The Mock Selection Exercise began at 2pm on Thursday, Feb. 12th. Scott Barnes, Chairman of the NCAA Basketball Selection Committee, spoke to us about the general duties of the committee and our role as stand-ins to experience the selection process firsthand. The actual committee met prior to our arrival in fact, doing some legwork of their own to compare notes with our pending results later on. It was less about members of the media changing hearts and minds of the actual committee and more about learning how to make the system better. We were there to provide constructive feedback beyond the scope of picking the right teams, while the committee reps were in charge of answering our questions so we could take the newfound education back to the masses. A couple committee members lingered about the room over the next two days to absorb the reverb.

One point the NCAA made clear: margin-of-victory won’t enter the computer rankings any time in the near future. The committee felt margins create a moral hazard on the playing field, encouraging teams to run up the score over good sportsmanship for the sake of padding the resume’.

One other revelation before we got started: contrary to widespread rumors, there’s no additional yet mysterious post-RPI point system the NCAA uses to massage the rankings and reward or penalize teams for meeting or failing to meet certain performance standards. The committee uses the RPI straight out of the box and takes it no further than that.
That said, the NCAA does reference additional sources from time to time including Sagarin Ratings and Pomeroy Ratings, but does so more as a sanity check of their own data than a substitute. They want to acknowledge intelligent people beyond the NCAA’s perimeter that do great work and they aren’t blindly ignoring someone’s product that might add something to the process. But it’s mostly up to committee members to seek outside data on their own that is most compelling and helpful to their work. With Internet connections everywhere in the room, the barn door is open if one chooses to use it.

Dan Gavitt, NCAA Vice President and lead dog in charge of the NCAA Tournament, spoke briefly about the ongoing work by the NCAA and Selection Committee in anticipation of the Big Dance.

Once the suits wrapped up their introductions, participants coughed up the conference reports we mentioned earlier in this series. With the table set, NCAA reps submerged participants head-first into the computer software to start casting votes.

We compared our pre-event coursework with media pair-up Jim Sukup and combined our lists of Locks and Under Consideration teams into a merged list to enter into the system on behalf of Committee member Janet Cone’s seat at the table.

The first order of business: tabulating all of the “Lock” votes by every voting pair on the mock selection committee. Teams receiving at least 80% of all votes cast were automatically fast-tracked into the Field of 68 (in no particular order), while teams receiving at least 20% of all votes cast were thrown into the giant swamp hopefuls swimming in the Under Consideration pool.

With votes counted, 17 teams received “Lock” status (listed alphabetically):

Arizona, Baylor, Butler, Duke, Iowa State, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisville, Maryland, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Northern Iowa, Utah, Villanova, Virginia, Wisconsin.

The NCAA proclaimed Gonzaga the West Coast Conference champion but placed them alongside the Locks for a total of 19 teams, eliminating the need for us to speculate on a long-shot bid stealer from the WCC. The same consideration was given to Wichita State out of the Missouri Valley Conference.

The Under Consideration pool was an exhaustive list of 45 teams that far exceeded the number of remaining at-large spots available in the bracket – after accounting for the two dozen automatic qualifiers from one-bid leagues. The A10 was represented in the Under Consideration pool by Dayton, UMass, Rhode Island, George Washington, and VCU. NCAA reps previously chose Davidson as the tournament champion and automatic qualifier from the A10 – but unlike Gonzaga and Wichita State they were stealing a bid from someone else at the tail end of the dragon.

Davidson’s automatic bid was thrown in the mixer to simulate the unforeseen chaos of conference tourney play and the A10 stood the best chance of sending an underdog to the NCAAs that would otherwise not qualify for an at-large bid.

The first complete test-drive of the NCAA’s bracketology software commenced with a thorough discussion and vote on moving eight teams from Under Consideration to the Bullpen for further scrutiny. Because this was the first attempt to move teams from Under Consideration to the Bullpen, eight teams were migrated instead of four. For more information on how the process works, read the prior chapters in this series.

The Top-8 vote-getters from the Under Consideration pool were (alphabetically):
Arkansas, Cincinnati, Georgetown, Indiana, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Providence, VCU

After another data sandwich and additional discussion, the participants ranked the Bullpen teams 1 through 8. The Top-4 moved on to the at-large field to join the initial 19 Locks.

Those teams were: (alphabetically):
Georgetown, Oklahoma State, Providence, VCU

With 23 teams now in the field, Arkansas, Cincinnati, Indiana, and Ohio State continued in the bullpen for another round. Joining them after another round of Under Consideration voting were Georgia, Iowa, SMU, and West Virginia. Xavier nearly made it into the Bullpen on this round, but tied Iowa — forcing a head-to-head vote the Hawkeyes ultimately won. If nothing else, it meant Xavier was one of the strongest – if not the strongest – teams remaining in the Under Consideration pool and would likely move to the Bullpen on the next round of voting.

