I'll try to do more detailed post mortem over the next week, but here are some initial thoughts (in no particular order) after the committee's hard work was unveiled:

  • Florida #1 overall? UCLA down to a 2 seed? Virginia up to a 4? USC up to a 5? Vanderbilt up to a 6? UNLV down to a 7? Stanford in the tourney? The committee seemed a bit inconsistent with their principles, particularly when it came to the importance of the conference tournaments vs. the "overall body of work" and whether previous season (ahem, Florida) are taken into account. I'll look more closely at this in a future posting.
  • Overall, this year was better than last year. CTD correctly picked 31 of 34 at-large selections - CTD had Syracuse, Missouri State, and Air Force; the committee picked Arkansas, Texas Tech, and Stanford. CTD also got 45 teams (69.2%) within 1 of their correct seed line, and 53 (81.5%) within 2 of the correct line. Some big misses (see above) were Virginia (had on the #10 line; was on the #4 line), USC (had 10; was 5), Illinois (had 8; was 12), Vanderbilt (had 10; was 6), and UNLV (had 4; was 7).

Thanks to everyone who paid attention this year. I've got some big ideas in mind for next year, but stay tuned over the next few weeks and over the off season for more analysis.