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NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCEMarch 10, 2009Jacki SilarRICK NIXON: Good afternoon, I'm Rick Nixon with the NCAA, and we thank you for joining today's pre- bracket teleconference with committee chair Jacki Silar. Jacki is the Associate Director of Athletics For Sports Programs and Senior Woman Administrator at Duke University. The ten member Division I member's basketball committee will begin meeting this Friday, March 13 in Indianapolis to begin the selection, seeding and bracketing process for the 2009 Division I Women's Basketball Championship. 31 conferences will have an automatic qualification into the Championship, while 33 teams will be selected at large. The 64-team bracket for the 2009 Championship will be announced at 7:00 p.m. eastern time, Monday, March 16 on ESPN. Following the announcement of the bracket we'll be having a post-bracket teleconference with Jacki that begins at 8:15 p.m. Eastern time that evening. Championship first and second round games will be played on Saturday, March 21st, and 23rd, and on Sunday, Tuesday, March 22nd and 24th. At this point I'd like to turn it over to Jacki Silar for opening comments and following our question-and-answer session. JACKI SILAR: Thank you. Good afternoon, to everyone. Thank you for being on the call today. First let me begin by saying that it's an honor for me to be the chair of the Division I women's basketball committee and to represent my nine dedicated colleagues that make up this committee. March is a great time to be involved in women's basketball. Whether you're, you know, a committee member, a fan, a coach, a student athlete, the thrill of participating in the Championship will be experienced by almost 1,000 women's basketball student-athletes, and they'll compete on the 64 teams that will round out our championship field. We just can't wait for the madness to begin. We've worked hard and long, and we're ready for it. But before we get into this, we have so many more hours of watching games, evaluating and discussing teams. As Rick mentioned, our committee will convene in Indianapolis on Friday the 13th of March. And we'll have our announcement made on Monday, 16th at 7:00 o'clock, on ESPN. The process of selecting, seeding and bracketing the field of 64 is by far the most important things that we do. Our responsibility is to select the very, very best, the 33 teams for the at large spots. You know what, there are so many more important games and a lot of basketball to be played this week. Even this afternoon, tonight and throughout the weekend. Having said that, please understand that I will try to answer all your questions, but to be fair to the teams that are still playing I really won't be able to speak and address questions that are about specific teams. Q. Like a lot of people I'm trying to figure out who might be going where. Just the basic questions you get every year. Are you going to allow a team to go up or down a seed to make the brackets fit? How much leeway to you give them from your 1 to 64 order? JACKI SILAR: It's a good question. We have a principles and procedures that dictate how we put teams into the brackets. You know, we place the teams in the bracket in order that they are on the S-curve. You know, for example, the number one overall seed would be placed at the regional site that is geographically closest to their campus, and we continue through the S curve. Then the second team would be the closest remaining of the regional sites and so on. It's important to us to get our teams as close to their campuses as possible for the student athlete experience, to have the fans available to travel. We do, yes, have the flexibility in our principles and procedures to be able to move teams across the seed line or up and down a seed line in order to balance the bracket. Q. How much, with so many teams hosting, how tough does it make it to stick to be a pure 1 to 64 order? Does there have to be a little bit of give? JACKI SILAR: You're right, we do have 16 site formats this year as opposed to our eight. And we are looking forward to that for many reasons. We are given that flexibility in our principles and procedures to do that, to be able to on give them the balance of the bracket. Q. Also in years past if two teams played in the regular season, they generally would not be in the same 14 bracket, but occasionally that would be, you know, that would be changed. Is that still the way it is pretty much? JACKI SILAR: That's one of our additional considerations that we can we can use. The principles and procedures allow that. But that is an additional one. It's not one of our priorities, principles. Q. I just wanted to ask you, I know on you can't comment on on on specific teams, but when you get a conference like the Big Ten, you've got four or five teams there that you could pretty much throw a blanket over. What is the main criteria that you're going to be looking at in determining which of those teams? I mean, they kind of spent the whole season beating each other up. Which of those teams get in and which don't? JACKI SILAR: Thanks for asking that question. You've got to realize that conference affiliation carries no weight when we discuss the merits of the team, and receiving at large considerations. You know we look at each team on their own individual merit, regarding the entire body of work. We have the 31 automatic qualifiers that are determined by the conference affiliation, but then there are 297 other teams under consideration. And each committee member, judges, individual teams based on what they did on the court and their entire body of work throughout the entire season. I. Q. Here at the Big Ten tournament there was a lot of grumbling among the coaches that when you have a league that has a lot of pretty good teams that it's going to bring the records of those teams down and complaining that it seems like the committee didn't necessarily take that kind of thing into account but looked at the overall records as you just set. You don't look at conference affiliation. I mean, is there a legitimate complaint there to be made? That if you have a good conference, that it does hurt come NCAA Tournament time? JACKI SILAR: I really wouldn't say that. Because we're looking at the entire resume, the entire body of work. We're looking at what they've done. And you've got to remember, there are ten committee members who analyze all the data in different ways. Each committee member will consider different factors, and they all look at it through a different lens. Some of our committee members will look at the experience, because they have different experiences in basketball, they'll look at possibly more emphasis on what they've seen on TV or in a DVD. And some of the other committee members might put more emphasis on the quantitative resources and tools that are available to us. Q. We talked about this a little bit in the mock bracket. But is there some fear from the committee to protect some of the better seeds, the ones and twos in the sense that you might have Rutgers or LSU, assuming this he both get in will be hosting first and second round games and potentially could have a two seed or a one seed going to play on on that hostile court? JACKI SILAR: Well, you know because we have the 16 site format, there is a great possibility that the lower seeds will be hosting the higher seeds. You know, overall all we can look at is how we place them into the