Super Sunday

By Dan Rodgers

Yes, today is the day. It's Super Sunday... and I'm not talk about the Super Bowl. This is the first taste that we will get of March Madness. At 6 p.m. we will find out which schools made the NCAA tournament and what seed they earned. Below I will break down each conference and which teams I think will get a bid. The first team is the conference champion (cc) and the rest are at large bids.

America East - Vermont (conference champs)
Atlantic 10 - St. Bonaventure (cc), Temple, Saint Louis, Xavier
ACC - Florida State (cc), UNC, Duke, Virginia, North Carolina State
Atlantic Sun - Belmont (cc)
Big 12 - Missouri (cc), Kansas, Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas State
Big East - Louisville (cc), Syracuse, Marquette, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Cincinnati, South Florida, Connecticut
Big Sky - Montana (cc)
Big South - UNC Asheville (cc)
Big Ten - Michigan State (cc), Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana
Big West - Long Beach State (cc)
CAA - VCU (cc), Drexel, George Mason
C-USA - Memphis (cc), Southern Miss
Great West - North Dakota (cc)
Horizon - Detroit (cc)
Ivy - Harvard (cc)
MAAC - Loyola Maryland (cc), Iona
Mid-American - Ohio (cc)
MEAC - Norfolk State (cc)
Missouri Valley - Creighton (cc), Wichita State
Mountain West - New Mexico (cc), San Diego State, UNLV, Colorado State
NEC - LIU Brooklyn (cc)
Ohio Valley - Murray State (cc)
Pac-12 - Colorado (cc), California
Patriot League - Lehigh (cc)
SEC - Vanderbilt (cc), Kentucky, Florida
Southern - Davidson (cc)
Southland - Lamar (cc)
SWAC - Mississippi Valley State (cc)
Summit League - South Dakota State (cc)
Sun Belt - Western Kentucky (cc)
West Coast - Saint Mary's (cc), Gonzaga, BYU
WAC - New Mexico State (cc), Nevada

Above is your field of 68. There has been an endless debate about who the four No. 1 overall seeds will be and that is understandable. The top two ranked teams, Kentucky and Syracuse, didn't win their conference tournaments. I still think both of those teams will be awarded a No. 1 seed. I think Missouri joins them. A lot of people think Kansas should be one, but Missouri beat Baylor in that championship game. Baylor had beaten Kansas in the semifinals. Missouri also finished second in the conference and was ranked fifth so it's not crazy. People might think I'm crazy for saying that UNC shouldn't get one, but I was between them and Michigan State. UNC had the edge and if they won their conference tournament there would be no question. However, Florida State beat them and the score doesn't tell the whole story. In my opinion, the Big Ten is better overall than the ACC and Michigan State did beat Ohio State in the final. So the four seeds, in this order, should be:

Kentucky
Syracuse
Missouri
Michigan State

UPDATE: Obviously, as expected, the committee gave UNC the No. 1 seed and Missouri got the two. All of the other predictions for those two seeds are correct, the order is just off.

The No. 2 seeds would then be, in order:

UNC
Kansas
Ohio State
Duke

I could go through every seed but we will just wait for the selection show for that to happen. Good luck to your school if they are on the bubble, and I'll be back later with NBA picks and teams that missed out on the tournament, etc.

UPDATE:

OKAY! Now that we've found out who made it and who didn't, I'm going to bold my correct predictions from above... I'm also going to talk about who I think got screwed and who made it but didn't earn it. I'm not going to bold the conference champs because they obviously earned a seed.

Not bad: I predicted 65 correct out of a possible 68. I gave the mid-majors a bit more love than the committee did. Purdue, Alabama and West Virginia are the three that I did not predict.

(10) Purdue - Iona, Temple and Michigan are the only tournament teams that the Boilermakers beat, one is in-conference and two are mid-majors. They are 1-9 against the AP top 25 and lost by double digits six times to the ranked teams in their conference. They didn't have a strong end to the season to convince the committee and got destroyed by Ohio State in the conference tournament.

(9) Alabama - Wichita State, Purdue (see above), VCU and Georgetown are the only tournament teams that the Crimson Tide beat this season. They were 0-4 against the AP top 25 and had a mediocre season in a below average conference. Bama didn't even beat one of the other three tournament teams in their own conference.

(10) WVU - Kansas State, Georgetown and South Florida are the only tournament teams that the Mountaineers beat this season and two of those are in-conference. They were 1-7 against the AP top 25, and they lost in the second round of the Big East tournament to UConn. They also don't deserve to be that high of a seed, but the committee gave this Big East squad the benefit of the doubt.

I understand that none of the mid-majors I selected to make the tournament faced an AP top 25 team and that their SOS might not have been great. However, the CAA is one of the best mid-major conferences and last season had four teams make it, including one in the Final four. Drexel and Nevada both ended the regular season at the top of their conference and all three teams had 24 or more wins.

Snubs are unfortunate but at leas the tournament got 65 of the 68 correct.

Rodgers That