Square peg through a round hole

That's how I would describe the pending eight or nine spots expected to open up by way of an at-large bid.

We have all 34 at-large spots currently filled as of last night. We had one spot available a few days back when Gonzaga won the West Coast Conference automatic bid by virtue of their win over Loyola Marymount, but as the mock committee's first order of business last night, we voted unanimously to remove Cincinnati from the field - at least for now.

The mock committee determined that with the Bearcats' loss to Syracuse in the first round of the Big East Tournament on Wednesday, they were not safely in the field and we should remove them for further consideration against the rest of the nomination board.

Previously, Indiana, Bradley, Seton Hall and Alabama had been held over as the top four vote-getters from a previous ballot. So as the next step in the process, each mock committee member identified four more teams from the nomination board with the top four vote-getters joining those four in what's called a "cross-country" vote, which is essentially ranking eight (8) teams 1-8.

Syracuse, Cincinnati, Michigan and UAB were the four teams that received the most votes.

Before ranking these eight teams, I felt it was absolutely necessary we discuss these teams very closely. After all, we all felt that picking teams from the list at this point in the process had become extremely difficult which could only mean we had to be very choosy.

There was a lot of sentiment that Syracuse did not yet belong in the discussion. There was equal sentiment, however, that Indiana and Alabama were by far the most appealing teams remaining. Since we were all in agreement that Indiana and Alabama should fill the remaining two spots, we all decided to vote them 1-2 on this 1-8 ranking to assure their inclusion.

The ballots went as expected, and Indiana and Alabama made it safely on our at-large board with Michigan, UAB, Seton Hall and Bradley earning the right to be holdovers for the next ballot.

As it currently stands, a maximum of nine (9) more spots could open up on the at-large board. This is based on if every conference favorite wins their conference tournament this weekend, and if not, a team from our at-large board (at least in the major conferences) win it instead.

Those nine spots potentially will be filled from teams on the nomination board. Last night, with very little resistence, we voted off Charlotte, Old Dominion, Stanford, UTEP, Virginia and Western Kentucky as we determined those six teams had no shot of earning an at-large bid.

The new nomination board includes the following 20 teams left for possible at-large consideration:

Air Force
Bucknell (playing for the Patriot League Championship against Holy Cross this weekend)
BYU
California
Cincinnati
Colorado
Creighton
Florida State
George Mason
Hofstra
Houston
Maryland
St. Joseph's
San Diego State (favored to win Mountain West conference automatic bid)
Seton Hall
Syracuse
Texas A&M
UAB
Utah State
Vanderbilt

Tonight, we plan to convene to discuss these teams a little more as well as discussing seeding for the higher seeds. Our tentative plan is to begin seeding tomorrow night for the top seeds, and if the weekend games change our minds on anything we have done, we can vote to make a few changes where necessary.