It's Almost Crunch Time

Greetings and salutations to all the aspiring resident bracketologists reading our blog. My name is Kyle Lamb and I'm a writer for Bucknuts.com and Bucknuts the Magazine covering Ohio State athletics, as well as high school sports for JJHuddle.com, Ohio High Magazine and U-Weekly, an independent campus newspaper in Columbus.

As my fine colleague Mr. Zuchowski has mentioned, we're doing a mock selection committee again this season for the 4th consecutive year. It started in 2003 as a mock committee for Jerry Palm of CollegeRPI.com. Palm had his own mock committee the year before, but didn't have the time to do another one, so I volunteered for acting as the so-called "committee chairman."

As someone that had been doing my own brackets since I was 14 years old (as I'm now 25), I assembled a 10-man crew from members of CollegeRPI.com, which today still has five members from our first group.

We haven't served in any official capacity with Mr. Palm the last few years, but we have continued the committee because it's fun for us wannabe bracketologists. With respect to Joe Lunardi, the results the last few years have indicated that perhaps ESPN should staff us as their "experts" instead of Mr. Lunardi.

On this season's committee, I believe we have pretty good chemistry. We have to work hard by committee procedures to eliminate any potential bias by disallowing voting by our members on the school they follow. Everyone on our committee is knowledgeable and would not let any bias cloud their judgment, but when you represent a school, the selection committee principals don't allow you to make any votes that include that school.

This year, we have a lot of people from the Midwest - moreso than the "real" committee would have. To gain another voice, I have brought back an 11th consultant from out West, a gentleman that served on our first two committees.

The real committee would have members serving from all over the country and also representing the smaller conferences. While our group might not have the resources to do that, past results have dictated we have a decent handle on what the committee is looking for, and have produced, with fairly high results might I add, brackets that closely resembled the real thing on selection Sunday.

In none of our previous three seasons have we missed more than one (1) at-large bid of 34 teams. In fact, of 102 at-large teams selected in a 3-year span, we have got 100 of the 102 correct, missing only one each of the last two years - pretty good success rate if I may say so.

Last year we got 56 of the 65 teams within one seed of their actual seed. Of those 56, nearly 30 of them we got exactly right, and we had something like 6 or 7 games exactly like the selection committee had.

Of course, we're not perfect and we've had our fair share of misses, too. Trying to put yourself in the mind of the selection committee is nearly an impossible task. Therefore, our M.O. has always been to use the criteria and information presented before us, examine each profile extensively, and make our decisions based on common sense and hope the committee is seeing the same thing. If we try to project the field, we sometimes have an added task of also trying to project what the committee is thinking. So in essence, we keep it simple and just use our own judgments based on precedent and the rest usually takes care of itself.

Over the next week, we are going to detail every move we make as a mock selection comittee, and we will follow the NCAA Tournament guidelines. This will give insight as to how the committee operates, although we do our meetings via a chat room on an instant messenger client, as we don't have the money or time to lock ourselves in a hotel room for 3 days in Indianapolis.

Our process officially begins Sunday evening. We will have everyone submit a list of up to 34 teams that deserve an at-large bid based on their successful play to date. This does not take into account the fact that some of these teams may wind up winning an automatic bid for their conference later in the week. Additionally, this list does not have to be of 34 teams, it can be less.

Secondly, we will also have every member list every other team that they feel deserves to be considered for an at-large. There is no minimum or maximum for this second ballot.

Any team on the first ballot receiving all but two of their eligible votes will be placed on the initial at-large board and is officially in the field of 65 already. Usually based on precedent, about 28 teams make this initial vote. It's also important to note that any team can be voted off the board at any time with a vote of all but two eligible votes.

Every other team receiving at least two votes for the first ballot and/or receiving at least two ore more eligible votes for the second ballot will be placed on the "nomination" board for consideration. Additionally, any team that won or shared the regular season league title for their conference automatically is placed on the nomination board of teams to consider, provided they have not won their conference' automatic bid.

This process in real life begins usually on Tuesday, but because we don't have as much time as the real committee, we start it a few days early to get a head start. Last year, we needed every extra minute possible as we didn't conclude our bracket until 15 or 20 minutes before 6 PM.

That's it in a nutshell. I'll have much more, including some of my thoughts on various issues later.