Bracketology: Oklahoma State deserved a better seed, but the NCAA Tournament committee mostly got it right

Considering the effect COVID-19 had on college basketball scheduling, the selection committee had few gaffes

It was a more difficult year than usual for the NCAA Tournament selection committee. With COVID-19 playing havoc with team schedules before and throughout the season, some teams did not get as much of a chance to prove themselves as others. Among those teams near the cutline of the bracket, having played more games helped. 

Of the last eight teams to make the field as at-large teams, only Wichita State played fewer than 25 games. The Shockers played just 19 games and they did not even have a COVID pause of their own. Only two teams in the entire bracket played fewer games, Iona and Colgate. Eight AAC teams had at least one COVID pause during the season and Wichita State missed out on several games because of that, including both scheduled games with SMU.

The two at-large candidates to play only 20 games each missed the tournament. Louisville and Saint Louis were close, but in the end, the lack of chances at better games hurt them both.

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I also felt that UConn (21 games) and Virginia Tech (22) were each underseeded with the Huskies getting a No. 7 seed and the Hokies a No. 10. It seems that the committee could have done a better job equivocating resumes of teams that played a different number of games, although I say that knowing that was the most difficult thing about trying to do projected brackets this season.

And as always, the teams that got left out gave the committee reasons to leave them out. The last half a dozen teams in the field did that as well, but the committee has to fill the bracket.

The only other surprising seed to me was Oklahoma State as a No. 4 seed. The Cowboys were one of the hottest teams in the country down the stretch of this season, adding wins over Baylor and two over West Virginia in just the past week. It looks like those two losses to TCU came back to bite them when it came time to seed the bracket though.

I bet Illinois is not too thrilled at the thought of playing the Cowboys so early in the tournament.

This is mostly nit-picking. The committee gave us a pretty competitive bracket under some pretty trying circumstances. Now, I just hope we can get all 67 games played, even though that does not seem like a reasonable expectation given how the rest of the season has gone.