Ncaa Countdown Can Begin

Seven days and counting.

On March 10, the nine members of the NCAA’s Basketball Tournament Selection Committee will turn over the 1996 Tournament’s 64-team field and bracketing to CBS and everyone can start the serious business of drafting teams for their office pools.

In the meantime, all one can do is speculate about who will get some of those 34 at-large bids and argue about whether UCLA should be a No. 3, 4 or 5 seed in the West Regional.

Well, there was enough arguing in South Carolina Thursday during the Republican presidential candidate debates.

So let’s stick with the speculating . . .

And here’s guessing that the committee’s task of filling out the field with the 34-large choices will not be quite as difficult as some might assume.

It’s hard to believe that any team that truly belongs in the tournament will be left out — unless you think Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Illinois should be in.

Those are three teams from so-called power” conferences (in this case, the Big Eight and the Big Ten) that definitely need strong finishes to get bids.

Illinois might have to hope the committee wants to give coach Lou Henson a retirement gift, since the Illini are definitely No. 6 in its conference NCAA pecking order (after Purdue, Penn State, Iowa, Indiana and Michigan).

And the only conference that stands a shot at six bids this time around is the Big East (Connecticut, Georgetown, Villanova, Syracuse, Providence and Boston College).

Don’t be surprised if the Big East, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast and Conference USA conferences snap up 23 of the at-large bids.

In fact, former coach George Raveling, now a color analyst for Prime Network and CBS, has a pretty good idea which has been the strongest league in the country this season.

Surprise! It isn’t the ACC or Big East.

I think it might be Conference USA,” said Raveling, and I know that’s gonna shock a lot of people.”

Not really, when you realize that the league — in its first season of existence and lacking an automatic bid to the tourney — numbers among its members Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Marquette and Tulane, all of whom figure to be no worse than No. 7 seeds in their individual regions.

How well will the West be represented?

Well, the Big West Conference should feel fortunate it’s still among the 30 leagues getting one automatic bid to the tournament.

The West Coast Conference will also get just one bid, unless Santa Clara stumbles in the conference tournament, which it hosts.

The Broncos are 19-7 with wins over Georgia Tech and UCLA and a power rating of 21 nationally (according to a formula used by Collegiate Basketball News that is supposedly close to the one used by the selection committee). They’d get an at-large bid.

Fans of UCLA and Arizona, which figure to finish 1-2 in the Pacific-10 Conference, have been able to rest easy for a while.

But Stanford (17-7) and California (16-8) are floating in bubble land. Stanford has wins over Arizona, UCLA and Cal while the Golden Bears’ only eye-catching victory came against Arizona.

The real concerns for many coaches, now, are seedings — they don’t want a late-season tailspin that could drop them a couple of slots in the bracketing.

UCLA’s Jim Harrick is one of those coaches.

He spoke fondly of a No. 2 or 3 seed last week but his Bruins seem a likely No. 4 seed in the West (the Pac-10 champion has always stayed in the West).

That 85-66 loss at Duke couldn’t have left a solid impression in committee members’ minds.

Barring any major collapses, Connecticut (in the West), Kentucky (Midwest), Kansas (Southeast) and Massachusetts (East) are the likely No. 1 seeds.

Normally the top-ranked Wildcats would be sent to their natural geographical region, which is the Southeast.

But Kentucky is the host school for that regional, meaning the Wildcats have to be shifted to another regional.

Of course, don’t forget, this is purely speculative:

Who really knows what’s going to happen until the brackets pop up on your television screen?