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NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 6, 2007

Judy Southard

THE MODERATOR: We'd like to thank everyone for joining us in our pre-bracket teleconference today with NCAA Division I Judy Southard. Judy is a senior associate athletics director, senior woman administrator at Louisiana State University.
The ten-member Division I Women's Basketball Committee will begin meeting this Friday, March 9 in Indianapolis to begin moving through the selection process for the 2007 Division I Women's Basketball Championship. 31 conferences will have automatic qualification into the Championship, while 33 teams will be selected at-large. The 64-team bracket for the Championship will be announced at 8:00 Eastern time this coming Monday, March 12th on ESPN. Following the announcement of the bracket we will have a post-bracket teleconference with Judy that begins at 9:15 Eastern time. The call number and passcode for joining that conference will be 1-800-214-0745, and the passcode 406844.
Also reminder first and second round games of the Championship will be played on Saturday, Monday, March 17 and 19; and on Sunday, Tuesday, March 18 and 20th.
Thank you and at this point I'd like to turn it over to Judy for some opening comments.
JUDY SOUTHARD: Thank you, Rick. It's my pleasure to have the opportunity to be with you today. I'm looking forward to our conversation and will be happy to try to answer as many questions as I can.
This is a great time of year for all of us and an exciting time for women's basketball. The selection seeding and bracketing process, of course, is one of the committee's highest priorities and within a few days we will begin gathering as a committee in Indianapolis to begin that work. As is usually the case, of course, we expect to be challenged by the task of selecting the best available 33 teams for the at-large spots, and then of course, seeding and bracketing the 64-team field.
Over the years, our committee has tweaked this process, and I can tell you that the current committee is very comfortable with the evolution of the process. We feel that it ensured that every team is treated equally, and the built-in integrity aspect means it all comes down ultimately to how well teams have done on the court over the entire body of their work for the season.
As far as our committee preparation is concerned, let me say that our group has spent hundreds of hours watching games. We have access to an abundance of information including conference monitoring reports and input from the coaches' regional rankings committees. We also have in-depth access to NCAA-provided resources that allow us to drill down into the core of every time's complete body of work in order to be able to analyze a team's worthiness for selection.
In short, it's just a very arduous and challenging process and one that takes an enormous amount of time. While it's certainly a very tense process, I think I would speak on behalf of all my colleagues when I say that it is something that we do look forward to annually.
Since there is still some very important basketball to be played this next week and on through the weekend, I want to be cautious about trying to answer specific questions about certain teams. Other than that, though, I'll try to answer all of your questions in an open and forthright manner.
And having said all that, I'll throw this back now and if there are any questions, we'll go from there.

Q. What do you see in a general sense as maybe the more difficult challenge, getting the field in, or seeding them this year?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Now, I'm not sure that -- I'm not sure that I would really put a priority on any of it. I think it's a step-by-step process, and so I'm not sure that we think about one before we've completed the other.
I think initially I would say that just looking at what I've looked at so far, I think we're going to have some tremendous decisions to be made with the selection process in and of itself. There are a number of teams out there who have some very similar resumes, and I think it's going to involve a lot of really some in-depth drilling down to find the differentials that are going to separate one team from the other. And then, of course, at that point the seeding, once we have gotten those 33 in, the seeding process takes over.
And the reason I think it's difficult to put one priority ahead of the other is obviously who those teams are is going to dictate where the seedings fall. There are a lot of teams bunched together in a lot of places in the bracket that will make different -- differentiating different seed lines I'm sure quite difficult for us.

Q. I know you said you can't really talk specifically about teams, but what if you have a team such as Pittsburgh that loses its starting point guard and still wins 23 games, I mean, is that taken into consideration; that there had to be a big adjustment there for the whole season, not even just like a week or two here or there with an injury?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Obviously we do take a hard look at all of the information that we receive from the conferences and from the individual schools regarding the status of certain players. Whether those players have been available for all or part of a season, when those players went down and out, and how it may have impacted a team. And certainly I would say that obviously we all know Pittsburgh has had a very, very fine year this year, and all of that information will be discussed and will be digested in making any decisions about them, as well as any other team.

