The seeding from 1-16 is crystal clear, because the selection committee printed it right on the brackets. I'm not entirely confident of my logic, but if I understand the brackets correctly the seeding from 1-48 looks something like this: 1. Wake Forest 2. Indiana 3. Maryland 4. Virginia *** 5. Notre Dame 6. UCLA 7. SMU *** 8. UNC Greensboro 9. UC Santa Barbara *** 10. Penn State 11. St. John’s (NY) 12. ODU 13. New Mexico *** 14. Creighton 15. Boston College 16. Virginia Commonwealth 17. North Carolina 18. UConn *** 19. Northwestern 20. Washington 21. Duke 22. Boston U *** 23. Tulsa 24. San Francisco *** 25. South Carolina 26. California 27. Loyola Marymount 28. Ohio State 29. American *** 30. Seton Hall 31. Michigan 32. Florida International *** 33. UCF *** 34. Akron *** 35. Hofstra *** 36. Long Island *** 37. Memphis *** 38. Cal St. Northridge 39. Santa Clara 40. College of Charleston *** 41. Wisconsin-Milwaukee *** 42. Michigan State *** 43. Dartmouth *** 44. Coastal Carolina *** 45. Portland 46. Western Illinois *** 47. Marist *** 48. George Washington *** *** automatic bid I tried to mark the automatic bids, so if my logic for the seeding order is correct, it looks like the last at-large team chosen was Portland, followed by Santa Clara, then Cal St. Northridge, then Michigan, etc. It appears the committee was trying to do some geographic balancing, although I have no insight at all to the "real" selection process. For instance, would a west coast team get a bid over potentially a stronger east coast team if there were a shortage of strong west coast teams? I've seen a lot of posts on other threads about "how could so-and-so get in?" or "how could so-and-so be seeded so highly?". Does anyone know definitively how they select the at-large teams?
While your logic makes sense - unfortunately the NCAA's does not. Only the top 16 teams are seeded - the remianing 32 are largely based on costs associated w/ travel, and who has better facility/can draw a bigger gate for the first round home game. Note how the first round pairings geographically match, and how they also geographically match to the seeded team for the second round: Wake - UCF/FIU VCU - UNC/GW UCSB - USF/UWM UNCG - USC/COFC Notre Dame - OSU/Memphis ODU - Duke/Coastal UNM - Wash/Portland UVA - American/LIU Maryland - Seton Hall/HOfstra Creighton - Northwestern/W. Ill St. Johns - BU/Dartmouth UCLA - Loyola/CSUN SMU - Cal/Santa Clara Penn St - Tulsa/Mich BC - UCONN/Marist IU - Mich/Akron If you take travel costs into account - you will see the pairings make much more sense that way than seeding.
You certainly have a point ... it would be good if there were some selection guidelines published somewhere ... that might make it easier for fans of "bubble" teams not chosen ... particularly if there were clear criteria. However, I guess like most season ending tournaments where all teams don't play the same schedule, there will always be that subjective judgment of the selection committee. Thanks for your perspective.
Gotta say that these stick out. SMU was seeded #8, while New Mexico was seeded #13. There is no reason why geography would pair the Bay Area with Texas instead of New Mexico. So apparently the Cal/Santa Clara pairing was considered by the committee to be weaker than Washington/Portland. Here's what insane about that... -- Cal went 4-3-1 in the Pac-10, 8-0-2 in non-conference play. -- Washington also went 4-3-1 in the Pac-10 but only 7-3-1 in non-conference. -- Santa Clara went 8-4 in the WCC, 7-1 in non-conference play. -- Portland went only 6-5-1 in the WCC, 5-2-1 in non-conference. If you assume honesty and competence (big ifs, I know), I don't see how you come up with a bracket like this.