LITTLE ROCK — March Madness is always a little more interesting when you have a dog in the hunt, but it appears the only way The Natural State will be represented in the big dance is if one of the teams wins its conference tournament.
Arkansas, Arkansas State, UALR and Arkansas Pine-Bluff are the Division-I men’s candidates. Same for the women’s teams, although the Trojans are riding a 19-game victory streak, are the No. 1 seed for the Sun Belt Conference Tournament in Hot Springs and should be a candidate for an at-large bid.
Arkansas Tech’s men’s and women’s teams have a really solid shot at making the D-II tournament.
Even without a state team playing, the NCAA Tournament is one of the most anticipated and viewed college events of the year.
Office pools are illegal in most states, but there are probably more office pools on this one basketball tournament than anything other than the Super Bowl.
Everyone loves the Cinderella stories, and a little more than a year ago your trusty scribe was invited to Indianapolis as part of the United States Basketball Writers Association mock selection seminar conducted by the NCAA to learn how the process of choosing teams really works.
It was intense, informative and educational.
Greg Shaheen, Dr. Jeannie Boyd and Dave Worlock, all of the NCAA, keep it lively and moving along, at least as best they can.
Before we actually had begun, a guy started campaigning for Siena, and after about 45 minutes of lobbying and discussion, Shaheen, who has a way of being direct without offending, got us on target.
As the day progressed we learned that there is no magic number of victories that will automatically get a team in the NCAA Tournament - not 20 or even 25.
We learned the Ratings Percentage Index counts, but not as much as we thought.
We learned that there are numerous votes by the selection committee to seed the field, and we learned that even after a team has been selected it can be removed.
Last year, a TV golden boy wanted a vote to remove LSU. It was explained that the Tigers were the best team in the SEC but the vote was still taken and failed, and as fate would have it, LSU was the only team from the conference to win a game last season in the NCAA Tournament.
As we researched teams - the NCAA has some unbelievable computer programs to allow you to find past games and results within seconds - Worlock, who once was the sports information director at Henderson State, would update us on how conference tournaments ended.
The 34 conference champions automatically go in the bracket and then comes the tough part, the at-large bids, which brought another short speech for Siena, That’s when Boyd, who was an assistant commissioner with the Sun Belt before joining the NCAA, quietly got us back on target.
This was when the computer programs became a life saver because the heavy lifting for at-large teams is their road record, how they fared against teams that are in the tournament, strength of schedule and how they did against top 25 teams.
Armed with that information, it was easier to make teams with as many as 22 victories disappear from the wish list.
Day turned into night.Breaks were taken, dinner eaten and there was a much needed ice cream social before the final bracket was determined.
It was after the ice cream when Shaheen decided to give our slow-moving group an assist and named about nine at large teams.
What usually takes the NCAA selection committee a hard four days we crammed into 12 hours, and when the official bracket came out a couple of weeks later it was not even close to what we had.
Of course, we were winging it and had no idea Mississippi State would win the SEC Tournament. Anything can happen during conference tournaments, and that’s where the hopes are for teams from Arkansas.
Sports, Pages 15 on 03/02/2010