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NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 17, 2008

Tom O'Connor

DAVE WORLOCK: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. We'd like to get to your questions just as soon as possible, but also give Tom O'Connor a chance to reflect on the selection, seeding and bracketing process as he's had hopefully a good night's sleep to absorb it all and had a chance to reflect on the work done by the committee from the past few days.
So, Tom, we'd like to start by getting your overall thoughts and impressions of the bracket now that you've had a chance to really look at it and study it some more.
TOM O'CONNOR: Thanks, David. Thanks, everybody, for taking the time to be on the call.
I have to tell you that I had a good night's sleep. I was able to fall asleep real quick and sleep the whole night, get up really refreshed. Must have been something in there that said something's going pretty good.
During the process of the last few days when we came in on Tuesday night into Indianapolis, two words that really come to mind now, looking back they're really valid, that was: fun and focused. We certainly have a great amount of respect for each other. We can have a good time with each other on the committee.
But there were focused conversations. They were focused on teams and really concentrating on the statistics that the NCAA staff brought to us.
The NCAA staff was absolutely phenomenal, giving us all the information and direction of which way to go and making sure we stayed on principles and procedures all along the way.
The committee as a whole, people have heard me say this before, but there's a tremendous amount of trust of each other in the committee. We listen to each other. The ethics in that room is just absolutely amazing to me.
I feel comfortable because we were fair to everybody and all the teams that were on the consideration list early. I certainly have an interesting and biased bent, but I really think we got it right.
With that in mind, I'll open it up to questions.

Q. As a basketball coach, you have a number of freshmen in this tournament, I'll not ask you to talk about them specifically, but is it good to have these one-year kids for college basketball? Is it good for the tournament?
TOM O'CONNOR: Well, first of all, I'm a former basketball coach. It's been a long time. But I appreciate the acknowledgment.
Kids in the tournament, it doesn't matter what year they're in. It's always a joy to watch people that excel at anything they do in life. In this particular case, it's physical because it's athletics and it's basketball. So freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, it's always good to have them in the tournament.

Q. How helpful was it to come in the extra day, Tuesday?
TOM O'CONNOR: It was extremely helpful in a number of ways. At the beginning, it gave us an opportunity to really settle in, first of all, and be able to talk about the teams at length without feeling stressed. Actually our process started maybe 90 days ago.
But getting into Indianapolis early helped out. Where it really helped out on the end is that, because we were so well-prepared and because the NCAA staff helped us to prepare during the time we were there, when we got into that contingency situation on Sunday, yesterday, where we had eight contingencies, it really gave us the opportunity to look back over those five days or four days and to say, Hey, we have all that information, we've talked through it, there's nothing that we really need to talk about statistically, it's just really making sure that we're placing the teams in the right seed at that point.
A good example of that is the first situation. If we were really stressed or if we were really undone from a standpoint of not knowing all the information, it could have been harmful to the tournament. But because coming in early, because we were well-versed as a group, each committee member, we were able to get through those last couple of hours a lot easier.
That decision we made way back in the summer really helped us yesterday.

Q. A lot of the surprises that happened in the conference tournaments late Saturday and Sunday, how much did that scramble things for you, how much did it make you tear up your brackets and start over again at times?
TOM O'CONNOR: Well, on Sunday we would never tear up our brackets. We were well on our way. We had eight contingency plans on Sunday. We had those eight contingency plans in place by maybe 3:00.
But all during that day there were five games, including the outcome of a game that would be determined who the participant was going to be in the opening-round game in Dayton. So those five games had an effect on who was in the tournament or who was out of the tournament.
So those eight contingency plans were in front of us. But at no time prior to 3:00 did we have to really rip everything up. It was after all the games were played that we ripped up seven pages and we just had that one page in front of us.

Q. With the parity in the last few days of the conference tournaments, but throughout the season, teams tightly bunched together, how difficult did it make all the decisions of the committee to try to determine who should be in or out?
TOM O'CONNOR: I think that the seeding was more difficult than selection. Selection was difficult because we had such a great basketball season this year in that during late in the year, regular season, you had teams up and down in their conference. One game could make a big difference how people were juxtapositioned in their conference.
It didn't come just in the last couple weeks; it was all during the season. And when you got into the room, there were so many teams that looked alike.
But back to the previous question. That's one of the reasons why we felt we needed to come in early, because there were so many teams that were alike that we needed to really take a good, hard look.

Q. Last year at this time Gary Walters did this call and there were all kinds of gripes that he had to respond to. You're not getting any here. Is that a good sign?
TOM O'CONNOR: I think so. I had one caller, and I don't want to say what school it was from, that said to me I was a fraud because George Mason was in the tournament. I just chuckled at that because they were an automatic qualifier.
I understand that. I understand emotionalism. I understand that people are entitled to their opinion. Not everyone's going to agree with us, whether it be the media or fandom.
I can tell you, though, about over an hour ago I had a terrific call with the athletic director at Arizona State, Lisa Love. It was a very professional call. I appreciated the opportunity to hear her thoughts. It was aboveboard. It was professional. I had empathy for her, being an administrator, that one of her teams did not participate in the tournament. I as an athletic director have lived through that in a number of sports. That's something that is emotional.
I'm glad that we had an opportunity to talk. But I can tell you that I was very pleased with that phone call because she kept it on a high professional level.

Q. She obviously had hoped her team would be in.
TOM O'CONNOR: I would hope so, just as any athletic director would want any of their teams in any sport that they have that came close to getting in.

Q. What did you tell her? Was it pretty much what you told us yesterday on the call?
TOM O'CONNOR: Absolutely. What I told you, I told Lisa Love.
DAVE WORLOCK: We'll conclude the call. I'm sure Tom won't mind getting a few minutes back into his schedule to take care of his personal matters and get ready for tomorrow night's game in Dayton between Mount St. Mary's and Coppin State. Thank you, Tom. Safe travels on the road. Thanks to everyone in the media for listening in.

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