The NCAA Tournament selection committee swears it never considers conference affiliation in its process, but Sunday’s bracket announcement made something very clear.
The Big East is the toughest conference in the country.
For the first time, one conference has three No. 1 seeds as Louisville (Midwest), Pittsburgh (East) and Connecticut (West) joined North Carolina (South), the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season champion, as a top seed.
Connecticut, which lost its first game in the Big East Tournament, edged Memphis, which enters the tournament on a 25-game win streak.
“It’s not just about Memphis,” Mike Slive, the chairman of the 10-member selection committee, said Sunday during a conference call. “It’s who else is in the mix. It’s not what Memphis didn’t do. It’s what other people did.”
While Memphis’ No. 7 RPI rating was one better than Connecticut’s, Memphis beat only two teams in the top 45: Gonzaga and Tennessee. Connecticut not only beat Gonzaga but West Virginia, Villanova, Louisville, Syracuse and Marquette.
Connecticut and Memphis could get a chance to settle it in a regional final. UConn is the No. 1 seed in the West and Memphis is No. 2.
The Big East, Big Ten and ACC all have seven teams in while the SEC has just three, including Mississippi State (23-12) which qualified only by upsetting Tennessee in Sunday’s SEC Tournament final.
The Mountain West, which hoped to qualify four a month ago, has only Brigham Young (25-7) and Utah (24-9). San Diego State (23-9), which reached Saturday’s league tournament title game, couldn’t get off the bubble, nor could New Mexico (21-11) or Nevada-Las Vegas (21-10).
Only four at-large teams came from the nonpower conferences, but Slive would not say the selection committee favored the bigger schools.
“We look at teams. We don’t look at conferences,” Slive said. “Those are labels put on by people outside the committee.”
Slive said the four smaller at-large teams — Butler (26-5), Dayton (26-7), Xavier (25-7) and BYU — all played tougher nonleague schedules and won.
“They’ve gone out and they have found a way to play games and to create a resume that resonates with the committee,” Slive said.
San Diego State, despite a No. 43 RPI, had its best nonconference win against Cal State Northridge, with an RPI of 153. Mississippi was New Mexico’s only nonconference win over a top-100 team, and while UNLV did win at Louisville, the Rebels lost six of their last 10 and had an RPI of 55.
Those three weren’t the only schools whose bubbles burst. Saint Mary’s (26-6), Penn State (22-11), Auburn (22-11), Florida (23-10) and Virginia Tech (18-14) will all slink to the National Invitation Tournament.
The NCAA bracket has its usual interesting pairings and geography. Arizona (19-13), which joined Maryland (20-13) as a bubble team that made it, goes to Miami along with Arizona State. Third-seeded Villanova gets to open in neighboring Philadelphia, where sixth-seeded UCLA could face a hostile crowd in the second round, as could Louisville if it meets Ohio State in Dayton.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
