BYU (obviously)

AND

Any SEC opponent...

It seems a lot of the focus in terms of selection has been on the UNC bid (deservedly so with its AD leading the selection committee and getting a bonus for his team getting picked), but the bigger issue is the crazy preferential treatment given to the SEC this year that scored a record 14 bids. That's over $10M to the SEC even if they lose every game (Texas earned the conference nearly a million by losing in the play-in game). I don't think any conference deserves 14 seeds (leaving only two teams in your entire conference out) and this didn't get the attention it should have. When the B12 was getting a lot of seeds last season, everyone was talking/complaining about it, particularly those in the SEC. I know the SEC had a great year overall and I agree that conference deserved the most NCAA berths this season, but this was completely ridiculous. Any team that loses two-thirds of their conference games should be out (looking at you Texas and Oklahoma) and even Vandy should have been no more than a play-in team.

The SEC played the same game this year to manipulate the NET rankings that everyone complained incessantly about the B12 playing last year, but the SEC was rewarded handsomely for it and nobody really even brought it up. SEC teams played a good number of EXTREMELY terrible programs OOC and ran up the score to achieve HUGE margins of victory in order to manipulate the NET rankings. Just this year, Texas had a 64 point win over AR-Pine Bluff, a 47 point win over Chicago St., a 46 point win over Miss Valley St., and a 31 point win over Houston Christian. Apparently Austin High School didn't have room in their schedule. These huge margins of victory against terrible teams upped the NET rankings across the entire conference, which then in turn artificially inflated the number of Q1 games in the SEC throughout conference play.

It's not as though Texas had a monster OOC season against good teams to earn a solid NET. In fact, they lost to the only ranked team they played OOC (#25 UConn) and they also lost to Ohio State in their season opener. In conference, Texas lost two-thirds of its games including several blowout losses by 20 points and they had only two conference victories in away games the entire season. Even with the inflated NET rankings in the SEC, Texas went 3-5 against Q2 teams. Texas simply did not belong in this tournament and I was happy to see them get bounced by a 12 seed Xavier, but that game should have been played by a non-SEC team. I think there will be more "surprise" losses by SEC teams this year, similar to how the B12 under performed relative to its seedings in the tournament last year and for the same reason.

So I can be happy that I got my first "win" of the tournament yesterday with the Texas loss. Here's to getting several more this first weekend.