Another Bullpen vote moved the Top-4 vote-getters to the at-large field:
Arkansas, Cincinnati, Indiana, Iowa

This process continued over the next couple of hours as more research and discussion took place to evaluate the remaining teams from the Bullpen and Under Consideration pools. More votes were cast and teams graduated from one level to the next and — if enough votes were present — into the at-large field. Teams short on votes either remained where they or relegated from the Bullpen back to Under Consideration if they failed to graduate to the at-large field on two successive Bullpen votes.

The work continued non-stop throughout the afternoon and into the evening with no formal intermissions, until a catered dinner around 7:30pm just outside the war room. Most folks took 30 minutes or less to inhale some hot buffet-style food and were back at their stations crunching more data while awaiting the next instructions from NCAA personnel.

At this point the real fun began and NCAA reps asked us to focus on the existing pool of teams already in the Field of 68 (Locks and at-larges) and start seeding the teams in numerical order by seed line. To expedite the process, we focused on identifying our Top-8 overall seeds.

The results in order of total votes received were:
1. Kentucky
2. Virginia
3. Duke
4. Wisconsin
5. Gonzaga
6. Villanova
7. Kansas
8. Arizona

The first four seeds occupied the #1 seed line in the tournament bracket while the last four seeds occupied the #2 seed line in the bracket. The NCAA was impressed with the media’s handiwork; it was the first time since the MSP began that every committee seat in the room voted for the same eight teams – in any order.

The temperature in the war room turned hotter as we further discussed the Top-8 seed lines, with particular attention paid to #4 Wisconsin and #5 Gonzaga. Because these teams were separated by an important bracket seed line separator (#1 vs. #2), lengthy consideration was given about the merits of each program’s resume’. In Gonzaga’s favor was a near-perfect record and tremendous depth on their roster. The Zags did their best to play a tough non-con schedule as well, but it was not as strong as Wisconsin’s. The participants felt Wisconsin’s overall resume’ deserved a #1 seed because their non-conference schedule was exceedingly difficult. Unlike Gonzaga — with no choice but to schedule a difficult non-conference slate – the Badgers could have insulated themselves inside the Big10 but chose not to play it safe. Instead, they played a grueling pre-conference schedule that included Duke, Oklahoma, Green Bay, Boise State, Cal, Buffalo, and Georgetown. For these reasons, nobody slid up or down the seed line.

Seeds 9-12 were determined based on another round of voting from all teams remaining in the Lock/At-Large/AQ pool.

The results were:
9. Oklahoma
10. Louisville
11. North Carolina
12. Utah

Likewise, seeds 13-16 were subsequently voted on and filled:
13. Iowa State
14. Baylor
15. Maryland
16. Notre Dame

The Irish were an interesting case. They tied Butler and Oklahoma State in total votes, forcing an additional round of discussion, data-mining, and voting. Notre Dame came away the winner, in part, because of more impressive wins at the top end of the schedule – wins that overshadowed ND’s extremely weak non-conference schedule.

As the oil lamps continued to burn throughout the night, participants were steered in whatever direction NCAA personnel chose to pour our efforts into. We jumped back and forth between seeding teams already in the field and picking teams to join the field in order keep fresh and avoid being overwhelmed by the repetitiveness of the process. It’s tedious work.

Ohio State would eventually swing and miss on two successive Bullpen votes and get relegated back to the Under Consideration pool – only to be re-added to the Bullpen on the next vote and subsequently voted into the at-large field. OSU’s lap around the holding pens resulted from a weak non-conference schedule.

Participants kept a close eye on ongoing games being played late that evening. Connecticut destroyed Tulsa, hurting Tulsa considerably as an existing member of the Under Consideration pool. In fact, that game more or less stuck a fork in the Golden Hurricane as they never generated much traction in the MSP. Ole Miss benefited from a buzzer-beating win over Florida.

The NCAA seeded the one-bid AQ conference winners at the bottom of the bracket as a matter of expediency. Plenty of work remained on our part however. Overall, 28 Lock/at-large teams were in the field and seeded by the media, while another seven teams were in the field but yet to be seeded.

Seeds 36-45 (10 at-large spots) remained with 27 teams still “on the clock”. That included four teams sitting in the bullpen:

Dayton, Colorado State, UCLA, and Temple

The Flyers reached the Bullpen in the prior round, but were out-flanked by Xavier, Texas, San Diego State, and Ole Miss. Having swung and missed on their first opportunity to reach the at-large field, UD remained in a strong position as one of the four best holdovers from either the Bullpen or Under Consideration pools.

Unfortunately, work was suspended on Thursday evening before we had an opportunity to vote four additional teams from Under Consideration to the Bullpen, cast another Bullpen vote, and fill additional spots in the at-large field. Dayton was looking good on the next round of voting on Friday morning.

Things were more precarious for fellow A10 members UMass, George Washington, and Rhode Island however. None of them had yet to reach the Bullpen and spots were filling up fast.

Coming Thursday:
Part IV: Day 2: Bubbles, Scrubbing, and Bracketing