There are usually a couple of questionable calls made by the committee that selects the teams, and decides how to seed the teams, in the NCAA basketball tournament. But, instead of merely making a few questionable selections, this year's committee made some calls that are beyond question; they are wrong (stupid, ignorant, pick an adjective), plain and simple. I have yet to see anyone who thinks that UAB and VCU (University of Alabama-Birminghan and Virginia Commenwealth University for those who don't know the initials) actually deserve to be in the tournament except for those on the committee, especially when compared to Colorado and Virginia Tech and Alabama and even Harvard. I don't know what the committee members were thinking, or what stats they were looking at that led them to these selections, but they have made themselves look like idiots.
Then there's the seeding. Kentucky beats Florida earlier on Sunday to win the SEC title, so naturally Florida is given a #2 seed while Kentucky only gets a #4 seed. And Texas, which most pundits thought at worst would fall to a #3 seed, instead gets a #4 also. There are some other questionable seeding decisions, but those are some of the most blatant.
I won't go so far as to say the selection process needs dramatic changes yet, but if next year's selections are as bad as this, then the NCAA should take a serious look at just how these decisions are being made as well as look at the people who are making them. There's no excuse for this happening, especially considering that the field was expanded to 68 for this year.
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