Sights and sounds of the Atlantic 10 Tournament – Day Three
by Bill Kintner
CINCINNATI – The semifinals are over, the table is set for an exciting championship game that includes the hometown team. In the meantime, I sat down with ESPN’s doctor of bracketology, Joe Lunardi to talk about football. Okay, just kidding, we really talked about the selection process for the NCAA Tournament. Joe is also part of the on-air broadcast team for Saint Joseph’s and he works in the university’s communications department.
This is part one of a two-part series.
Bill Kintner: What is different now about the NCAA selection process? I know they made public how they do it, or at least the RPI this year.
Joe Lunardi: I don’t think they made public how they do it. They made public their own RPI. As it turns out, they have even more data entry errors than the people who replicate it, and those who have been doing it on their own for a number of years have actually been correcting them as the season has gone along. I don’t think transparency is a bad thing. I think it is going to become clear that the RPI really is a broad-based tool and not a rank me one-to-65 tool.
BK: Walk through the process of what the selection committee does to pick the 65 teams.
JL: They are really picking 34 teams. The 31 conference winners are automatic qualifiers. So their job is regardless of conference affiliation, past history, star players and successful history, is to pick the 34 best teams after the 31 automatic qualifiers. There are a number of ways of identifying them. Certainly you are looking for teams that play quality competition, teams that win on the road, teams that are hot at the end of the year and teams that don’t have injury or suspension issues. I give the committee a lot of credit for making a much greater attempt to go to games. I have seen many committee members at games in the last two or three years that I have not in other years. They are almost all former coaches, athletic directors and people who have been around the game and can tell a tournament team from a non-tournament team.
BK: Are they going out of their way to see bubble teams like Butler or Miami?
JL: Yes, they are not just showing up at Carolina/Duke. I talked to committee members who tell me that they get home from their day jobs and every night watch two or three games. They take it very seriously, they study the reports that come from individual schools. (In a very deep, authoritative voice) I think they may even pay attention to people like us a little bit, who try to mimic what they do.
BK: You listed the criteria they are using. Do they stick with it during the selection process.
JL: I think it is much more objective than it used to be than when I got started at this 10 years ago, in part because there are more objective ways of evaluating teams than there used to be. The RPI is one tool to try and look through and really measure your opponents. For example, a team like George Washington here in our league, if they had won this tournament 10 years ago that 29-1 record would have sat there and they would have been a one or two seed. But now we know that they never proved it. They still haven’t beaten a team that is going to be in the tournament until the automatic bid winner here is determined and that is why they will be a four, five or six and not a one, two or three. I think there is a lot more accountability now and the scrutiny of the work of the committee has made them sharper. I know that they are sensitive about being able to defend their selections, as opposed to closing the secret door and make their selections in secret.
Part II tomorrow
Notes
- In a brush with greatness, The Big O (Oscar Robertson) was in attendance for tonight’s games. During the first game the Big O was on the air with Sportscaster Andy Furman on 700 WLW. Furman was broadcasting live from courtside during the Saint Joseph’s/Temple game. I didn’t get a chance to talk with him, but I did tinkle in the same toilet he had previously used.
- Temple and Saint Joseph’s split the two games played during the regular season with each school winning at home. Saint Joseph’s played their home game at the Palestra, which is off campus.
- Temple Coach John Chaney is a candidate for “should wear a t-shirt but doesn’t award” because he the sweats like crazy during games and his sweat stains look disgusting.
- Saint Joseph’s win over Temple was the first in eight A-10 Tournament games against the Owls.
- In a “fish grows bigger” tale, Fordham Coach Dereck Whittenburg loves to talk about his “pass” to Lorenzo Charles to win the 1983 NCAA Championship for North Carolina State. In reality, he shot an air-ball that Charles grabbed out of the air and put in the basket. I can’t wait to hear about the no-hitter he pitched to win the World Series for the Yankees.
- Saint Joseph’s will make its second straight trip to the A-10 Championship game and its fourth overall. The Hawks lost to George Washington last season, 76-67. Saint Joseph’s won the A-10 title in its other two championship-game appearances, defeating Rhode Island, 61-56, in 1997 and knocking off West Virginia, 70-57 in 1986.
- In Saint Joseph’s three tournament wins, the Hawks have held their opponents to a combined 31.8 percent shooting from the field (50-for-157) and just 23.3 percent (10-for-43) from behind the 3-point arc.
- Xavier is making its fourth appearance in the A-10 Tournament Championship. The Musketeers have won all three of the previous appearances (1998, 2002 and 2004).
- Tonight’s victory gives Xavier 20 wins for the ninth season in a row.
