on the bubble. Only Northwestern Louisiana and Marshall would have been excluded because of their records. . . . How rare are great centers? Of the 12 finalists for this season’s John R. Wooden Award, only one is a center--LSU’s Shaquille O’Neal. Six are forwards, five are guards. . . . Don MacLean (averaging 23.4 points, 7.7 rebounds), one of the Wooden finalists, is the first UCLA player to make the cut since Marques Johnson won the award in 1977. . . . Kudos to the selection committee for including Providence guard Eric Murdock as a finalist. He wasn’t even on the preseason Wooden poll of candidates. . . . Has it come to this? Stadium Software of Ann Arbor, Mich., is selling a computer program called Hoopla! that runs your office NCAA tournament pool. Now if someone just could develop software that accurately picked the NCAA winner. . . . And while we’re in the mood, may we recommend “Undue Process, The NCAA’s Injustice for All” by Don Yaeger. The book provides a disturbing portrayal of the NCAA hierarchy and its operating methods.

Here’s how the field of 64 should shape up, including the 15 schools that have already received automatic bids (indicated by an asterisk): ACC (6)--Duke, North Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina State, Wake Forest and Georgia Tech; Big East (6)--Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Georgetown, St. John’s, Seton Hall and Syracuse; Big Ten (5)--Indiana, *Ohio State, Michigan State, Purdue and Iowa; Big Eight (4)--Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma State; Pacific 10 (4)--*Arizona, UCLA, USC and Arizona State; SEC (4)--LSU, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt and Alabama; Metro (3)--Southern Mississippi, Florida State and Cincinnati; Southwest (3)--Arkansas, Houston and Texas; Western Athletic (3)--Utah, New Mexico and BYU; Atlantic 10 (2)-- Temple and Penn State; Big West (2)--UNLV and New Mexico State; Mid-American (2)--Eastern Michigan and Ball State; Sun Belt (1)--*South Alabama; Missouri Valley (1)--*Creighton; Ivy (1)--*Princeton; Colonial Athletic (1)--*Richmond; West Coast (1)--*Pepperdine; Southern (1)--*East Tennessee State; Midwestern (1)--Xavier; North Atlantic (1)--Northeastern; East Coast (1)--*Towson State; Trans America (1)--Arkansas Little Rock; Ohio Valley (1)--Murray State; Metro Atlantic (1)--*St. Peter’s; Mid-Continent (1)--*Wisconsin Green Bay; Big Sky (1)--Montana; American South (1)--*Louisiana Tech; Independents (1)--DePaul; Patriot (1)--Fordham; Northeast (1)--*St. Francis, Pa.; Big South (1)--*Coastal Carolina; and Southland (1)--*Northeast Louisiana.

And finally, our top 10: (1) Nevada Las Vegas, (2) Syracuse, (3) Indiana, (4) Duke, (5) Ohio State, (6) Arkansas, (7) North Carolina, (8) Utah, (9) Kentucky, (10) Arizona.

Our waiting list: Kansas, Oklahoma State, East Tennessee State, Seton Hall, New Mexico State and Texas.