OSU eager to learn NCAA fate
Ohio State women’s basketball coach Kevin McGuff has said multiple times this season that, unlike many in his profession, he is not a bracketologist.
In the months leading up to the NCAA Tournament, there’s little his team can control other than winning games, he has said, so there’s little point in focusing on seed lines, regions and pairings that are out of the Buckeyes’ control.
Also out of the control of McGuff and the Buckeyes is an NCAA schedule that left No. 11 Ohio State (26-6, 15-1 Big Ten) with more than
quartet produced little in the way of head-scratching.
With the brackets set, the action begins Tuesday and Wednesday with opening-round games that will include matchups between the last at-large teams invited into the draw: No. 11 seeds Providence vs. Southern California and Kansas State vs. Wake Forest.
The tournament gets into full swing Thursday, with the Final Four set for April 1 and 3 in Phoenix. Villanova, which won the title last year on a buzzer-beating jump shot by Kris Jenkins, will open its quest for back-to-back titles against the winner of an opening-round game between New Orleans and Mount Saint Mary’s.
“I want the guys to enjoy it tonight, and then tomorrow, we’re just one of 68 teams,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said.
Although Kansas was the overall second seed, the Jayhawks opened as the favorite in Las Vegas, at 8-1. North Carolina and Villanova were next at 9-1, followed by Gonzaga, Duke and Kentucky at 10-1.
Overall, the bracket produced more quibbles than blockbusters.
If there was any debate about the top, it was about whether Duke (27-8) really should have earned a No. 1 seed instead of a No. 2. The Blue Devils won four games in four days at the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament and have beaten the rival Tar Heels (27-7) twice. But Mark Hollis, the chair of the selection committee, beat back that debate quickly, telling the commentators on CBS that Duke had entered the week as a No. 4 seed.
And although the Blue Devils kept winning over the weekend, “they got stopped on the way by teams that won both their regularseason and conference tournaments (No. 2 seeds Kentucky and Arizona), and they were never compared to teams on the No. 1 line,” Hollis said.
Teams whose hopes were dashed included Syracuse and Illinois State.
Syracuse was vulnerable because of its ranking in the RPI of 84th and its 2-11 record on the road. Still, the omission of the Orange was notable because of the outcry when Jim Boeheim’s team made the field with a similarly mediocre resume last year; Syracuse then advanced all the way to the Final Four.
“Last year, we had the same number of losses (14), and the committee chose to go with teams that had wins,” said Boeheim, whose team’s losses this season included blowouts by weaklings St. John’s and Boston College. “This year, it was virtually the same committee, but they were emphasizing the losses you had.”
(However, Vanderbilt made the tournament with a 19-15 record.)
Illinois State’s chances took a blow when it lost to Wichita State by 20 in the final of the Missouri Valley Conference tournament. Also, it turns out that Wichita State wasn’t as highly regarded as many suspected the 20thranked team in the latest Associated Press poll would be; the Shockers received only a No. 10 seed.
Kentucky coach John Calipari, whose Wildcats could face Wichita State in the second round, reemphasized a point he made last year.
“When you mis-seed somebody, it hurts the seeds above them,” he said. “You put a team at ‘8’ that shouldn’t be there, and the ‘1’ looks at it like, ‘Why are we playing this team?’”
With never-ending realignment turning more mid-major programs into true majors, the number of so-called little guys making the tournament continues to decline even if you count Gonzaga of the West Coast Conference as one of those. The six-biggest conferences took 32 of the 36 at-large spots this year.
The ACC leads the conferences with nine teams in the tournament; the Big East and Big Ten have seven each.