NCAA bracket gets a little clearer

INDIANAPOLIS – The NCAA tournament’s field of 65 seems to finally be coming together. Sort of.

Four days before the brackets are set, selection committee chairman Craig Littlepage said about two dozen teams are well positioned to receive one of the 34 at-large bids. That is a major change from two weeks ago when Littlepage acknowledged there were fewer “locks” than in past years.

If true, that could help alleviate some of the complaints bound to come Sunday night when the field is announced.

“The last two and a half weeks have helped in many situations,” said Littlepage, the athletic director at Virginia. “Right now, I would say I could come up with 23 or 24 teams that have done enough and that’s probably around the average the committee comes up with when we take our first vote on Thursday. I feel pretty comfortable with the teams I would put down on paper.”

But Littlepage has only one vote on the 10-member committee, meaning other opinions could still make this weekend more harried than usual.

Among the new issues the committee must contend with are:

•The unusually high number of “mid-major” teams that have better RPI ratings than those in the traditional power conferences, even better than perennial contenders such as Kansas and Kentucky.

•The unbalanced schedules in some conferences, particularly the 16-team Big East where teams face nine opponents once, three teams twice and avoid three altogether.

•Sorting through the logjam in conference standings, a phenomenon that has created more mediocrity than superiority.

Of course, there are also typical problems such as evaluating injuries, determining whether suspended players might be available when the tournament begins next week and deciphering late-season trends.

Yet in a topsy-turvy season that has helped the profiles of teams such as Gonzaga and George Washington, who are ranked high enough to merit consideration for a No. 1 or No. 2 seed, nothing about this year’s process seems easy.

“I think we’ve become pretty sophisticated in evaluating the schedules they’ve played and the resumes they’ve put together,” Littlepage said. “We’ve got to come to some conclusions about the rigor of the schedules they’ve played, home versus road success and trends.”

Instead of reducing the field, though, Littlepage and his committee have been dealing with an expanded group of contenders.

During a dry run last month, Littlepage said the committee realized there were fewer “locks” than normal this year. A similar scenario played out again two weeks ago.

But late-season surges, collapses and conference tournament results have helped winnow the possibilities. Littlepage said beyond the two dozen teams he personally believes are in the tourney, 28 or 29 others are still under consideration.

Thirty-one conference champions will receive automatic bids; the rest of the field will be comprised of 34 at-large teams and the number of contenders will likely drop as conference tournaments play out.