|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCEMarch 13, 2011Gene SmithDAVID WORLOCK: Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this evening's teleconference with Gene Smith, the chair of the Division I Men's Basketball Committee and the athletic director at the Ohio State University. Since we're running a little late, we want to pass along our appreciation for your patience. We're going to jump right into the questions. We'll go ahead and take our first question. Q. I wanted to ask you about Virginia Tech. Did not make the field again this year. What was it about their résumé that did not get them included? GENE SMITH: Virginia Tech is a very good ballclub, a well-coached team. When we looked at them, considering all the other criteria we look at, the committee looks at about 15 different quantifiable criteria, then we have advice from our regional coaches advisory committee, a lot of different things. At the end of the day when we stacked Virginia Tech's résumé up against all the other teams, we just didn't feel like they were a team that should be in the at-large field. Q. I gather that from them not making it. In the past, the chairman would say it was because they had a bad strength of schedule, they didn't beat enough teams in the NCAA field. What in their résumé hurt them this time around? GENE SMITH: Virginia Tech did a great job improving as a team in their non-conference schedule. It's about who you play, how you play and how you did relative to that competition. While they significantly improved their non-conference schedule and teams that they played, it's still about how you did. When you go back to the comments you're referring to from previous committee members, that's a primary focus of Virginia Tech. They were considered with many other teams and just weren't able to get enough votes to get in the at-large field. Q. Would you say it's because not enough top-50 wins, too many bad losses or both? GENE SMITH: I would just tell you to look at their overall résumé, look at their schedule, look at how they did relative to their competition that they scheduled in the non-conference schedule. Q. I was wondering if you could talk about the Duke/North Carolina thing. Was the winner of that game going to get a No. 1 seed? How did the No. 1 seed play out there? GENE SMITH: Both of those teams did a great job in the regular season, obviously in the tournament. We compared them against everyone else. Part of the conversation throughout was how well they performed in the regular season. When we got to the tournament, we did not say to ourselves that one team had to beat another in order to be in a particular spot. The first few lines in the C lines, a lot of scrubbing, a lot of discussions. There were multiple teams that could have been No. 1's. They were in that mix. Based upon their total body of work, we didn't put that much on one particular game. Q. What was the toughest decision that you had to make in terms of selection and then in terms of seeding? GENE SMITH: I would probably say in selection it was the last teams in. When we were looking at those teams, there were a number of quality teams on the board that we had to consider, and we just didn't have enough slots obviously for all the teams that were in, even though we had three more slots this year. It was challenging in the selection process when you think you have some teams that are very good out there that just didn't get in. Also in the seeding part, the seeding frankly wasn't as challenging as some of the other years that I've been on the committee. We spent a fair amount of time scrubbing, a lot of time over Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning, looked at a lot of data, had a lot of great conversations about teams from a qualitative point of view. I felt the seeding process wasn't as challenging as the bracketing. Q. With UAB specifically, how much weight did the committee put on UAB winning the Conference USA regular-season title? GENE SMITH: Some committee members thought that was an important criteria. Other committee members were impressed by their road wins, who they beat, their RPI, a lot of different factors. As you well know, everyone looks at a number of different things. There's not absolutely one thing that's the total difference maker. I couldn't point to one thing. But they have a great résumé. They're a very good ballclub. We all know that. Q. Pitt is one of the only top seeds that didn't win a conference championship. You obviously liked them for a No. 1 seed. What was it about them? GENE SMITH: First of all, when you look from a basketball point of view, they're a great basketball team, they're well-coached, played some top programs, had some great wins against the top 50. They're just a very, very, very tough team from a very strong conference. When you consider that they were frankly regular-season champions, they just did a great job with their body of work. The regular season's the gauntlet. A lot of people try to put a lot of emphasis on the tournament. But the regular season, that's the run. That's when you have to perform just week in and week out, day in and day out. When you look at the gauntlet they ran through, they had some unbelievable performances against some great teams. Q. With Arizona hosting the games here in Tucson, did that make a difference in the line you ended putting them on? GENE SMITH: No. When we do the seeding, we never look at location. When we do the seeding, we're comparing teams against one another. We have no clue where they're going to end up. So we're trying to stay true to the integrity of our seeding process so we can have a competitively balanced field across the country. So, no, that was not a factor as we move forward. They're the host. They couldn't play there anyway. Q. That's what I meant. The fact that you were trying to get them in a Friday/Sunday so it doesn't conflict with the games being held here. GENE SMITH: I misunderstood. I'm sorry. That's not a major