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NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 17, 2008

Judy Southard

THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us for today's post-bracket teleconference with NCAA Division I women's basketball commission chair, Judy Southard. She is a senior associate athletic director at Louisiana State University. After meeting in Indianapolis for the past four days, the committee announced earlier this evening the 64-team field for the 2008 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship. 31 conference teams earned automatic qualification into the Championship, while 33 teams were selected at-large. First and second round games will be played on Saturday/Monday March 22 and 24 and on Sunday/Tuesday, March 23 and 25 and will culminate at the Women's Final Four to be played in Tampa Bay on April 6 and 8.
JUDY SOUTHARD: Good evening, everybody. I'm certainly glad to be with you this evening. We have had a very interesting four days here in Indianapolis. Or committee as usual has been charged with quite a monumental task, and we have spent an inordinate amount of time drilling down and studying many, many of our NCAA qualifying teams to determine who will go into the tournament this year to make up our 64-team bracket.
We have many, many responsibilities charged to us, but arguably the most important are the seedings, the selection of the seedings and the bracketing of our tournament, and as we said, that was quite an arduous task this year.
We have had a fair amount of compression this year in the middle of the bracket, which is a little bit unusual for us. It translated to some very difficult decisions that had to be made starting at about the sixth line, and extending all the way down into the 10 and 11 line.
I'd like to just before I get started, I really would like to acknowledge our committee members and thank them for all the hours that they put in, not only to the service of the process this weekend, but also the huge number of hours that they devoted to studying these teams, watching games and preparing for this weekend. And especially we would like to thank Sue Donahoe and the NCAA staff for everything they did to assist us and all of the things that we have to do in order to be able to put together the best championship possible.
We are looking forward to going to Tampa the first week in April. I know it's going to be a very exciting event for everyone, and having said all that, I'm going to kick it back to Rick and we'll get started in just a second.

Q. Obviously Rutgers, UCONN is the thing people are talking about, and I know you have some flexibility built to move teams around, lines themselves; is Rutgers the eighth-best team, or did they get moved a little bit because of other principals and such?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, the way we do this is our principles and procedures require us to drop the teams in the bracket, obviously if there are a number of teams in the bracket or in a particular line from different geographic regions, it does influence how they are placed in the bracket.
We certainly knew there would be some questions about this. We dropped the first four lines in before we really decided that we needed to go back and take a long, hard look at what we could do. We tried to find or tried to see if there were any way that we could make some moves along the two-line in order to be able to change that matchup.
But quite frankly, any move that we would have made would have compromised the competitive integrity of the competitive balance of the bracket, and we felt like that that was one of the most important things that we needed to protect. So consequently I would applaud our committee for taking an extremely long time for trying to work through this and finding a way to make it happen, but it just could not be done.

Q. Here in the Big Ten area, we have a kind of tradition that we kind of look at all our teams playing in that top half of brackets, the Big Ten's top team was that No. 6 Ohio State; can you explain to some of the people why the Midwest, why there was a No. 6 for Ohio State and Minnesota, Purdue and Iowa all got 9th?
JUDY SOUTHARD: We actually do not even consider conference affiliation as we are moving through the bracket.
Now, certainly, we are all well-versed on our teams and our conferences and to some degree, you know, we know what conferences teams belong to, but it's just not something we concentrate on.
We are actually taking individual teams and judging them and ranking them, comparing them with other individual teams. The conference affiliation does not even play into this. So as we took each of the teams that we mentioned, we are looking at them individually in comparison to other teams, and that we were also judging individually, and it just happened that the way we were drilling down into team sheets and looking at the scheduling factors, the won/loss records, the head-to-heads, the last 12 games, it's essentially an assessment of the full body of work, the complete resume of the team; and when in stacking those teams up, that is how we proceed through determining the seed that we are going to place a team at.

Q. I was hoping I ask you about the last teams to make it into the tournament, like Florida State and other teams?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I can't say that Florida State was the last team in. I think that's an assumption that someone might want to make. But to tell you where we were, we had 11 teams left on the board to fill the last three slots in the tournament.
As we really drilled down, we studied everything that there was to study about those teams that were comparing for those last three slots. And again, it's an analyzation of the full body of work, the portfolio of the team from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
One thing I would call to your attention it is that eight of Florida State's losses were to teams that had an RPI of between one and 15, and we, of course, had to factor in the evaluation of how Davis Kane (ph) being out of their lineup for nine games might have impacted them at a certain period of time within their schedule and how they fared won/loss-wise during that time.
We broke that down and went into some of the more intricate details, and in doing that and comparing teams, we slowly were able to eliminate teams. And ultimately the last three teams to go in, and whether or not -- I can't tell you right now whether Florida State was one of them or not, but certainly we know Florida State was in that mix of the last 11 to 15 teams that we were looking at for last four or five slots in the bracket.

