Behind The Scoreboard


Thursday, March 8, 2007
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Behind The Scoreboard
By Claude Vinson

Almost time for NCAA’s tournament selections

At one point they were Number 1 in the West.

At another, they were in a three-way tie for Number 1 in the West. And for a brief while this past weekend, they were Number 1 in the West again.

Those are the fortunes of the NCAA teams rushing headlong into March Madness, and to their credit, the Ole Miss Rebels didn’t just give up and slink away when they faced the pair of adversarial setbacks. As their new head coach Andy Kennedy put it – “We are in it till the end.”

Now as play is about to start in the SEC for all the marbles, Ole Miss and its neighboring nemesis are both sharing a piece of the SEC West pie. Mississippi State gained a share on Sunday evening by knocking out the Crimson Tide.

Before we start telling on the NCAA selection committee, we need to take a couple of more looks at teams, especially on the distaff side. As you are aware, I am sure, the women’s SEC championship played to an end on Sunday. The last game was a contest between LSU and the winner of the Georgia-Vanderbilt game. The shocking news was that the Number 11 Lady Tigers (LSU), sent the Number 2 Lady Vols home.

Anyway, back to dropping a dime on the selection committee. These guys are notorious for looking first at the team with 20 or more wins in a season to give the first options to. But before they reach in that barrel, they take the winners of all the Division 1 conferences and give them an automatic.

After that they flip coins to make up the field of 65 (just kidding!). Really, they take a look at the teams with lesser wins and consider strength of schedule and performance success. And not unlike the BCS process, it leaves some teams rankled. Most teams would like to know early where they are ranked and which location will they be playing in.

They have about another week before everything will be known.

Right now they have to concentrate on rising to the top of the heap in their respective conferences. And that in itself is enough of a burden.

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