consideration for us. It's only an additional consideration. Sorry. Q. Just with them playing Memphis and Josh Pastner, do you even think about stuff like that? Josh was a guy here for 10 years as an assistant. It's a good story line. GENE SMITH: That's amazing. As you well know, I was at Arizona State University for five years. I know him and I never thought about that till you just told me. That's interesting. No, there's no conspiracy there's there, my man. We'll note take that for the future (laughter). Q. I have a St. John's question. I was wondering to what extent D.J. Kennedy's injury affected their seeding. Maybe could you speculate what seed they would have had had he not gone down? GENE SMITH: I can't speculate on what seed they would have had. There's no question D.J. Kennedy is an outstanding player. I think he was averaging a little over 28, 29 minutes a game, a little over 10 points a game. He's an integral part of the great success they enjoyed throughout the year. We're fortunate to be able to evaluate them a little bit after his injury because of the games they played after that. It wasn't great. We're aware of it. We still looked at their total body of work and really took that into consideration. We're just glad that they're in because they're a very strong team. Q. Was North Carolina the eighth team on the S-curve? GENE SMITH: I have no clue. 'The eighth team on the S-curve.' As you well know, we don't seed that way. Q. There was no consideration given to having the weakest of the second seeding play Ohio State then? GENE SMITH: No, not at all. We search for balance. The top four lines are, again, geographic opportunities, but we don't look at that. Q. Question for you on Colorado. It seemed like they were really close. A lot of people were talking about them not getting in. How close were they? How much of an effect beating Kansas State three times and also going 6-7 against top-50 teams was a consideration at all? GENE SMITH: Obviously both of those were considerations. Colorado was really close, as were a number of teams. At the end of the day when we analyzed all the information, put them up against the other teams, they didn't get enough votes to get in the field. But you hit on some criteria that was talked about in the room. Those were quality wins that they had and great performances by them. Q. Granted Alabama's non-conference schedule lacked quality wins, but why did the committee exclude an SEC team which finished with 12 regular-season wins, second most in the league? I think that's the only team who finished with the second most amount of wins in a power conference not to be in the tournament. GENE SMITH: We didn't really exclude them. We selected the 37 best teams as we could, as you well know. We only have X number of slots. This particular year, there were a number of great teams, well-coached teams. I think this is a great year for our coaches. When you look at the teams across the country, the teams that are in, even some of the teams that didn't get in, they're well-coached. They really weren't excluded. We just didn't have enough slots for them to be in. Alabama was seriously under consideration. Q. What does the omission say when you finish with the second most amount of wins? GENE SMITH: We never look at conference strength. We don't have a consideration of that. We look at the individual teams, what they did relative to their schedule. We compare them against different teams across the country. The SEC is a great conference, but this is a national tournament. So we look at the individual teams and not the conferences. Q. Given the stir that's already been created by several teams that got left out, isn't there sort of an inevitability that we're going to see another expansion here soon? GENE SMITH: I'm real comfortable with the size of the field that we're blessed to have. As we went through the debate last year nationally and got feedback from all the different conferences relative to expansion, the feedback was loud and clear relative to that issue. We ended up where we are with 68 teams, the opportunity for 37 at-large teams. I do not anticipate it will be something that will happen in the near future. We have great partners with Turner and CBS. I think from an individual perspective, I think we're real comfortable where we are. Q. Can you talk a little bit about what happened during the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis. I think some people thought several teams, Penn State, Michigan State, Michigan, might have played their way into the tournament this weekend, but based on some of the final seedings that wasn't true. GENE SMITH: Well, we always take the tournament games and add them to a résumé. A lot of people think we put this huge emphasis on the tournament. We add those individual teams to the total résumé. That can enhance your résumé or not. Relative to the seeding, there again, in that process each of those teams were compared against whoever was in the field and ultimately fell in the spots that they were in. So there's some great teams obviously that were played here in Indianapolis, and that helped us relative to seeding them a little bit, but that was it. Q. I know some people on the network shows were questioning Florida being a No. 2 seed. Could you talk about that decision. GENE SMITH: Again, Florida is an outstanding basketball team, well-coached. They played a very good overall schedule, had some quality wins. So when you stack them up against the teams in the top quadrant, we call it, they rose to the top. We felt like they deserved to be a No. 4 seed. They had strong strength of schedule, overall four, non-conference strength of schedule of a seven. We felt they deserved to be at the top of the seed list. The No. 2 seed is a very strong seed. Q. Based on what you were saying earlier about not putting so much emphasis on the tournament, that would fall into the fact that the loss today did not do anything to eliminate that? GENE SMITH: No, it's just