Q. Do you think there could be more mid-majors this year selected amongst at-large teams than usual?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I think probably what I would say about that is that we are seeing a great deal of parity. I think we are seeing more parity in our game; let me put it that way, and that's a good thing.
I think we're watching what -- you know, and I use the vernacular that our coaches and that you guys in the print and electronic media use when I say "mid-major" or "power conferences." I think as a committee we don't really discuss it in that way. But to answer your question, what you perceive as mid-majors or power conferences, I do think we're seeing an increase in the level of play in what are perceived to be the mid-major conferences.
Obviously it makes it a lot more interesting when it comes to the selection process, and I certainly feel like that is an indication that our parity is improving, our game is improving across the board and in regards to the total membership, and I think that's a very, very positive thing for our game.

Q. I wanted to ask about the seeding on the 1 and 2 line, I know obviously you can't speak to specific teams, but I was wondering if you could talk about the committee's philosophy in terms of teams within the same conference and also regular-season rematches. When the committee is deciding where to place teams on the 1 and 2 line, how are they guided in terms of avoiding, A, rematches among teams from the same conferences, and also, rematches among teams that have played in the regular season?
JUDY SOUTHARD: We have a set series of principles and procedures for placing the teams in the bracket. And just for your reference point, you can find that, the selections and seeding principles and procedures, you can actually find that on NCAASPORTS.COM under the Women's Basketball page. And those procedures actually dictate how we place teams in the bracket.
We are not allowed to place -- the first three teams chosen from any one conference cannot be put in the same regions. So that right out of the box should eliminate the problem of conference teams facing each other in the later rounds of the tournament, particularly in the higher-seeded lines, if you're following my train of thought here.
We do have a list of additional considerations that we take into consideration as we are trying to place teams in the bracket. We do look at in-season matchups. We do look at the number of times teams may have played each other previously in the NCAA Tournament. We look at how many times -- we try to avoid, we try to avoid those kind of match-ups if we can.
Now obviously at some point in time depending on how many teams are selected from any one conference, we're going to run out of options and we're not going to be able to use those additional considerations, but they are -- that all is considered in the process.

Q. If I may follow up on Dick Patrick's question, I was wondering, how much more has the merge -- merge is probably not the right word -- but the BCS Conferences, many of the BCS Conferences have expanded. I wonder how complicated, how much more complicated the process of choosing teams has that type of expansion made it for the committee?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, first of all I think you need to -- everyone needs to be reminded that we really don't look at conference affiliation as we go through the selection process. Conference affiliation, a conference's previous history in the tournament, an individual institution's previous history in the tournament are simply not things that we take into consideration as we are selecting teams for this year's bracket.
Now, what we try to do instead is drill down and analyze the schedule of each individual team, and we try to judge the body of work as a whole from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. Where that conference affiliation comes in, and where it may impact some of the larger conferences is as it relates to what we call unbalanced schedules; that being a type of scheduling done by a conference office that does not have everybody playing everybody else the same number of times.
But once again, we really apply our decision-making only to the individual team, and we analyze the schedule they play.
And I guess if I were going to give you an example, I would say to you that certainly if you have got a team -- if you've got two teams like Duke and North Carolina in the ACC, one of them may play a Top-10 team three or four times, another one may play three or four Top-10 teams, another one may only play one or two Top-10 teams. It really has nothing to do with their conference as much as it has to do simply with the fact that we are going to analyze that individual schedule for its own merit.

Q. With par system (ph) still working -- inaudible -- take into consideration with the teams that are coming out of the same conference, you mentioned the first three not being put together like that --
JUDY SOUTHARD: I'm sorry, let me get to you start over. I got an interruption here and I missed the first part of your question. I apologize, can you just start the question over for me please, sir?

