COLLEGE BASKETBALL NCAA TOURNAMENT Q & A : The Behind-the-Scenes Post-Season Selection, Seeding Process

What are the most-asked questions about the NCAA college basketball tournament? That’s one.

There are many others and almost all have to do with the selection process and the seeding of the teams that follows.

As you try and decide which 34 at-large teams you think belong in the field and who and where they’ll play in the 64-team grid, take a look at the answers from selection committee Roy Kramer, the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, to the questions most people want to ask him.

Question: Who is on the committee?

Answer: “There are nine members including myself. The others are Ken Free, the commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and seven athletic directors: Jake Crouthamel, Syracuse; Tom Butters, Duke; Bob Frederick, Kansas; Charles Harris, Arizona State; Rudy Davalos, Houston; C.M. Newton, Kentucky; and Gary Cunningham, Fresno State.”

Q: Does it matter which athletic directors are on the committee?

A: “It really doesn’t because you remove yourself from the room when a team you are affiliated with is being discussed. It is not an advantage to have an athletic director or commissioner on the committee and I feel we adhere to that guideline stricter than any other the committee has.”

Q: Do the members of the committee do any work as individuals ahead of time?

A: “Each member when he arrives in Kansas City will bring with him a preliminary list of 34 teams or so to be considered for the at-large berths. Those teams will be put together as a full list and that will comprise those teams placed on the board for consideration. We always go back and use every source of information possible to make sure no team is overlooked. Any team which receives six votes, the number necessary to be selected, would be moved from the board into the field.”

Q: What criteria are considered?

A: “The overall record, conference record, how they’ve played on the road, how many wins on the road versus at home, how well they’ve done in last 10 or 12 games, how they’ve done in games against teams considered in the top 50, how many victories came against teams considered in the bottom 150, good wins, good losses and a coaches’ ranking system which is provided. Then we start to compare those still not in with those already selected for the tournament, how they played against them and against the other teams being considered.”

Q: What takes more time, selecting the teams or seeding them?

A: “The parity which has developed has made for some difficult choices in the selection process, but I’m not sure the seeding process might not be the most challenging part of the entire weekend, trying to determine if a team belongs on the fourth, fifth or eighth line because some of those teams can start to look an awful lot alike with the records around the country.”

Q: Can a team get an at-large bid with a sub-.500 conference record?

A: “There are other things that can come in to play to balance off that losing record. For instance, their strength of overall schedule, how they fared non-conference, the strength of that non-conference schedule, games they won on the road. Those can all offset a losing record in the conference and that’s not to say a losing record in the conference is not important, but it is one of the factors we look at it and if it is weak there have to be positive factors on the other side of the fence. There have been teams which have gotten in with under .500 conference records in the past, but all had some very positive chips to play and I would suspect that will happen again this year.”

Q: Does a poor finish to the regular season and not advancing far into the conference tournament hurt a team’s chances?

A: “The committee will look at individual teams whose records fluctuate during the season and would attempt to accumulate any information which would impact that such as injuries or suspensions. One of the factors we have always stated we look at is how a team has played in its last 10, 12 games of the season because we feel this is a good indication of how the team is peaking as it comes to the tournament. We point out this is one factor considered along with eight others being considered.”

Q: Does a team from a weak conference have as good a chance as a team from a power conference?

A: “Whether or not a team gets in can be very controversial especially when a team has a slightly better record than somebody else. But I must say there has never been a team which has been overlooked by the committee and not analyzed and scrutinizied and picked apart in every way possible before they are set aside and not invited to the tournament. I would anticipate that we would be analyzing very carefully a group of schools which could number 100 before we pick those 34, so I don’t think anyone will be overlooked.”

Q: Do teams playing tournament championship games on Sunday afternoon go in with a disadvantage?

A: “That’s always tough particularly if that team is not an early selection and we’ve had that on occasion. What we normally do is we are kept aware of that information as the weekend progresses and we can have a slot on the board with an either-or situation for those teams. Seeding and brackets can even be more difficult because of that.”

Q: Can an individual player of All-American caliber help a team be selected?

A: “We’re in the business of selecting teams not players and our evaluation is based entirely on the team’s record, not on individual players who represent that institution.”

