Skip to content
Sports
Link copied to clipboard

Who'll make NCAAs? Dance card is crowded

If you think you're having problems trying to figure out a pecking order in college basketball this season, consider the predicament of the NCAA Division I men's basketball committee, which is entrusted with selecting and seeding the 68 teams for the NCAA tournament.

Temple basketball still has some work to do to impress the Selection Committee.
Temple basketball still has some work to do to impress the Selection Committee.Read more

If you think you're having problems trying to figure out a pecking order in college basketball this season, consider the predicament of the NCAA Division I men's basketball committee, which is entrusted with selecting and seeding the 68 teams for the NCAA tournament.

With Selection Sunday now only four weeks away, the 10 members of the committee have been hard at work watching basketball games and studying the various metrics used to rate teams. With Villanova having become the sixth No. 1 team this season, trying to rank the teams from 1 through 68 for seeding purposes should be a major headache.

"It's safe to say that the madness may have arrived early this season, and obviously will remain with us," committee chairman Joe Castiglione, the athletic director at Oklahoma, said earlier this week in a conference call with the media.

"To further illustrate what kind of season it's been, typically we have between nine and 11 conferences that send multiple teams to the tournament. This year I think you could make a case for about 14 leagues that could get multiple bids if the top teams from some of those leagues don't win their [automatic qualifier] by winning their conference tournament."

Castiglione mentioned Monmouth, which has four wins against top-100 teams in the RPI, with two of them coming against teams in the RPI top 25, as an example of a team that would merit consideration if it didn't win the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament. He did not name any other team.

The conferences of which St. Joseph's (Atlantic Ten) and Temple (AAC) are members each have three teams projected to be in the NCAAs, according to the bracketology sites on ESPN.com and CBSSports.com. The picks include the Hawks, a No. 10 seed as an at-large team in both predictions, and the Owls, envisioned as an automatic qualifier as AAC champ, as an 11 or 12.

At 55 in the RPI, however, the Owls still have work to do to assure themselves a spot. They are 6-0 against the top teams in the AAC but also have lost to league members Houston, Memphis, and East Carolina. They'll get a tremendous opportunity to impress the committee on Wednesday night when they take on Villanova at the Liacouras Center.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats are part of a massive scramble for a No. 1 seed. The unpredictability at the top is epic.

"By the time we started the selection meeting [last year], we made the unprecedented announcement that eight teams were locked into the two seed lines," Castiglione said. "Based on what we've seen, that may not happen again next month. It's just not been that kind of a season. Yet I view this as a good thing."

Clarifying - finally

The conference call also clarified how the individual rounds what be called this season. The two nights of games in Dayton that start the tournament will now be referred to as the "First Four" instead of the first round. The rounds of 64 and the round of 32 now go back to being the first and second rounds. There is no more third round; it's the Sweet 16 or regional semifinals.

Can they match Game 1?

It has been 40 days since then-No. 1 Kansas and No. 2 Oklahoma played a memorable three-overtime game that is hands-down the game of the year in college basketball to date. So the big question is: Will Saturday's game in Norman, Okla., match the performance level and the drama of the first meeting?

Certainly, Buddy Hield, who scored 46 points in the Sooners' 109-106 loss, could go off again. Hield is averaging 25.7 points while shooting 51.8 percent from the field, 50 percent from three-point range and 90.2 percent from the free-throw line.

"Nobody's impacted the game this year like Buddy has," said Kansas coach Bill Self. "They could give that [player of the year] award out now."

However, Kansas forward Perry Ellis is on a recent roll with four 20-point games in his last six. Guard Frank Mason III had the thankless task of defending Hield the last time, but maybe he can get some of his shots to veer an inch or two off-line.

A win for the third-ranked Sooners, who defeated No. 24 Texas earlier this week, could put them back in the No. 1 conversation.

Scary moment

North Carolina head coach Roy Williams is expected to take his usual seat on the home team bench at the Smith Center, where the Tar Heels meet Pittsburgh on Sunday, five days after collapsing on the sideline because of vertigo. Williams left the bench in the second half of a win over Boston College, then returned to the court for postgame handshakes before meeting briefly with the media. He blamed his episode on a sudden jerking of his head when he spun back toward his team's huddle after complaining about a no-call involving one of his players.

Expatriate of the Week

Point guard Maurice Watson Jr., one of the greatest scorers in Public League history when he played at Boys Latin, scored a career-high 32 points to spark Creighton to a 70-56 upset of No. 5 Xavier. The 5-foot-10 Watson, who repeatedly drove inside against the Musketeers' tall front line, also contributed seven rebounds and five assists. Watson is averaging 17.8 points and a league-high 6.6 assists per game in competition against other Big East teams and shoots 48 percent from the field.

jjuliano@phillynews.com

@joejulesinq