Q. What would you say was the main thing working against a school like Minnesota, that it had more wins against Top-50 opponents, but maybe not as strong a schedule overall; what were some of the things working against Minnesota?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I'm not sure that I would say what worked against Minnesota. I think the way we analyze this is we look for what distinguishing factors set a team apart.
So we are not really looking for what was necessarily bad about or not good necessarily about a certain team; but rather, what another team brings to the table that makes them rise above that team. And so, you know, I'm at a point right now where I couldn't even tell you who we were comparing Minnesota, to because we were comparing close to a hundred teams over the last four days.

Q. Can you talk about the decision determining the final No. 1 seed, sending them to Spokane?
JUDY SOUTHARD: You mean what gave Maryland the edge over Stanford as a 1 seed? Well, I think probably the two most distinguishing factors that Maryland had to bring to the table were that they had 13 wins against teams in the Top-50 and they were 22-3 in the Top-100, and that was just an awesome resume in comparison to where we could -- as to where we compared them to Stanford.
Maryland was 22-3 in the Top-100; Stanford was 16-3. Maryland had 13 wins against the Top-50 and Stanford was 11-1. And we started getting down to the finer details in the separation that went with making that decision; I would probably be remiss if I didn't say that the two losses that they took or that they sustained to Southern Cal and UCLA probably also influenced several of our committee members, also, as it related to the order of these two seeds.

Q. Was there any consideration of putting LSU and Tennessee in the same region like you did Rutgers and Connecticut, or is that just the way that the rankings worked out?
JUDY SOUTHARD: If you go back again to our principles and procedures, and I don't think -- we don't make any secret of the order of the one line. That's the only line that we will divulge the order of the seeds.
But Connecticut the overall No. 1 seed, and North Carolina as the overall No. 2 seed, and Tennessee 3, Maryland 4. And then the way we start placing the teams in the bracket is we do that in seed order by geographic proximity.
So Connecticut got the first site in and their geographic proximity was closest to Greensboro, so they were sent to Greensboro. And then North Carolina came up next; you look at what's the closest site to Chapel Hill, and that was New Orleans. Tennessee had the choice of the two remaining spots, Oklahoma State and Stanford, and by default the No. 4 and No. 1 seed went West to Spokane.

Q. It looks like you had a lot of scrambling around in the Big 12, with Kansas they won the regular season, and I think there's three teams in the league ranked above them. Can you talk about that that a little bit?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, we had to factor in the issue of Kimberly Dietze's (ph) injury, and that's always a major thing for us. If you followed that lead, you know that Kansas State did win the regular season championship, but when it got to tournament time, they were upset the first round of the tournament, and arguably maybe because Dietze went down in that game with the injury.
So we had to take a little bit of time. We applaud our member institutions for sharing information honestly and candidly for us. Kansas City came forward and let us know that the young woman did have a season-ending injury and would not be available for postseason play. So accordingly, we had to factor that in as to where we decided to seed Kansas State.

Q. Just a couple questions about the Oklahoma City regional. Can you just talk about Oklahoma getting the four seed and what factored in there; and then Oklahoma State, another local team that I'm sure would be a nice draw for the Oklahoma City regionals; can you talk about that?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I wanted to make sure, I was looking at the bracket as I talked to you about this.
The reason we could not accepted both Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to Oklahoma City was because Texas A&M was also in that bracket. We can't put two teams from the same league in a grouping that would cause them to meet each other before the regional finals, and that put us in a position that we were not able to consider sending both Oklahoma State and Oklahoma to the same region even they though were not seeded in the same spot; mathematically it would have worked out that two of the Big 12 teams would have had to have played each other before the regional finals, and that's counter to one of our principles and procedures for placing the teams in the bracket.
As far as Oklahoma is concerned, you know, they had a really nice year and we would congratulate them. They tied for third in the Big 12 of the regular season and they did have a three-game losing streak going into the tournament that I think more than likely affected their seeding to some degree. Sometimes this time of the year, a conference tournament can help you or can hinder you. In some cases, it can help a team get in; it can keep a team out or in some cases it can help a seed or hinder a seed.
I think all of those factors combined had a lot to do with the committee's decision to seed Oklahoma No. 4.