Q. With the par system (ph) still in effect and helping you out with teams being able to affect the fans to the first and second rounds all the way up to the regionals -- with the 33 at-large bids and you mentioned also earlier about the top three not being in the same region or area together, how will that help the next team available out of the conference that has an opportunity to get to the tournament, will they be affected?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I wouldn't necessarily say they would be affected. We're really -- there are certain match-ups that we are going to make sure don't happen, and I haven't got the list of principles and procedures right smack in front of me right now to go through every one of them with you.
But once we get to a certain point, we're going to try to put teams from the same conferences in different regions as far along the process as we can. Now ultimately, when we get past four and we have five, six, seven teams from the conference, it does mean that some teams from the same conference are going to be in the same region. But we are going to try to set the bracket to ensure that they don't meet in the early rounds of the tournament.
We try our best to make sure that conference teams do not meet each other until at least the Regional Finals, and the only -- the only time at which we are not able to do that is if there were as many as nine teams from a conference.
So does that answer your question?

Q. Yes, pretty much. The other thing, will the top teams out of the conference, at-large and everybody gets their shot, teams that get knocked out in conference play -- I'm sorry, in tournament play, how will that affect the conference champion?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I'm not sure I understand your question.

Q. In tournament play, once the conference tournament starts, teams that the regular season champion gets knocked out maybe the first round or second round.
JUDY SOUTHARD: I gotcha. You wanted to know what happens if a regular season champion gets knocked out in the earlier rounds?

Q. Yeah.
JUDY SOUTHARD: You know, in some cases a conference tournament -- it's really just a matter of how a committee member wants to evaluate that information. There are certain situations in which a committee member may determine that a conference tournament result can be very important to a team's likelihood of having an opportunity to get into the tournament. There could be another situation where someone's chances may not be impacted as negatively by getting beat out in a first or a second round of their conference tournament.
Most of it, most of the selection process is not going to be based singularly and solely on one thing, and that being the conference tournament. It's going to be a selection of data that of course includes conference result, conference tournament results. But it's also going to include other information such as how a team is playing down toward the end of the year; whether a team is played without an injured player over a period of time; how a team has done on the road; how they have done at home; how they have played against a certain strength of schedule; have they a strong schedule or weak schedule.
So it's really a selection of data that we use to select the teams. There's no one thing that is an overriding priority for us.

Q. You kind of addressed in a little bit in your last answer, you have had in some of the major conferences, had the regular season champion losing in the postseason tournament. How complicated has that made that for selecting the top four seeds, even the top eight seeds, of trying to weigh the regular season champion versus the tournament champions?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, obviously we have had some really interesting things transpire over the last several days.
I think what it really does is it causes us as committee members to pause a moment and really go down and try to really study, again, just what the full body of work is for a team. Certainly at this time of year, particularly and using the term power conferences, in the power conferences, for certain teams a loss or a quote, unquote, upset, if it doesn't happen -- if it happens in one of the later rounds of the tournament may not necessarily hurt a team. In some situations, it could help a team to upset; it could help a team to move up seed line.
Obviously I do agree with you. I think our process this year is going to be a little bit complicated by the fact that we do have so many strong teams in what I perceive to be the 2, 3, 4 and maybe even as deep as the 5-line. There are some very strong teams who are really jockeying for position there.
Again, I would go back and say that there are ten individuals sitting in that room that are analyzing all of this material, and different ones of us will spot different factors that will bring to the table as reasons for why we feel like a team should be seeded on a certain line or in a certain position. And then ultimately it comes down to ten individuals casting their own votes for what their opinion is based on a great deal of research that we've done.

Q. If I could just ask you a quick conference-specific question. What do you see as the prospects of the Big-10 being more than a three-bid league this year?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I'm not sure that I could answer that question right now. I'm not sure that it's really fair to try to answer that question when there's still so much basketball to be played. And I say that really in the truest of senses, because we still have several conferences that I think arguably might be multiple-team conferences that are in the middle of their conference championships. And trying to analyze right now where any one conference falls and how many teams would come out of a conference -- you know, and I'll say this to you, and I really mean this in all honesty. Once we go into that room, we pretty much are oblivious to what conference affiliation is.
It was actually not until after the bracket was completed and printed by the NCAA staff last year that I went back, and only because they prepare it as their post-selection -- in their post-selection notes that I even know how many teams from a conference were put into the bracket. We just don't concentrate on that aspect of it at all. We are really judging the teams individually and comparing them one to another as individuals, not as having an affiliation what certain conference.

