Underseeds Sprout Discontent

Gonzaga Coach Mark Few doesn’t need any favors. He has Blake Stepp. He has Ronny Turiaf. He has a team that had lost only twice, that so far was beaten only by the unbeatable, that hadn’t let an opponent finish within a dozen points in nearly two months. His team is mostly healthy, for the first time in a while. What does he need with charity?

It would be great if his team were to get its due when the selection committee seeds the teams that make the NCAA Tournament field. That would be a nice change. Because this program competes in the West Coast Conference, typically not a place that launches Final Four candidates, accurately evaluating Gonzaga has been elusive for committee members in the last six years. That has been hard on this program -- and sometimes even unfair.

But don’t pity the Zags. They’ve advanced in four of the last five tournaments, reached the Sweet 16 three times and came within a couple of minutes of the Final Four in 1999. Here’s who deserves your sympathy: the teams forced to play Gonzaga sooner than they should have been.

When the selection committee underseeds a team such as Gonzaga, the repercussions are equally great for the opponent that must play the Bulldogs in the first and second round. The only reason to seed the field is to provide the best teams with the most accommodating paths to the Final Four. If that’s not the goal, the committee might as well add the 34 at-large teams to the 31 automatic qualifiers and pick them all out of a hat.

“We certainly understand the ramifications that could affect a better-seeded team,” says Charlotte Athletic Director Judy Rose, in her final year on the selection committee. “We probably seed people more based on that than people realize we do.” The committee’s track record on that, however, is not as impressive as its performance in selecting the right teams or, say, giving No. 1 seeds to the proper teams.

Underestimating Butler last year and handing the Bulldogs a No. 12 seed helped cause the early elimination of Mississippi State and Louisville. Butler’s schedule was unimpressive, but the Bulldogs were a veteran team that had won 80 percent of its games over three regular seasons. Only four tournament entrants exceeded Butler’s 13 wins away from home.

In 2002, Cincinnati was presented a No. 1 seed but faced a second-round matchup against UCLA, whose 3-1 record against top 25 RPI teams was better than all but three teams in the field. UCLA won the game in overtime.

It might have seemed a stretch for the committee to seed a Colonial Athletic Association team way up at No. 7 in 1986, but that Navy team had national player of the year David Robinson and a 27-4 record. Even playing at home, No. 2 Syracuse couldn’t survive a second-round game.

“I’ve always said the seeding process is much more difficult than the selection process,” says Western Athletic Commissioner Karl Benson, who is midway through his selection committee term.

Of course, the committee makes this job harder by declining to allow folks such as me and you into the room to point out when these sorts of calamities are going to develop. The best that can be done is to warn those folks now about teams that are more dangerous than their records, resumes or conference affiliations suggest:

* North Carolina. The Tar Heels are staring at a possible sub-.500 finish in ACC play. Beginning in 1997, eight teams from the top six conferences secured tournament bids with losing league records. On average, they were handed No. 9 seeds. Only one was seeded as high as No. 6. For a team such as Pittsburgh or Oklahoma State, it wouldn’t be much of a reward to get a No. 2 seed if that meant a second-round game against a seventh-seeded North Carolina team. The Tar Heels’ starting lineup includes three players who likely will be first-round draft picks. Some entire major conferences might not have that many.

* Louisville. The Cardinals’ seed has been dropping almost daily as they struggle to play through injuries to stars Taquan Dean and Francisco Garcia. When those two averaged a combined 18 points and 29 percent shooting, Louisville went 1-5 during a six-game stretch and fell to a tie for sixth place in Conference USA. That league has never placed more than four teams in the tournament, so it might be tempting to dismiss the Cardinals’ 4-0 mark against RPI top 25 teams. If Dean and Garcia show signs of good health closer to the tournament, though, it might be a mistake.

* Gonzaga. The Zags’ No. 7 RPI ranking -- amazing for a team whose league does not help inflate that rating -- should make it more difficult for the committee to dismiss them. But beginning in 1985, the first year of the 64-team field, the only teams from mid-major leagues that received top three seeds were UNLV (No. 1 in 1987, 1990 and 1991) and Virginia Commonwealth (No. 2 in 1985). Few is not obsessed about how Gonzaga will be seeded. With losses only to Saint Joseph’s (in New York) and Stanford (in Palo Alto), with the team’s depth and talent, he suspects the Zags are being taken more seriously than in years past. “We’ve seen that in recruiting,” Few says, “and we’ve seen that in scheduling.”

If its tournament seed reflects that respect, Gonzaga will not be the only basketball power viewing that as a blessing.