They are an odd example of a tournament ready team. They played two tough teams OOC (Baylor and UNI) and got smoked by both on the road. They played four non-D1 teams. They went 3-5 OOC against D1 competition with their best win either Texas Southern or Western Michigan. Once they got into their conference they absolutely dominated, and I mean dominated. They've now won 22 in a row and only two of them were by single digits, most by more than 20.

Glad I stayed up late to watch Northern Iowa do to Texas what it has done to Kansas and others - make them look pretty ordinary.

Once again the opening two days of the tournament have demonstrated the Selection Committee's biases and fallibility.

In an excellent column a couple days ago, The Plain Dealer's Terry Pluto characterized the committee's annual proclamation that it doesn't favor the "big" conferences as an utter "fiction."

Is there anything that could change the committee's approach and conclusions? Knowing a little about leadership and group dynamics, here is what could effect such change: One, just one, member saying forcefully: "Okay folks, let's take a close, long look in the mirror and ask: Are we finally ready to admit to ourselves that it's time to stop selecting 6th and 7th place teams from the big conferences and pick teams from smaller conferences that have won, impressively, their regular season titles if not tournament titles? The big conferences will scream foul, but millions of fans would support such picks. Now let's get at it."

I saw TOmmy's timeline early yesterday and chuckled as he had SFA winning. I was the one who was wrong for sure.

Mich St losing flabbergasted me.

Wonder how long SFA coach is going to be around. That was masterfully done

Watching UNI I thought back on talking to those kids a couple of years ago at the Convo and listened to them talk about Ali and his shot that knocked Kansas out...the next Gen gets to experience a similar moment.

When this weekend is over I suspect my brackets will regress back to the norm and the next level will look hauntingly familiar. SFA MTSU and Hawaii may get bounced and the same teams that have been at the top for 30 years will be in the next weekend. Hope not ....but still there is a nice undercurrent that is getting picked up on ...Mike cited an article just above that makes me happy. Maybe the change is on the distant horizon.

I saw him on someone's bench the other week. Back from Europe and breaking into coaching.

The match-up would have to have been favorable in my opinion. The SFA's and MTSU's winning in this tournament and in the past years have more than a couple guards that can get it done. I'm not sure Ohio has shown that they have more than Simmons and Dartis. Ohio definitely has better shot makers than several teams I've watched.