Committee has tough decisions at top of bracket, too

INDIANAPOLIS – Gary Walters understands the difficulty in filling those final spots for the NCAA field. This year, however, his selection committee faces a new twist – picking the top seeds.\nWith Florida’s late-season struggles, Wisconsin’s injuries and Kansas’ power ranking, Walters acknowledged Wednesday that putting together the 65-team field this weekend will be far from clear-cut.\n“There appears to be less clarity at the top this year,” Walters, the committee chairman, said during conference call day hours before the 10-member group was to meet. “So that could change the seeding if someone stubs their toes in the conference tournaments.”\nWhile much of the talk focuses on whether mid-major schools such as Old Dominion and Drexel of the Colonial Athletic Association, Santa Clara of the West Coast Conference and Missouri State of the Missouri Valley Conference have done enough to warrant at-large bids, the debate among committee members may driven more by seeding.\nAmong those in the mix are Florida and Wisconsin.\nThe Gators (26-5) are the defending national champions, the regular-season Southeastern Conference champs and were ranked No. 1 as recently as four weeks ago. Yet consecutive losses at LSU and Tennessee, before beating Kentucky at home last weekend, has knocked the Gators down to No. 6 in The Associated Press poll, No. 9 in the RPI Index, a calculation that includes victories over Division I opponents, strength of schedule and opponents’ strength of schedule. So Florida could be fighting for a top seed when the SEC tournament begins Thursday.\nWisconsin (27-4) finds itself in a different predicament. The Badgers are No. 3 in the poll and No. 4 in the NCAA’s RPI ratings but haven’t looked the same since starting center Brian Butch went down with a right elbow injury during a 1-point loss to No. 1 Ohio State on Feb. 25. Butch was expected to miss four to six weeks, meaning he could miss the rest of the season, and the Badgers have struggled to score without him.\nInjuries are something the committee generally considers as Cincinnati learned in 2000 after Kenyon Martin cracked a bone in his right leg and tore ligaments in a conference tournament game. The Bearcats, who were ranked No. 1, wound up with a No. 2 seed.\n“This is one of those real subjective areas, whether a player is scheduled to come back,” said Walters, the athletic director at Princeton and a former Providence assistant. “It’s something you can only hypothesize about, and some teams have done very well when a player goes out. Others have struggled.”\nOne committee member, UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero, will participate by phone and computer. UCLA said he will be staying in Los Angeles because of his father’s death Tuesday.\nThe only lock, heading into the weekend, may be top-ranked Ohio State (27-3), which is No. 2 in the RPI and has steadily improved throughout the season. Otherwise, it’s a muddled picture.\nUCLA (26-4), which lost to Florida in last year’s championship game, is ranked No. 4 in the poll and No. 1 in the RPI, so a strong showing in the Pac-10 tournament could solidify its hold on a top seed.\nKansas (27-4) is ranked No. 2 this week but has an RPI rating (15) that could force the Jayhawks off the top line if they make an early exit in the Big 12 tournament.\nNorth Carolina (25-6) has the opposite problem. It’s ranked No. 3 in the RPI but only eighth in the poll, something Walters acknowledged would be one gauge used by the committee. So the decisions are likely to depend on which factors the committee considers most important.\n“The RPI is a tool, basically a general indicator of strength but it’s not an absolute,” Walters said. “Clearly, there would be some problems if a team played a weaker schedule or something. Our job is to determine the 34 best at-large teams.”\nAnd then decide how they fit into the mix.\nWalters said the committee would submit its first ballot late Wednesday night. Committee members are not expected to be available again for interviews until the bracket is released Sunday night.\nHow it eventually looks – even at the top – is anybody’s guess.\n“We need to continue to look at the unbalanced schedules in the league and the unbalanced schedules outside the league,” Walters said. “I think in the past, you could kind of scratch in the teams on the top line. Now, there’s more doubt between the first and second lines.”