bracket, as you know from mock selection, according to the S-curve. So we feel like what's important is we've got to put them in in the geographical location closest to their campus that's available at that time because it maximizes the student athlete specious. Hopefully it will increase attendance at the sites, and also it will increase our TV viewing audience. So that's all I really can say about that. Q. Just a follow-up on a different note. I already know the answer, but when you guys come down to the last couple of teams, I know you do a tremendous amount of research, I've seen the computer system you have. Is attendance and hosting going to play any role at all in a team like Georgia that may be on on the bubble right now and whether they can get compared to another team at the same level? This team may be hosting the first two rounds as opposed to a team that may only bring in like 4000? JACKI SILAR: I can honestly say it's not part of one of our criteria or factors. It will not be considered whatsoever. What's considered are many other factors, but not whether or not they are a host for the first or second round. We're looking at their resume. What they've done regular season, non-conference season, that's kind of thing. We're definitely not looking at whether or not they are hosting. Q. You've talked about considering the resume of a team. How much of that resume is based solely on on this season or for, perhaps, a bubble team the fact that they've done well in the last three, four tournaments and this is somewhat of a down year? Does that prior success factor into deciding if the team gets in this season? JACKI SILAR: No, it doesn't at all. We look at each year with an eye only on that year. So it's what they've done in this season only. In the '08-09 season, the games they've played, the wins, the losses. But nothing is factored into last year or the previous year. Q. Is margin of defeat something that's considered when you're looking at the resumes of these teams? JACKI SILAR: Well, what you have to look at is we look at everything. We've looked at so much of the criteria. We look at factors related to if it was on on a neutral court. If it was an away game, a home game. We look at their strength of schedule, obviously win-loss record, common opponents. All of those factors are considered. Once again we have ten members on this committee, and everyone views the different factors with a different light. As I previously said, they all consider different factors and weigh them differently according to what they think is important to them. Q. I'm wondering when a team, say like Purdue has had lost its point guard for a series for some time during the season and they get her back for the last part of the season, does that affect seeding? And can an injury to a team for a key player effect seeding? JACKI SILAR: Well, in regard to the committee's consideration of injured or unavailable players, it's a difficult task. And the committee, again, relies on information provided by the conference, and the institution in making a decision regarding a team's selection or seeding. Once again, it's ten individual members, and each of those committee members will determine these injuries during the season or going into postseason differently. Every committee will gauge it differently as they look at the selection for who should be in the tournament field and/or where they should be seeded. Q. How difficult is it to keep history when people are making decisions like this, out of the decision process? JACKI SILAR: How difficult? Could you repeat that again? Q. How difficult is it to keep history when, say, a team hasn't done well in the tournament and, you know, to keep that out of the decision for the current season? JACKI SILAR: Personally, I don't have a problem with keeping that, because we have so much data and factors to consider in front of us. We have an abundance of information. And that information just is not presented to us, and so it's not even a factor for us. Q. To go back to the injury question. Wondered if it might be hard this year because it seems, at least, that there have been some prominent players injured late in this season. Such as with baylor. Could you just comment on how difficult that might be to assess whether a team might be getting a player back, or how the absence of a key player might effect the seeding? JACKI SILAR: As I previously said, you know, it is a factor. The fact of having available players for the postseason, this is one of our factors. You know, we have to rely on the information that is given to us by the NCAA staff, and they receive that information from the conference or from the institutions. So, you know, like I said, each committee member has to weigh that on how they think that would be impactful for that team, whether or not where they would be seeded and put into the S curve, or whether or not regarding the tournament field. So I would be lying to you if I didn't say that it is one of our factors. Q. Any sense whether this might be one of the more difficult years because of the injuries that have occurred in season? JACKI SILAR: I've been on the committee, this is my fourth year. I do remember in previous years when there have been the possibility of very impactful student-athletes not being available for various teams. So I think this year as we try not to look at the past, it will be no different than any of the other years. Q. When we talk to these bracket experts with the 16 sites, you know, they pretty much unanimously say they would hate to be you to try to figure all this out. How difficult is this process with all the home sites and trying to match up everyone on the S-curve? JACKI SILAR: How difficult is it? Q. Yeah, how difficult is it? How difficult is this process going to be with all the home sites and trying to figure everything out? JACKI SILAR: Well, the challenge will be once we select and seed them, and then placing them into the bracket. We have principles and procedures that sort of put everything in place for us. We have an S-curve we attempt to place our teams out of this S-curve into the bracket closest to their geographical region that they're placed in, closest to their campus. We've tried very hard to make sure that they are closest to their campus. That was one of the factors in going from the format of eight predetermined sites to 16 predetermined sites. One of the positives of that was to increase the attendance, and hope that we'd be able to have our fans and people from campuses be able to come over and support those teams and watch great basketball. We're hoping that with this 16 site format, that we'll be able to have a win-win for our student-athletes. For our coaches, fans and we're anticipating larger crowds and bigger TV audiences. And we feel this is one more step in growing our game. And we're looking forward to hosting, and having 16 sites for our first and second rounds. Q. To keep the purity of the 1 to 64 ranking, is it easier with the eight teams neutral sites? Or is it easier, do you think with the 16 sites of four teams with some of them being at home? JACKI SILAR: That's an interesting question since I have never experienced using this format of the 64 sites. So that would probably be premature of me to try to answer that question. I could answer that question for you next year. RICK NIXON: We appreciate everybody for joining us. The transcript from. End of FastScripts |
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