Q. Can you talk about why Oklahoma got sent to Oklahoma City, as opposed to Oklahoma State who got the higher seed?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, with Texas A&M being in that regional, they were on the two line and Texas A&M, when can came time to drop the seeds in the bracket, the closest geographic proximity to their campus was Oklahoma City. And that point, that precludes us from sending anybody from the Big 12 on the 3 line into the same bracket with them.
So that's the reason why they had to be sent to a different region. But when the four line came up, because it would be mathematically impossible for them to meet prior to the regional finals, Oklahoma was available to send to Oklahoma City; and of course, we made that decision; and it fell within the guidelines, but certainly we hope that it enhances the attendance in Oklahoma City.

Q. I had a couple questions for you on the Des Moines region. One, why was Iowa not sent to Des Moines and what factors went into compiling the eight-team bracket here in Des Moines?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Here is the issue that began to happens to us what we got down to the eight, nine, ten seed lines. When we had eight teams from the Big East and eight teams from the Big 12 that are qualified for the tournament, and there were a number of those teams in each league that qualified on the seed lines ranking from the 7 to 10 line. That created a huge compression for us in the middle, and really, really limited the kind of movement and placement that we could utilize because we were constantly fighting the battle of putting two teams from the same league in a bracket and creating a situation in which they would meet before the regional finals.
So it was really just a luck of the draw that they fell into that grouping of teams that were creating a lot of problems for us and as the order of the seed were dropped in, there was nowhere that we could get them to Iowa, to Des Moines.

Q. What factors went into compiling the eight teams that are in Des Moines?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, we actually placed the teams in the bracket by geographic proximity by regions first. Once we get the entire 64 teams in the bracket locating them regionally first, then the first thing -- then the next thing we do is we have to go in and we have to drop in the host sites. And so when you drop in those host sites, immediately it just is like a domino effect.
If we drop Purdue in, whoever is in that grouping of four with Purdue is going to have to go to Lafayette. With Purdue if we drop in Iowa State and they are host in Des Moines, the four teams in the same grouping with Iowa State have to go to Des Moines.
So very quickly the locations for first and second seeds fill up, and that's going to be the case as long as we are still allowing -- in women's basketball, we allow the first and second round games to be played on campus sites, and we also guarantee a team hosting that they will be located at their site.

Q. Wonder what you would say to Rutgers that is looking at maybe having to play at Iowa State, and I think that is a similar situation that they have encountered five in the last six years.
JUDY SOUTHARD: You know, the Des Moines site is not a home site for Iowa State, and I think we have to keep that in mind.
Another thing, a lot of this happens, as I said, just by the mere fact -- and we have do to drop in host sites. And when a host site drops in, it automatically triggers a domino effect that everybody in the grouping has to drop into the site with them.
The one thing we talked about as a committee that we felt as a positive thing was Coach Stringer had such a great career in the State of Iowa and essentially she is going to be going back to an area or within a state where there are an awful lot of people there who respect her a great deal and who follow her career. And, you know, we just feel like that it is going to be a good situation all the way around. We feel like it's going to enhance the crowds and everything else.

Q. In regards to North Carolina as the overall No. 2, No. 1 overall seed, did Tennessee have anything to do with LSU being in Baton Rouge?
JUDY SOUTHARD: No. I think you're talking about -- I think you mean, have anything to do with LSU going to New Orleans, I believe is what you're trying to say, in terms of the regional.
If you recall, because you came in and went through the mock selection with us, if you recall, we dropped the seeds in by geographic proximity starting with the No. 1, overall No. 1 seed.
And so when you take Connecticut and you drop them in first and they get to go to the place closest to their campus, that was Greensboro, the next team on the one line was North Carolina. The closest site to Chapel Hill of the 3 remaining was New Orleans. And then you've got the Oklahoma City and Spokane sites with the other two regions. Tennessee was the No. 3 overall seed and had the closest proximity of the two remaining, and that sent Maryland out to Spokane.