Q. I want to follow up on your comments about not looking at the conference affiliation. It seems that you are looking at it from the power conference viewpoint. I wonder about the smaller conferences, if a team has done well in one of those smaller conferences, if it has played a schedule in the conference that isn't very strong because it is such a week conference, but outside the conference has played a strong schedule, how do you evaluate that team? Do you penalize it at all because it has not played in a strong conference?
JUDY SOUTHARD: First of all, and I would say that we apply the principles across the board to any school in any conference. Again, the question earlier was specific to one of the power conferences, but it was an answer that I would have given to you as someone who may be asking a question about an institution from a conference that may not be considered -- and again, these are -- this is the vernacular used by the media and by our coaches; the power conference.
We as committee members don't even discuss that. We don't use that vernacular at all. We are truly gauging each program as an independent and they are going head-to-head with the other 332 schools in the country for those 33 slots -- well, once the 31 automatics have gone in, there are 300 vying for those last 33 spots.
What we have access to is a team sheet, however, that does break down each team's schedule, and it tells us how many games a team has played against RPI the top 25, the top 50, the top 100 and the top 101 and below. What would be important to us in trying to compare any two teams when we get down to those last couple of slots, is looking frequently at what they have done out of conference. We know that in all regards, a conference school is a victim of their conference scheduling to some degree, and that can work for you or against you in any of the conferences, both small conferences as well as the larger conferences.
So we would probably take a lot of time, if you are speaking specifically of a conference that has a weaker membership and may not be playing -- may be playing in the lower RPI numbers, we would take a hard look at what that team had done outside of conference with their scheduling; did they try to schedule up some to really show their strengths on the court and what their competitive ability is.

Q. So if I can just follow up, then what they have done earlier in the season can carry a lot of weight at this time of year?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Yes, ma'am, it can. Absolutely.

Q. I'd like to go back to the injured player prospect and see if I understand this correctly. If a team has lost its play-making guard and you see that, and that player is not going to come back, might that drop them in the seeding maybe from 2 to 3 or 3 to 4?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, I think we have to take a long hard -- I'm not going to speculate about whether it would drop them or not.
I think what we would do is we would take a long, hard look at exactly what the situation was. We obviously do take into consideration the availability of all student athletes for the postseason, and then all of that information is shared and each of us as an individual committee member will evaluate just how much that information may impact what our opinion is of where that particular program needs to be seeded or where they need to be; you know, where they need to be ranked in the post-selection process.

Q. In this particular year, would the last ten games be something that would get a strong consideration given how close these teams really are?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I think obviously the last ten games is always an indication of how well a team is playing. But I think we also have to look at exactly who those last ten games may be against.
And again, this refers back to some degree to some of the imbalance in conference scheduling. Because obviously the last ten games of the year are all conference games, and it really -- I think it's really going to depend upon what kind of schedule that -- particularly in the conferences with the unbalanced schedules, what kind of schedules we're looking at comparing one with the other.
I do think that this year we are going to have some interesting debates as it relates to the 4 through 8 positions in some of the conferences and comparing conferences -- not conferences; teams, teams that play in certain conferences against teams that play in other conferences. And obviously I think the strength of the last ten games is important, and I think also with those kinds of schools, what they did out of conference early in the year also going to be important.