Q: Does a conference’s previous record in NCAA tournaments have any effect on selections for the current year?

A: “We look at the conference only in the context of how it has played this year. This is the 1992 tournament and we’re not selecting teams based on how they played in the 1991 tournament or before that.”

Q: How long does it take to fill out the entire grid?

A: “The normal agenda for the committee centers around convening Friday morning to take care of housekeeping business for first- and second-round sites, officiating assignments and such. About noon Friday we begin to move into the selection process. Our goal is to have the field selected late Saturday so we have adequate time for the seeding process late Saturday or at dawn Sunday.”

Q: Do conference tournament games count any more than regular-season games?

A: “Any game is important, regardless of when it was played. Every single game gets evaluated through the process of selection. Certainly considerations are made for the strength of the conference overall, but otherwise they’re looked at like everything else as we make the selection. No one game makes a season and no one game is ruled out.”

Q: What affects seeding more: how a team fares in the regular season or in its conference tournament?

A: “Both are taken into consideration. What kind of victories during the regular season will be a factor but the tournament will also be a factor in seeding because that tournament game could be the third time teams have met and that could be the difference in seeding one over another and how they’re placed in a bracket or in what region. I think conference tournaments influence selection and have a significant impact on seeding.”

Q: What do you rely on the computer for?

A: “We rely on it for a number of things and have expanded its role in the last two or three years to help us do a better job. There is an RPI Index provided to us. It’s not a rating system in the sense where we say here are the top teams and go right by the computer. The primary index of that computer is a multi-factored index including non-conference schedule, rating of the conferences, strength of home and road wins, the last 10 games, records against the top 25 and bottom 150. The way we use it is to give us an evaluation of all the factors we consider. The computer helps us by keeping at our fingertips an enormous amount of information we used to have to accumulate by hand and we spent a lot of nights into the wee hours putting together those charts.”

Q: Is geography a big factor in where teams are placed?

A: “Yes, but of more concern is the evening of the brackets so a team starting in the West and one in the East have the same chance of getting to Minneapolis. We do try to keep teams to a region as close as possible and we could use as a factor whether or not a team has been moved for the past two or three years to determine where it could go this year.”

Q: Does a team have to be better than .500 overall to get an at-large bid?

A: “There have been some teams pretty close to .500 selected and I don’t think one right at .500 has ever been, but that doesn’t mean it could not happen. If we look at a team and if its index is strong enough, that team will be looked at.”

Q: Is there a limit to how many teams can be taken from a conference?

A: “There are no guidelines and I know people think we can’t take more than five or six from an eight-team league, but the number of teams from a conference selected has never had any bearing on a specific selection. Our job is to pick the best 34 at-large teams and we are somewhat oblivious to how many teams from a conference are selected.”

Q: What could keep a team from playing tournament games at a certain site?

A: “A team cannot play in arena it has played three or more regular-season games in. You automatically have to move out of any site that way accordingly. It is only regular-season games, not conference tournament games so all the Big Eight teams are eligible for the Midwest Region even though the conference tournament is being played in the same arena the regional is.”

Q: Does it hurt a team to be in a conference which doesn’t have a postseason tournament?

A: “It’s not a detriment, but on the other hand I don’t think it’s a plus, either. It takes care of itself. The conferences that have big games this weekend, we’ll follow them as we would the SEC or ACC tournament. It’s just games played in a different way.”

Q: Does a good win early in the season count as much as a good win late in the season?

A: “There’s a difference partly because of the way we look at the last one-third or so of the season as being indicative of the way the team is playing as it enters the tournament. That win is still a factor, even if it’s the first game of the season, but it’s not quite the same as if it were the last game.”

Q: Do the conference tournaments that don’t lead to an automatic bid still matter?

A: “The tournament, with a bid at stake or not, is a continuation of the season and those games are factored into the record. It will be a factor both in the selection process and seeding.”

Q: How do you break a tie between two teams considered equal?

A: “At times you can get to a point where two teams are identical, but what you do is keep going back time and time again to see if you can find something different and I can’t remember a time where you couldn’t find some factor to push one team one way or another off that fence.”