Q. When North Carolina and Tennessee having the same record and Tennessee's RPI -- inaudible -- the LSU log, did that hurt them that they were not able to redeem themselves by winning the SEC Championship?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I think that all of our committee members evaluate all of the information in a lot of different ways. I think there were a number of things that we looked at. No question that Tennessee year-in and year-out -- and there's a great deal of respect for the way they schedule and they are going to continue to schedule that way because they believe in it and they are great role models for all of our other institutions out there that we keep preaching to to try to beef up their schedule.
It came down to really trying to analyze who was playing the best going later into the season, and when you looked at North Carolina, North Carolina finished the season going 13-0 after they lost to the UCONN n on January 21. And you know, the LSU loss at Tennessee, I'm sure was a great factor with some of our committee members. It really came down to splitting some pretty close hairs.
North Carolina, of course, went through the ACC undefeated and won the tournament, and Tennessee, of course, had a great tournament run and won the SEC tournament. But in the end, after all of the analyzation was done, North Carolina was the team that the committee felt deserved to be in the No. 2 overall seed.

Q. I know you said you don't look too much at specific conferences, but just looking at the Mountain Western Conference, wondering if you can explain why New Mexico and Wyoming ended up in the same region.
JUDY SOUTHARD: The first I would do is remind that you our principles and procedures would allow us to place teams from the same conference in a region so long as they are placed in a manner that they could not see each other until the regional championship. In.
This particular case, both Wyoming and New Mexico are in the same region, but they are not playing in the same grouping. Even though they are both going to Albuquerque, they are to the going to the same grouping and consequently they would have to go all the way to the regional finals in Spokane before they would see each other.
So that's the reason why they could end up in the same region in the bracket.
Now going to the other point, again, we are not talking about conferences whenever we are trying to place these teams in the tournament. They are looking very, very closely at their records, strength of schedule, RPI and all of the things that go into it. We have a vast array of resources that we can use, not to mention the fact that we all watch an inordinate number of games and we have all seen all of these teams play several times.
So based on all of the things that we have available to us, we analyze the teams against other teams who are under consideration, we accordingly seed to the best of our abilities based on how we can evaluate that information.

Q. Is there anything that stuck out from Utah, with four losses? They dropped to eight and they lost to Colorado State in the first round of the tournament last week; is that something that factored in, do you remember?
JUDY SOUTHARD: I would say probably that -- I would say certainly that the conference -- I mean, any games are going to be used as part of the evaluation and I can't say necessarily that that was an overriding factor. You know, we have ten people on our committee, and each of those individuals evaluates all of this information in different ways, and they process -- we have open dialogue across the table.
We really spend a lot of time analyzing all of the material we have. But at the end of the day, it comes down to ten individuals casting ten votes, and we are comparing teams against one another and trying to rank them in our estimation as to who is the best and so forth down the line.
And so it just happens that the portfolio for Utah probably did not have some of the other distinguishes factors that some other teams that they were being engaged against had and consequently that affected their seed.

Q. The seeding of Florida State, I know you mentioned you don't look at the conference, but Florida State was tied with to other teams, Boston College and Georgia Tech; Boston College defeated Georgia Tech, Florida State had no wins against anybody in the field. How do you reconcile selecting Florida State over Boston College?
JUDY SOUTHARD: We did take a long hard look at that. I would have to say that probably one of the things that hurt Boston College was their non-Conference schedule. Their first non-Conference win was against the team that had a 125-plus RPI, and for the most part, they played a number of teams that were over to what we call the far right hand of our evaluation sheet; meaning that they played a number of teams that had RPIs of well over a hundred.
So you know, I think when it came down to the bottom line and again we are analyzing a total portfolio when comparing teams to team -- and I cannot tell you that Boston college was not necessarily compared against Florida State. Boston College was compared against a number of other teams that were under consideration at the same time, and someone else's resume was just better than theirs.

Q. Were they along the 11 teams on the board as you were getting down to selecting the last few teams?
JUDY SOUTHARD: They were among the final 11. No, they were in a final grouping that we analyzed very, very heavily before we got down to 11, and then ultimately we got down to six before we filled the last three slots. So they did get a great deal of attention and we did spend a great amount of time looking at their resume.

Q. What separated Minnesota and Michigan State?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, again, you're assuming that we made a decision comparing those two teams to one another, and I can't tell you that that's what happened.

Q. Okay.
JUDY SOUTHARD: Remember, we have a large grouping of teams that we are trying to analyze that are all being looked at and all being compared for a limited number of spots in the tournament.
Now, having said that, you know, I can sit here and look at what we saw with Michigan State and what we saw with Minnesota, and both of them had fine years. This was a very, very difficult call. Michigan State was one of those teams that was on the board up until the very last moment. It was a tough decision to make.
You know, even though they did -- I believe they upset Minnesota, I believe they won the game against Minnesota in the Big Ten tournament, but they went 2-1 against them -- or I take that back. They split with them in the regular season and Minnesota won the tournament game. That was probably something that was a factor; and the fact that they were 12-13 versus teams that were in the top RPI was probably a factor for some of our committee members. That's all information that we are using to compare Michigan State to other teams that we are looking at with similar resumes.

