After a solid week of speculation and anticipation, the NCAA finally has a full dance card. Tonight the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Selection Committee announced it's 65 team field for the NCAA Tournament (aka The Big Dance). Kentucky, Duke, Stanford and St. Joe's got the coveted #1 seeds. Out of the 65 slots, 31 are automatic bids that go to the winners of the different conferences. Some of those automatic bids go to conferences that contain only small-time programs like Lehigh and Alabama State. After the automatic bids, there are only 34 at-large bids for the selection committee to hand out. Rumor has it that UTEP got the last at-large bid. If you want a better look at the whole field, CBS Sportsline has excellent, printable brackets.
I can barely resist commenting on the seedings, but at this time it is better for me to hold my tongue. After all, I have to compete against many of Banshee Blog's readers in various NCAA tournament pools. Lest anyone think that I am a coward, however, I will be sure to make my predictions public once my competitors have made their predictions official.
The tournament starts on Thursday afternoon at 12 pm EST. Only 85.5 more hours to go.
