Snubs Felt on All Levels

The mid-majors did great. But not all of them. The big boys got their share. But not enough of it. The anti-West bias? What bias? Air Force is in. Utah State is in. But not Florida State or Missouri State or Michigan or Maryland.

The pairings for the 65-team NCAA tournament were announced Sunday and they were marked by charmingly consistent inconsistency.

Duke, winners of both the Atlantic Coast Conference regular season and tournament titles, was given the overall No. 1 ranking and a spot at the top of the Atlanta Regional.

The other No. 1 seedings, in order, went to Connecticut (Washington Regional), Villanova (Minneapolis Regional) and Memphis (Oakland Regional). UCLA received what is considered the highest of the No. 2 seedings in the Oakland Regional. The Bruins can make it to the Final Four without leaving California. They’re off to San Diego for the first two rounds and, if they advance, up to Oakland.

Last year, the Bruins were 11th-seeded, one of the last at-large teams taken. “It’s a lot different,” sophomore point guard Jordan Farmar said of being No. 2-seeded a year later. “We have put different expectations on ourselves.”

Only two teams have been ranked No. 1 this year -- Duke and Connecticut -- and if they play it will be in the final. Connecticut won the title in 1999 and 2004 and both times it had to beat Duke.

Power conferences did not get cheated. The Big East Conference earned a record eight bids -- though Commissioner Mike Tranghese had talked of his league deserving nine. Cincinnati, a last-second loser to Syracuse in the first round of the Big East tournament, felt snubbed. And the Big Ten got six bids even without Michigan, which thought it had a stronger at-large case than some teams that were selected.

The Pacific 10, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast conferences got four bids each, same as the Missouri Valley Conference.

Grumbling came from Maryland and Florida State of the ACC.

Maryland Coach Gary Williams, whose Terrapins missed the tournament for the second straight year, questioned the inclusion of Wisconsin and Arizona, which made the field for the 22nd consecutive time, the longest current streak in the nation.

“What makes them better than us? I don’t know,” Williams said. “For whatever reason our 19-12 wasn’t as good as Arizona’s record (19-12) or Wisconsin’s record (19-11).”

And even though his conference got a record four bids, Missouri Valley Commissioner Doug Elgin wondered why Missouri State was snubbed. “I’m extremely disappointed, I have to say, that Missouri State came in with a 20 RPI and didn’t get anything,” he said.

The two most surprising at-large spots went to Utah State, runner-up to Nevada in the Western Athletic Conference, and Air Force, which had a computer-generated RPI ranking of 50.

The RPI, or Ratings Percentage Index, a number concocted from a formula that includes a teams’ record, the records of the teams it plays, wins at home, wins on the road, and other secret ingredients, has gained such importance that there are dozens of websites dedicated to replicating the NCAA’s numbers.

So this year the NCAA decided to make its own numbers public -- and then apparently decided to de-emphasize them.

Instead, NCAA selection committee chairman Craig Littlepage said his group “watched a lot of games.”

Benefiting from the new TiVo plan was Air Force. “When we started to talk about a program like Air Force,” Littlepage said, “We asked the question, ‘What is a really tough team to beat? What is a team a particular school might not want to play?’ We watched Air Force and felt, at the end of it, they presented us with a unique team to beat.”

Or, as Air Force Athletic Director Hans Mueh said, “I didn’t beg. But I did point out that no team would represent what the NCAA wants to espouse better than Air Force.”

Littlepage said the committee would take into account how injuries might affect a team, then pronounced that Villanova deserved its No. 1 seeding whether all-Big East guard Allan Ray was healthy enough to play this weekend or not. So the Wildcats got a top seeding and a trip about 10 miles up the road from Main Line to the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia.

Littlepage said the committee considered strongly what kind of nonconference schedule teams crafted, a shot at snubbed Florida State and its 314th-ranked out-of-conference credentials. But then Utah State was welcomed to the tournament despite games against Lewis and Clark and Binghamton.

“I think this should dispel the notion that we are numbers and RPI-driven,” Littlepage said. “Larger conferences really do have a choice of who they play nonconference. We’ve chosen to be rigorous on schools in larger conferences and who they choose to play.”

Another curious choice was George Mason over its Colonial Athletic Conference mate Hofstra. Hofstra beat George Mason twice in the last 10 days, but Hofstra is in the National Invitation Tournament and the Patriots got only the second at-large bid the conference has ever received.

Explained Littlepage: “George Mason and UNC-Wilmington tied for the regular season championship. George Mason was not tied with Hofstra.”

So winning a conference title seems to matter. Or scheduling tough teams. Or just being “unique.”

And the RPI might count. Or maybe not.

There was little controversy about the teams at the top, though. The road to Indianapolis is expected to be paved with Blue Devils and Huskies, who have been at the top all along.