I don’t envy the job of Charlie Creme at all.
ESPN’s women’s “bracketologist” follows the NCAA selection committee process every week to formulate a 64-team bracket.
After having done the mock bracket exercise in Indianapolis a few years ago, I still can’t get myself to start looking at the deep numbers until February at the earliest. (In fact, I was happy to flee the HQ building in a snowstorm vowing never to write anything critical about the NCAA again.)
February is still 10 days away and the atom-splitting is already substantial, and all the way to the top of the heap.
This week, Creme wrote about how razor-thin the margin has become for determining even a few No. 1 seeds, which is rarely the case in the women’s game. By his latest count, there are no fewer than seven teams vying for two No. 1 seeds (presuming South Carolina and Connecticut have nailed down the other two).
But that was Monday.
On Friday morning, as I write this, there’s more smoldering in the ACC, with Duke and Louisville being upset. Duke’s loss was a head-turner, to Boston College, which had been winless in conference play. Louisville, one of those with a conceivable shot at a No. 1 seed, overcame a 21-1 deficit at Florida State, led by six points with five minutes to play, then faded down the stretch.
The Seminoles, who also have beaten Duke, are among the growing legions trying to get into the ranks of a top 16 seed, which means hosting first- and second-round games. For the moment, they’re tied with Louisville and Notre Dame atop the ACC, where 9-10 teams are harboring NCAA hopes.
The clawing in the Big Ten has become even more ferocious, with the same number of schools in the hunt for an NCAA invitation. Purdue’s 90-88 overtime win at Minnesota jammed the upper part of the standings even further. Whitney Bays’ jumper with 3.4 seconds left gave the Boilermakers some hope of climbing out of the bottom half of the standings. Penn State even won a Big Ten game, upending Indiana.
In the SEC, Tennessee downed LSU to keep pace with South Carolina. But Georgia clipped Texas A & M, and in Oxford, Miss., freshman Morgan William did Bays a few ticks better, hit the winning shot with 3.0 seconds left as Mississippi State downed Ole Miss 64-62. That finish perfectly capped up a frenzied evening that is coming to symbolize a season with more unpredictability than usual.
Even two teams going nowhere managed to draw headlines when Alabama’s Breanna Hayden punched Auburn’s Hasina Muhammad in the face after they got tangled up following a free throw. It was ugly, with three players being ejected in an incident that lingered a good long while.
It’s still January for another full week, and I can’t imagine how Creme is going to explain his latest bracket. This is when his work, and that of the selection committee, really gets mind-numbing. Add to that the top 16 hosting scenarios (Louisville and Arizona State cannot play at home due to arena conflicts), and the finished product figures to look far different than what’s there now.
