After Selection Sunday

Took a few months off to regroup after football season but now it's time to come back for the best sporting event in the world.

Once again, Pete and I tried to predict the brackets before they were announced. This year we missed three teams again. We had Colorado, Alabama and Virginia Tech in the field instead of UAB, VCU and Clemson.

The team with the biggest gripe, in my opinion, is probably Alabama. I have no problem with Georgia being in but I don't see how you put Georgia in and not Alabama when Alabama was 12-4 in the (albeit, weaker half of the) SEC and beat Georgia twice in a week. Plus they do have a win against SEC tourney champ Kentucky.

I like VCU and actually like the fact they made the tournament. But in all honesty, this year, they do not deserve it. I'm a big fan of the Colonial but you can't finish 4th in that conference and be in line for a bid. Pete and I discarded VCU pretty early in the process. Granted they had two good wins against Old Dominion and George Mason in conference but their next highest RPI wins were non-tournament teams Drexel and Wichita State.

I know the committee doesn't look at conferences when comparing teams, but in this case I'm going to compare Clemson and Virginia Tech. The RPIs were close enough that it didn't matter. Clemson did beat Virginia Tech head to head but as showed by Georgia and Alabama, that doesn't matter that much either. Apparently the selection committee was big on playing people outside your conference. If you look at Clemson's non conference SOS it's 206 and Virginia Tech's is 181. Both gross but Virginia Tech should get the nod there. Clemson has zero top 50 wins. Virginia Tech has 2 (Duke and Penn State). I'm not sure about this one.

Pete and I didn't even discuss Colorado. We had them locked in. I think like everyone else we saw them beat Texas, beat Nebraska is a bubble eliminator and beat Kansas State for a 3rd time. Based on those wins it didn't seem necessary to look any further. That's where we were wrong. I do think Colorado passes the eyeball test of a tournament team but you'll have to do alot better than 9-9 in the Big 12 when your non-conference SOS is 331 (comfortably sandwiched between powerhouses South Dakokta State and North Carolina Central). I still probably would have put them in over UAB but I get it. At least UAB won the regular season championship of their conference. Their non-conference SOS was 167 which is still bad but dwarfs Colorado's. They had a better RPI (31 to 66) too. I get the line of thinking but I still would have put Colorado in. The job of the committee is to make the most competitive tournament they can. This feels like a message was being sent.

In order of the 6 teams talked about I would probably have them as Alabama, Virginia Tech, Colorado, UAB, Clemson and VCU if I was to redo my last 3 in, last 3 out.