Krebs appointed to NCAA Tournament Selection Committee
Paul Krebs is as hopeful as any UNM basketball fan that the Lobos men’s basketball team cuts down nets again in March as Mountain West Tournament champions, punching a ticket back to the NCAA Tournament.
He just knows he won’t be there to see it.
Ironically, as UNM’s 10th-year athletic director formally accepted an appointment Thursday to join the 10-member NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Selection Committee — the body that chooses which teams get invited to the NCAA Tournament — he guaranteed that he won’t be able to watch the Lobos should they play in the event.
“I won’t be able to go to the Mountain West tournament now — we’ll be meeting in New York (putting together the tournament field),” Krebs said.
The Mountain West tournament concludes in Las Vegas, Nev., on March 11, and Selection Sunday, the day the 68-team tournament field is announced, is March 12.
Krebs now will also be assigned to a first- and second-round NCAA Tournament location that won’t be where the Lobos play, should they qualify for the tournament.
Nevertheless, his selection to the committee was a no-brainer, he said, pointing out it’s potentially of great value not only to UNM, but the Mountain West Conference, which has taken a nose dive in recent years in terms of the number of teams invited to the Big Dance.
“The advantage for the University of New Mexico and the Mountain West is that when we’ve had people on the committee in the past (Scott Barnes of Utah State in 2015 and Chris Hill of Utah before they left for the Pac-12), it provides our basketball coaches and the folks within our league some intelligence,” said Krebs, who has run the UNM athletics department since 2006 and was on the NCAA Baseball Selection Committee while serving in the same role at Bowling Green prior.
“... I’m honored and excited to be a part of what I think is one of the best athletic events in the world. Certainly to me, it’s as good as it gets in college sports.”
Though committee members cannot even be present in the
room when the topic turns to the schools they work for, knowing the thought process of the committee as a whole is of great benefit for a team or league when scheduling. The committee in recent years has been criticized for seemingly changing the criteria it emphasizes when choosing at-large teams for the tournament.
With Krebs on the committee, UNM and the Mountain West should not have that gripe, though that wasn’t the case two years ago when Barnes chaired the committee and Colorado State was one of the teams seemingly left out with a résumé the Rams felt was worthy of an invitation.
“I know in the spring, when it’s all said and done, we’ll have our spring meetings and there will be a lot of discussion with the basketball coaches, and then hopefully we can deal more in fact than in myth and innuendo and presumption,” Krebs said.
The appointment is for five years, though Krebs is under contract at UNM only through 2019. He fills the vacancy left by Jim Sterk, San Diego State’s old athletic director, who recently left to work at Missouri.
The 10 member committee adds two new members each year. Krebs and Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart are the rookies this year.
Krebs is the second UNM AD to serve on the committee, after Rudy Davalos (1995-99). Krebs, the longest tenured AD in the Mountain West, also serves on the NCAA’s Competition Oversight Committee. As a result of this appointment, he turned in his resignation this week as the league’s representative to the NCAA Council.
He will have several leagues he will have to follow throughout the year, and there will be several teleconferences and meetings, as well, before Selection Sunday, starting with a November trip to Glendale, Ariz., site of this season’s Final Four.
“The good news is that everywhere I go, I’m the AD of the University of New Mexico,” Krebs said. “I’m representing the University of New Mexico, and it brings some attention and notoriety. When you think there’s 351 schools that play Division I basketball and there are only 10 ADs on the committee — we’re in a small fraternity.”
In addition to Krebs and Barnhart, the committee is chairman Mark Hollis (Michigan State), vice chairman Bruce Rasmussen (Creighton), Janet Cone (University of North Carolina Asheville), Tom Holmoe (BYU), Bernard Muir (Stanford), Peter Roby (Northeastern University), Jim Schaus (Ohio) and Kevin White (Duke).