Q. I know what the principles and procedures are in terms of the geographic proximity, but did that bracket make you think twice about that? I guess considering that you have a No. 1 seed that's about an hour away from one of your regions with North Carolina and Greensboro, being able to send UCONN -- would you like a flexibility to be able to send UCONN somewhere else even if they are the overall No. 1 seed, just considering the growth of women's basketball and having the chance to have a No. 1 play that close to their home campus?
JUDY SOUTHARD: You know, one thing that's really important for us is to try to give us the greatest advantage if at all possible in seed order, and UCONN earned and deserved the No. 1 seed.
And when you look at the opportunity that they have to go to Greensboro, that is probably about maybe a 525-mile trip from Bristol, which means that a lot of their fans can pile in their cars and go down there and see them play.
Now, we would have disadvantaged their fans and their institution if we had taken them and sent them somewhere else when they, in fact, earned the right to have the first selection for the geographic proximity closest to their campus.

Q. Realistically do you think that a lot of people are going to drive 500 miles, as opposed to taking a flight --
JUDY SOUTHARD: That's not really anything that I evaluate.

Q. But you guys are evaluating, if it's important, I guess you have evaluated that you do think enough people are going to drive.
JUDY SOUTHARD: We are evaluating the fact that we are hoping that the closer we can get teams to their campuses, perhaps their fans will find it a greater advantage to try to be able to follow those teams.
The bottom line is, Connecticut was the No. 1 overall seed and earned the right to be placed at the geographic location closest to their campus, and we feel that that's a very important principle as we are placing our teams in the bracket.

Q. If I can just follow up on that, I'm not trying to argue with you, but you're trying about the very next team is North Carolina and you're saying about how close it is to get fans close; you have another No. 1 that's an hour from Greensboro versus 500 miles from Greensboro. I realize in the principles you had no choice, but isn't this something that needs rethinking?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Every year when we meet the summer, we have lengthy discussions about what we can do to improve our principles and procedures and what we can do to improve our tournament.
For instance, this past summer, we made a really key decision that we think allowed us the flexibility to probably have the best balance-bracket that we have put out certainly in the four years that I have been on the committee.
We have a situation this year where we have 19 teams that we have been able to locate close enough to their campuses that they are not going to have to get on an airplane to go play.
So we are constantly evaluating that information. We are constantly making decisions to try to do things that will help our bracket, and to say that we don't continue to talk about this, to say that we don't continue to evaluate this, absolutely we do. And we will continue to do that again this summer.

Q. Wondering if a team like Kentucky with a .500 record, but finished fourth in the SEC would get much consideration?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Kentucky got a lot of consideration, and they created some spirited discussion with our group because we were very impressed with Kentucky as a team.
I would say probably that the 15-15 record was a bit of a stretch in some regard as we were trying to analyze them. I think probably the one thing that was difficult for us to get beyond was the fact that they were 5-15 against teams in the Top-100. And they had no quality non-Conference wins in the top 100. We were comparing them again to a number of teams that had similar resumes, maybe a little bit better overall record but similar resumes as it related to conference records and RPI and strength of schedule and so forth.
But as you start getting so many teams on the table with limited number of spots for them, you're searching for that one thing that's going to set a team apart, and the reality is that there were some other teams that just simply had a better resume that Kentucky did.

Q. Wondering where TCU fell in the discussion. They finished above Wyoming in the Mountain West and beat Oklahoma State by 34 points. Were they one of the teams?
JUDY SOUTHARD: They were on the board till the bitter end, and it's one of those situations that we simply didn't have enough spots left in the tournament for the last two or three teams that we were really were spending a great deal of time looking at them.
You know, this is one of those situations where you wish you had enough spots that you could put everybody in because they did have a fine year and they received great consideration by our committee.

