NCAA selectors got it right for Cougs, Zags

Man, do I love it when an Ivy League guy is in charge of the bracket.

During the many public grillings Gary Walters – athletic director at Princeton, former college teammate of Bill Bradley and this year’s chair of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee – submitted to during the weekend, he had this to say about March Madness:

“One of the really neat things about this tournament … what makes it especially quintessential Americana is this balance, if you will, between the automatic qualifiers, which I like to refer to (as having their) roots in Jacksonian democracy versus the at-large teams, which (have their) roots in Jeffersonian democracy.”

And I thought the only choices in college basketball were man-to-man and zone.

Quick – give me the Yeoman Farmers in the office pool.

Look, I’d like to sort out Walters’ analogy for you, but I’m afraid my high school civics teacher was showing game films to the class the day we were supposed to cover that. It was tournament week then, too.

I know this much: the committee is the hoops equivalent of modern government, entrusted with broad powers and manned by servants with a sincere desire to work toward the public good.

Except that mostly they piss everybody off.

If the selection committee screwed up this year’s bracket worse than usual – and I’m not sure it did – it was probably because Walters had his nose buried in John Stuart Mill and not in the sports pages. For instance, if they were ready to fire Stan Heath at Arkansas – and they were – then that’s a pretty good hint that even the good people there didn’t think their team belonged in the NCAAs.

No RPI needed.

Now, the committee members make their share of goofs each March both in selection and seeding, and I would rather eschew Christmas dinner and cold lager than give up a stroll through their stupidity. Allow me to join the jury sneering at Illinois and Stanford, and wonder how it is that Duke can get a sixth seed in the NCAAs when it was a seventh seed in the ACC tournament.

Mike Krzyzewski must have loaned Walters his copy of “Critique of Pure Reason.”

But all the folks stirred up about the snub of Drexel are conveniently forgetting that the Dragons finished fourth in their league, and I’m guessing half of them don’t even know what league that is. Hint: it’s very Jeffersonian.

In any event, the committee got it right when it came to the local schools and, really, does anything else matter?

Washington State got an easy trip to Sacramento, a No. 3 seed befitting its accomplishments and a challenging – but not uncomfortable – bracket position in a pod with Oral Roberts, Vanderbilt and George Washington. And when CBS’ Seth Davis immediately declared the Oral Bobs to be his upset special, the Cougars got the underdog chip they wear on their shoulders so well.

As for Gonzaga, the Bulldogs would have thanked the committee for its spot in Sacramento, too, as well as the No. 10 seed – except that Walters beat them to it.

“There was a certain amount of empathy in the committee for the tremendous strength of schedule that Michigan State played this year – by the way, also for Arizona, candidly, and also for Gonzaga,” he said.

“I’m really glad Gonzaga ended up winning their league because we would have had a difficult time … trying to decide what to do with them.”

Uh-oh. We all know what that means.

It means that had the Zags not won the West Coast Conference tournament, there’s every likelihood that Mark Few would have been channeling his pal Jim Boeheim yesterday and today and right up until tipoff of Gonzaga’s NIT game.

That’s the way it was in the Zags’ early NCAA tournament years, when they were twice a No. 10 seed and once a 12. You didn’t think then that the committee could turn down Gonzaga except that without the automatic bid, it would have. No, it doesn’t necessarily make sense that the Zags would have slipped off the bubble without the auto, and yet saw their seed rise after they qualified, but that’s pretty much what happened.

Playing nine NCAA tournament teams – none in their own conference – had to do something for the Bulldogs. Say what you want about Drexel’s determination to beef up, but it didn’t come close to taking on the dragons Gonzaga did.

“Everybody had some crazy projections,” Few said, “but where we were seeded was probably fair to where our strength of schedule was.

“I think that’s an endorsement of what we’re doing. I hope we’re still reading the committee’s mandate properly. I think we are. I think they’re still placing a big value on out-of-conference strength of schedule and whether you win your league. I think we’ve got a handle on that.”

Good. Now maybe he can help us out with the Jacksonian/Jeffersonian business.