The selection committee did about as good a job of drawing up the NCAA basketball tournament field as anyone can remember in recent years, with the exception of inviting Kentucky with an 18-12 won-lost record. Must have put a great deal of stock in the Rupp Arena win over Tennessee.
The only thing Billy Packer, a CBS analyst and Atlantic Coast Conference supporter, could quibble about was the Big East getting eight teams in, compared to only four for the ACC. Selection Committee Chairman Thomas O’Connor, of George Mason University, responded that the committee looked at teams individually, not at conferences. Makes a lot of sense in all but the aforementioned example.
Michael David Smith, over at Fan House, puts it more succinctly:
But as O’Connor accurately pointed out, determining the 34 best at-large teams has little or nothing to do with determining the best conference, top to bottom. The Selection Committee doesn’t talk about conference rankings, and it shouldn’t. The Selection Committee’s job is to select the best teams, not reward the teams from the best conferences, and the Selection Committee did that job well, even if ACC partisans don’t like it.
Other committee members: Michael Slive, Southeastern Conference commissioner; Jonathan B. LeCrone, Horizon League commissioner; Christopher Hill, athletic director, University of Utah; Daniel G. Guerrero, athletic director, UCLA; Laing E. Kennedy, athletic director, Kent State University; Stanley M. Morrison, athletic director, UC-Riverside; Eugene Smith, athletic director, Ohio State University; Jeffrey A. Hathaway, athletic director, Connecticut; Lynn Hickey, athletic director, Texas-San Antonio.