Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990 TAG: 9003112638
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: KANSAS CITY, MO. LENGTH: Medium
From those three conferences should come up to nine of the tournament's top 12 seeds.
More than 290 Division I teams are eligible, but those three leagues may own almost one-fourth of the bids when the 64-team field is unveiled today.
"I guess popular wisdom seems to be that if your conference doesn't have "Big" somewhere in its name, this may not be your year," said Jim Delany, chairman of the nine-man selection committee and commissioner of the Big Ten.
"But there is absolutely no way to forecast anything with certainty," he added. "Which teams will get upset in the early rounds? Which teams will get to the Final Four? That's what makes the tournament so much fun. Nobody knows what's going to happen."
Delany will emerge, bracket in hand, at about 6:15 p.m. today from the conference room where committee members have been holed up for three days. Sequestered almost as tightly as jurors in a murder trial, the committee and senior NCAA staff members Tom Jernstedt and Dave Cawood began their deliberations shortly after dawn on Friday.
Their finished product will be announced live on CBS at 6:30 p.m. today, and a three-week run at the national championship will start with first-round games the Thursday.
"The tournament is 52 years old, but the 64-team format is only about five years old," said Delany, in his first year as chairman. "Just about every time we do something a little bit different, you could say it's the first time we've done it. So when people ask me if the Big Eight could get three No. 1 seeds this year, I just say there's never been a conference with three No. 1 seeds before, but there's no rule against it."
Eight of the top 10 teams in this week's Associated Press poll are from the Big Eight, Big East and Big Ten. The Big Eight, the new kid on the big-time basketball block, has had the No. 1-ranked team nine weeks in a row, with current No. 1 Oklahoma joining Missouri and Kansas.
Kansas is No. 2 and Missouri, the regular-season champion, is No. 6 after being No. 1 for four weeks in January and February. Oklahoma and Kansas figure to be good bets for No. 1 seeds in at least two of the four regionals. Missouri could have been a No. 1, but the Tigers lost in the opening round of the Big Eight Tournament.
Big East powers Syracuse, No. 4 in the poll, and No. 5 Georgetown also are possibilities for top seeds. Some observers say as many as six Big Ten teams, possibly more, will get bids.
Outside the three "bigs," only third-ranked Nevada-Las Vegas figures to get a No. 1 seed. The Rebels could be tabbed No. 1 in the West Region.
Delany, who speaks of the "culture" of the selection committee as it has evolved over the decades, says decisions will be based strictly on how to balance the bracket best.
"If, in the committee's view after reviewing all the objective data and analyzing it, the top seeds in the country are all from one conference, then that's just what we'll do," he said. "It's purely hypothetical at this point. But if that's the case, that's simply the case, and we'll work with that."
In reaching its decisions, the committee uses computer rankings, schedule strengths, regional reports from coaches' groups, news service and other opinion polls and committee members' own observations. Each of the four geographic regionals - East, West, Midwest and Southeast - are seeded No. 1 through 16. Thirty of the 64 bids automatically go to conference champions or conference tournament champions.
That leaves 34 at-large bids for the committee to pass out, each one worth more than $250,000.
One rule strictly enforced, Delany said, is that no committee member is allowed to lobby for his own school, conference or region. When the committee weighs the merits of a school in which a member has a particular interest, that member leaves the room.
If not for this rule, Delany might be in an uncomfortable position as commissioner of the Big Ten. There already have been charges in the media that he plans to make sure the Big Ten gets as many bids as possible.
"But I was commissioner of the Ohio Valley when I was first elected chairman," he said with a grin. "Do they think I'm going to be disloyal to the Ohio Valley?"
Tournament revenues will be only slightly higher than 1989 in this, the final year of the current CBS contract. A bid will net, in addition to all expenses, about $286,500. The Final Four teams in Denver at the end of the month will each pocket, after expenses, about $1,432,500.
by CNB