Q. Looking at some anomalies, there are some teams, conference, con-conference, there are certain teams with a rivalry that are on their schedules every year for regionals and whatever, some programs take an unusual dip and that unusual dip sometimes can really negatively impact the other team's RPI. ;So beyond the drill backs, I don't think that's something that's going to show in the drill grid; do you get into that kind of discussion, too?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I think what you're asking, if I understand the question correctly, what you're asking is the strength of the intent of schedule. I mean, you know, a lot of times you set obviously -- set schedules as many as two to three years out. And so, you know, there are times when we will get down to making -- and these decisions and these discussions usually happen when we are down to selecting the last two or three teams quite frankly. It's when you're looking for that one little piece of information that's going to be the resume-builder for one above the other.
But there are times where we might make the observation that obviously this team intended to schedule up because they put Team A, B and C on their schedule. It just happens that this past year, A, B and C happened to have down years. Maybe there were injuries; maybe there were defections from the program or whatever else.
Is this a part of the conversation? Absolutely it is. How much weight it carries with an individual committee member, I couldn't speak to. As I've said before, I think we all spend an enormous amount of time doing our research. We spend a great deal of time over Selection Weekend in dialogue and sharing information. And then, you know, going back and repeating myself at the end, it's a vote of ten people. You know, we are all -- each of us is going to vote in our own good conscience what we believe is the best and the right thing to do.
But yes, that information is discussed.

Q. As you look at the first and second round locations, the pod system I suspect probably gives you closer to total neutral floors than you've ever been, but I also wonder if you could talk about how close you think we are to a totally neutral tournament from start to finish?
JUDY SOUTHARD: You know, I don't want to speculate how far out we may be on that. I think we all agree that we would like to see our game eventually evolve to a state of total neutrality, and as you said, we certainly are getting closer and closer to that. By reducing our first and second round sites from 16 to eight, and then by further having some of those sites be truly neutral, we have reduced the number of campus sites dramatically over the last several years.
For this year coming up, this current year that we are going into, and I need someone on the staff to correct me if I'm incorrect on this, but I believe this is the first year that we are mandated to go totally regional neutrality.
We are getting there one step at a time. I think we need to give ourselves a little bit more time to study the attendance figures and to really see how this -- how we are growing the game and growing our fan base.
And then of course what I also would like to see, and I think what our committee would like to see is we would like to see more communities step up and make that commitment to women's basketball and want to host for us and adopt the women's game.
I know I'm kind of talking around the question here to some regard, but I guess my bottom line on this is we have this dialogue as a committee every summer. We'll have it again this summer. But I certainly would not want to speculate on how fast we will move to totally neutral sites.

Q. Are you handcuffed to a certain extent by, I believe the rule that especially the first and second round level, that if a school is hosting the tournament and they receive a bid, they have to play in that arena?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, you're guaranteed at the first and second round site, if you're hosting and you are in the tournament, you are guaranteed to play at home. You are correct about that.
That is the only part of our process that is different from the men's process at the current time. And that is the one place where -- and I wouldn't really use the word handcuffed. I don't think that we are totally handcuffed. We just do have to work a little bit harder with how we go through the bracketing process because of that one restriction.
But again, having reduced the number of sites like we have, it doesn't strap us nearly as badly as it could.

Q. Do you look back at last year and say a case where a team didn't get in because maybe its strength of schedule wasn't strong enough and some of the non-conference opponents were not strong enough and the team did something about that this year to correct it, to maybe sort of compare a little bit?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Honestly and truly, we don't look at past history. Past history is not considered at all in any aspect of the selection and seeding and bracketing part of that.
I might throw one caveat at that and that would be that in the bracketing process, obviously sometimes we as I said as an additional consideration, we can -- we may attempt to try to avoid first-round match-ups from a previous year's tournament just because it's not good for the fans and we'd like to try to avoid that if we can.
But in terms of really looking at historical information, we don't consider that. It truly is the body of work from the first game to the last game of this current year that we are studying and that we are using as our information for the selection process. We are comparing teams based on what they did this current year.
Now, is it noticeable when somebody makes a correction? Certainly it is. But it's not something that we go into what premeditated idea that we are going to go back and study all this and, you know, it strictly is studying and drilling down into the body of work for the current season.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks again for joining us this afternoon.

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