Q. Going back on some of the things you touched on Michigan State, they had higher RPI and strength of schedule and finished above .500 in the Conference. Can you talk about what made Florida State the pick over Michigan state, if that was the case, since you did say Michigan State was on the bubble till the end, and exactly how close was Michigan State to getting in?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, you're assuming that the final analysis came down to between those two teams, and I just don't think that that's how you can categorize it.
Our committee, again, and I know I'm repeating myself but for those who may be listening to the complete teleconference, but again, we are analyzing a number of teams that fit within the same category and drilling down into their team sheets and discussing what we've seen as we have watched them play and analyzing not only the quantitative information we have but also the quality of the teams based on what we have seen and been able to garner from all the information that we have.
And you know, they were on the board until the very end, much like they were in that grouping with 11 teams that we really spent a lot of time drilling down on.
At the end of the day, as I said earlier, there are ten individuals who cast ten votes and when it gets this tight, different people evaluate the information in different ways and it just happened that Michigan State was just not one of those teams fortunate enough to make the bracket.

Q. It sounds like there was quite a bit of discussion about Michigan State. Can you recall specifically what it was with Michigan State that kept them out, because I mean, when you talk about strength of schedule and RPI, as you said before, they had five Top-50 RPI wins versus the Florida State that didn't have any RPI in the Top-50.
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, you know, I mean, I can share with you some of the things that we talked about, but I can't say what one or two things may have been the deciding factor for any member, because again, each committee member evaluates this many ways.
They were eliminated in the semifinals of the conference tournament by Illinois. So that was one of the things that I know that we talked about as we were going through and evaluating them. They were 5-7 against teams in the Top-50 RPI and they were 12-13 against the Top-100. Now there may have been somebody else that got in the tournament that had a better resume in those areas than they did; may have been somebody that had the same.
But there are individual things that each committee member identified as important to them, and again, as I said, we all process the information differently, and at the end of the day, there's simply not enough spots for everybody who deserves to go in.

Q. You mentioned RPI a lot and at 61 RPI, Auburn had a 69 strength of schedule, 2-4 last six games, had a significant academic casualty and lowest RPI of anyone in the tournament. What factors put them in against teams like Gonzaga at 39 and Florida at 42 and James Madison at 45?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Well, first of all, let's remember that the RPI is a quantitative index that basically categorizes or assigns a numerical value to a volume of information that's all factored into a formula. There's a lot that goes into what creates the RPI, and as committee members, we do a lot of work drilling down into what makes up the RPI.
Remember that the RPI is 75 percent of what your opponents and what your opponents' opponents do. It's not necessarily related to what you accomplish yourself as a team. Only 25 percent of the RPI is made up of what you accomplish yourself as a team.
We are looking at the full portfolio from the beginning of the season to the end of the season. And I'm sure that there were a number of factors that the committee members identified as making Auburn worthy of going into the tournament.
I know one of the things that we did discuss at length was the fact that they went out of conference and had two wins in the Top-50, and those were valued as pretty significant wins for them.

Q. You have referred to RPI in previous discussions and strength of schedule and injuries and finishing strong and all of those things; it doesn't seem that Auburn maybe has the same resume. I understand about the two wins, so basically really it was those two out-of-conference wins in your recollection, turned the side?
JUDY SOUTHARD: No. I would not say that at all. There is never a one, single thing that eliminates or carries a team through to a tournament spot. It's the full body of work from the beginning to the end and analyzing everything that that team brings to the table.
And again, making the comparisons between the beginning of the season and the end of the season, for Team A against the beginning of the season and the end of the season for Team B. The committee members in their evaluation felt that in their evaluation that Auburn was deserving of being in the tournament.

Q. I was just wondering how long Florida State was on the board and what eventually kind of get them out?
JUDY SOUTHARD: You know, Florida was in the discussion very early but quite frankly did not stay in the discussion for a length of time. I think Florida has made significant strides in their program under Amanda Butler. She is a fine young coach and she's going to do a great job and their best is yet to come, so to speak.
We look at a lot of different things, and, you know, they have a couples of losses in conference to the lower level at the SEC that I think probably hurt them in the eyes of the committee, and they only went 6-13 against the Top-100 teams in the RPI, and that's a tough statistic to stack up against some of the other resumes that we were looking at.
I would just like to say again how much we appreciate the work of the committee and our staff for helping us prepare for this. We honestly feel like that we have put together an extremely competitive bracket.
As I stated earlier in the conversation, this is a bracket, we use a numbering system to be able to track the balance of our bracket and this is probably the most balanced bracket we have put together in a number of years.
So we are looking forward to a great championship. We certainly want to wish all of our coaches, our student athletes all of the best of luck, and we wish all are our fans safe travels as they follow their favorite teams on the road to the Final Four.

End of FastScripts

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