There is not too much to pick at here. I would grade this a B+ job by this committee. I had Virginia Tech IN over Florida, but those last couple of slots were so close. That's the only team that I missed. So, 64/65 teams, 31 seeded exactly, and 58 within one seed line of actual. Pretty darned close.
There are a couple of seeds that are puzzling.
1. Putting Duke ahead of Syracuse on the S-Curve is nearly indefensible. I get that Duke won both the ACC regular season and tourney. But, that's only enough to beat out West Virginia (and that's even debatable), not Syracuse. Simply look at all the numbers that matter. The Orange have a better profile.
Duke beat ONE top 25 RPI team. Syracuse beat five. Syracuse was 8-1 in true road games, while Duke was 5-5. OOC wins are comparable, but I would take Cuse's wins over Cal, Cornell, Marquette, Memphis, Oakland, Florida, and North Carolina (5 NCAA teams) over Duke's wins over Gonzaga, Arizona State, UConn, Tulsa, Charlotte, and St. John's (1 NCAA team). Again, the Orange clearly have a better profile. Now, again, Duke did win both the ACC regular season and tourney titles.
That makes this team an even bigger puzzler...
2. Temple. I nearly put them at a 2 seed! I thought they were easily a 3 at worst and they land at 5. That's particularly difficult to understand given that the reasoning for Duke over Cuse was "regular season and conference champs." Temple did that, too, in the #7 RPI league. The Owls were #8 RPI; beat Villanova, Siena, Virginia Tech, and Seton Hall out of conference; piled up 12 road wins; had a better SOS than Ohio State, New Mexico, and Purdue; had no sub-100 losses (worst loss at @#82 RPI St. John's); won 10 straight to close the season.
And, that garnered only a 5 seed? Temple earned a protected seed. Period.
Those are the only two major issues to me. Otherwise, I thought this committee did a very good job. They handled the Bubble extremely well. Anyone who is not IN knows exactly why they are at home.
And that is the mark of a good committee.
