Bracket Thoughts

It's been a long standing tradition now for Pete and I to try our hand at predicting the brackets. This is what we came up with this year:

We had Florida, Utah State and UTEP out of the bracket while we included Illinois, Virginia Tech and Mississippi St.

We left UTEP out of the bracket because, while they dominated Conference USA, their two best wins were probably against UAB who didn't even make the tournament. I guess the committee weighed their splits against tournament teams Houston and New Mexico State higher than we did. As for Florida, when it came to comparing them with our last 3 in, we held the fact that they have a sub-200 RPI loss (South Alabama). Looking back, they did beat Michigan State, Florida State and bubble(ish) teams like Mississippi State and Ole Miss so I can see their case but I would still leave them out in favor of Illinois. Illinois finished the regular season losing 5 of 6 which probably hurt but they did have three top 25 RPI wins to Florida's one. With Virginia Tech the committee chose to send a message about scheduling. We put them in the tournament because all things being equal, they were the 3rd place team in 3rd best conference in the country. We didn't hold their non-conference schedule against them, the committee didn't weigh their conference schedule in their favor.

Our last debate was between Mississippi State and Utah State. We were in agreement that if we were making the real tournament we it would be a no-brainer that we would put Utah State in. Mississippi State went in to the SEC Tournament knowing they had to win it to make the NCAA Tournament and they didn't. But we're trying to predict what the committee would do. We made the call that their run through the SEC Tournament and taking Kentucky to overtime would have Miss St. pass the committee's eye ball test. I'm actually happy they didn't. Utah State deserves it.

There are some seedings that I do have a problem with:
Villanova - They are not playing well going in to the tournament and I think Georgetown leap frogged them as the 3rd highest seeded Big East team. Maybe I'm just a little disappointed that by Nova being a 2 seed makes Duke's road to the Final 4 easier.
Temple - The A10 got screwed on this one. Temple deserved a Top 4 seed. Winning the A10 regular season and conference tournament doesn't mean that much anymore I guess. And to face Cornell in their first round game in unfortunate. I thought Cornell deserved a better seed as well.
Gonzaga and Vanderbilt - I'd swap them. Vandy screams 8/9 game and Gonzaga is more of a 4 to 5 seed in my opinion.