Let the Whining Commence!

The Field of 64…er, 65

The field is set, so let the crying begin. It is actually a little quiet this March as Jim Boeheim’s Syracuse Orangeman fell one win short of being a viable enough bubble-candidate to whine and politic on ESPN all afternoon. The best substitute this season was Va Tech’s Seth Greenberg, who took the high road verbally, but let the frustration and sarcasm drip from each repeated compliment to “the difficult job the committee is faced with.”

For all Bubble-Whiners, here are the facts for those “excluded”

• Virginia Tech – Yes, they looked impressive in their last-second loss to North Carolina, but last time I checked almost wins did not count. AND if they did, would anyone begrudge Villanova’s last at-large selection?? At least Hansbrough beat Tech, rather than the officials calling a phantom bump 74 feet from the basket in a non-shooting play with 0.1 seconds in the game to criminally alter the game! (No word if the same crew got to do the UCLA –Cal game last week) At the end of the day, with a 1-7 mark against the RPI Top 50, and no non-conference wins to speak of, they landed where they belonged; kNITing a nice sweater for next season.

• Dayton – Give me a break. A losing record in a good, but non-BCS league in the A-10; a stumbling 6-6 finish to the season after getting healthy and an early quarterfinal loss in conference tourney, dropping them to 0-3 against A-10 measuring stick Xavier. Someone please explain to me how this team is 50 slots higher in the RPI than the Sun Devils?

• Florida – It’s STILL great – to be – a Flor-ida Gator, but it will be even better in 08-09. Not many schools that lose their best 6 players, all of whom now get paychecks to play basketball, would even have lingered in the bubble mix this long. Respect to Billy D and the baby Gators.

• Ohio State – A nice push late to get big wins over slumping Purdue and Michigan State, but the swoons of both Florida and Syracuse robbed the Buckeyes of two valuable non-conference banner wins. In the end, they were left with just a 3-10 mark against the tourney field (one of those wins being over UMBC) and not enough juice to topple a weak, but full bubble.

• Mississippi – Another prime example of the flawed RPI. This is a team that finished 7-10 in a down SEC, the soft SEC West to boot. The fact that Joe Lunardi had them on the same bubble as Kentucky for the last three weeks is just yet another reason to want to gouge his eyes out.
  
  
• Arizona State – Yes. They beat Arizona twice. Yes, the beat Xavier in December impressively. Yes, they beat Stanford. Yes, they beat USC… wait, actually Arizona State got screwed. Forget what the RPI says, it is obviously a flawed system. With a .500 record in arguably the deepest and strongest conference in the nation and five marquee wins, Arizona State has a legitimate gripe for inclusion over the likes of South Alabama, Kansas State, and especially Baylor.

For those team IN the field, it appears to be pretty-wide open; with no clear cut favorite. UNC, UCLA, Kansas, Memphis and Texas all appear to have legit title chances, while Stanford, Georgetown, Wisconsin, and Tennessee appear to be not too far behind.

Check back tomorrow for 5 Fatal Flaws in Your Bracket Pool!