Time for Closing Statements

Tournament Hopefuls Have a Month to Put Final Touches on Resumes

An improbable turnaround in the second half of the season has Maryland poised to return to the NCAA tournament, but the Terrapins' position is precarious and their margin for error is slim.

A similar predicament confronts many teams nationwide that have one more month to distinguish themselves before the tournament selection committee unveils the 65-team field March 16. Because the differences among schools can be razor thin, the impression a school leaves over the final weeks of the regular season can be a lasting one.

"You may be looking at a team getting hot and gelling at the right time," said Tom O'Connor, the George Mason athletic director and chair of the selection committee. "Winning in the last 12 games indicates a team is playing its best basketball of the season. Losing in the last 12 games will tell you something as well."

The committee aims to select the "best" 34 at-large teams, not necessarily the most deserving, to join 31 automatic qualifiers that fill out the field. What makes the 10-member committee's decisions hard to predict is that the selections represent the "subjective opinion of all committee members," O'Connor said. In other words, some members could value a strong finish to the season, an impressive road record or schedule strength the most. Others could place more weight in a team's position in the Ratings Percentage Index, the mathematical formula that measures a team's strength.

"Everyone has a different opinion and a different way of looking at it," O'Connor said. "That gives us a consensus in the room."

When committee members arrive at the Westin Hotel in Indianapolis on March 12, they will complete a ballot asking them to select teams that are locks for at-large bids. Usually, 18 to 24 teams are selected.

Over the next five days, the committee will complete more than 100 ballots to select the remaining at-large teams. That part of the process is the toughest, committee members say, because while a team can play its way out of a poor seed, it can't advance if it is not in the tournament.

With one month to play, the group of teams vying for the final few at-large bids includes both high-profile teams and upstarts from smaller conferences. Because the committee does not select teams based on conference affiliation, the nation's top-rated conference, the ACC, is not guaranteed to receive the most bids.

At this point, just four ACC teams -- Duke, North Carolina, Maryland and Clemson -- likely will go to the tournament. No one has emerged as a prime contender to receive another at-large berth.

North Carolina State, which was expected to challenge for the conference title, is 15-9 after losing two straight games to fall into a tie for eighth place in the ACC. The Wolfpack has only two road victories and only one victory against a top 50 team.

Miami, which was predicted to finish last in the ACC, has a relatively strong RPI (41), but the Hurricanes are 3-6 in conference play, sitting in 10th place.

"We have the highest RPI of any league in country, yet people talk about the ACC being down," Virginia Tech Coach Seth Greenberg said. "It's college basketball. There is a tremendous amount of parity, there are a lot of good teams and there is a very small margin for error for everyone."