Apparently it came down to UTEP vs. Utah State for the last spot. Andy Katz broke this news about 5 hours before the brackets were announced. I wonder if CBS is going to launch an investigation because clearly a committee member leaked this info to ESPN, violating CBS’s exclusive rights for revealing the brackets.

I can’t complain a whole lot about the committee leaving LSU and Utah State out of the brackets in favor of Air Force and UTEP. LSU played poorly at the end and in retrospect they didn’t deserve to go. Utah State is another matter. They are so hard to compare to other teams because of a lack of quality competition. They split with Utah and BYU, while Air Force went 3-1 against those teams. AFA had 2 bad losses compared to USU’s 1. Air Force faced slightly tougher competition and had relatively better road wins.

The key for UTEP getting in was not having any bad losses. They didn’t have much else going for them. Their best true road win was against #102 Fresno State, and just scheduling games against Sul Ross State and Texas Permian Basin isn’t admirable.

One shocker that came out of the seeding was Maryland getting a 4 seed. On the one hand, the committee put a lot of emphasis on Air Force’s regular season, but for Maryland, their ACC tourney run apparently had a lot of weight, like almost 100%.

Finally, after hearing about this antics on the selection show, I would love for Billy Packer to have to call a St. Joe’s game in the Final Four.