one game. It's just one game that's added to the entire résumé. They lost to Kentucky, but they beat Vanderbilt, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt prior to that, Alabama prior to that. They had a nice run. We don't get into putting that level of emphasis that I think a lot of people think that we do. Q. Can you tell us what swayed the committee on Virginia Commonwealth. GENE SMITH: Virginia Commonwealth is a tough team. They play solid. Great ballclub. If you watch them play, one of those teams that a lot of people don't want to play. But, again, it's all about their total body of work. And when you look at what they did in their schedule, the number of wins, the wins against the top 50, their road record, they had a number of criteria that different committee members thought were important and decided that they were a team that should be in the field when you compare them with everybody else. Q. Were they the last team or where were they in the final four teams? GENE SMITH: I can't remember the exact number. They were first in the first four. Q. So they weren't the last team out? GENE SMITH: No, no. Q. How did the committee deal with some of the specific injuries and omissions from these teams? For example, Chris Singleton from Florida State, Chris Wright from Georgetown, Bandon Davies now not playing for BYU? How did the committee deal with those three team issues? GENE SMITH: We talked about all those, Singleton, all those kids. We were blessed with BYU because there were actually five games we had a chance to look at without Davies, so we had a chance to see how that affected them. With the injuries of other players like Wright at Georgetown, we didn't have that opportunity. We got feedback from people on the status of those kids as the weekend went on. But we still at the end of the day, when you're playing without a player, you still have to execute, you still have to perform. So we take it into consideration during the weekend, but it's something that we always look at. At the end of the day, you still have to execute. Q. Were those schools, especially Florida State and Georgetown, where the players have said they were going to play, but they didn't play, did those schools specifically tell you guys in some form of communication those players will be able to play in the NCAA tournament? GENE SMITH: Yes, we got feedback from the schools that they would be able to play as we move forward in the tournament. That was important for us to know. But you still have to evaluate their performance without those kids and compare them against the other teams because you still had to execute even if you didn't have them. Q. How tough was it to bracket 11 Big East teams? GENE SMITH: I went into this entire weekend fearful that we may have a real challenge with bracketing. It was challenging without a shadow of a doubt because we had a couple conferences with multiple teams. When you're trying to avoid replays, you really end up with some challenges. We ended up looking at, for example, the Big East, trying to make sure when we had replays, and as you well know they have a conference scheduling format where they don't play each other twice, some schools that only play once. When we did that bracketing, knew that we'd have rematches, we tried to match up the one plays and not the two plays. That created a slight challenge, along with all the other regular-season matchups of other teams we were bracketing. It was a little bit more challenging than normal, but it wasn't as bad as I anticipated it would be. It worked out very well. Actually, that question speaks to why a particular team is not always in its true seed. As you well know, teams can be moved one line. We try to avoid that when possible because we want to stay true to the integrity of the seeding process. But when you are in those scenarios, inevitably teams get moved. Q. Why did Saint Mary's not make the cut? GENE SMITH: Again, Saint Mary's, as you well know, is a good team, great ballclub. I don't want to get into the qualitative part of it. They're a very good ballclub. We just compared them against everyone else and we only had 37 slots. At the end of the day they didn't get enough votes to get in. Q. What kind of emphasis did you put on the fact that Kentucky won the SEC tournament or lack of emphasis? You had talked about Florida, how they had strung a string of victories together. Kentucky strung an impressive résumé together at the end of the year and still ended up as the No. 4 seed. GENE SMITH: You know, a lot of people put a lot of emphasis on the 1 seed, 2 seed. At the end of the day, the top five lines are benefited in a great way. You benefit because you're protected from being in an environment where you are at a home-crowd disadvantage when you get into the bracketing process. You're protected as best as you can geographically, when we can put you in a geographic location that's closer or in proximity, if we can do that, but that's not always the case. Kentucky is a very good ballclub. But when it came to the votes, they slid a little bit. Also keep in mind, when I mention Florida, it was to a particular question. You look at Kentucky's full résumé compared to everyone else, we feel real comfortable with their seed. Q. What do you mean that Kentucky slid a little bit? Are you saying the fact that they won the SEC tournament wasn't a factor or it hurt them? GENE SMITH: Keep in mind there's 10 people in the room and everyone in the room has different a emphasis on different criteria. So when we go to vote, everyone selects the criteria they think is important to them and they ultimately vote. That didn't happen with just Kentucky, it happened with everyone else in the field. So when they came up on the board, everybody voted based upon their individual criteria. We study every single team, look at a lot of different factors. They ended up in the spot that they did, and we think it's a good spot. Q. On USC, Southern Cal out here, they had a lot of quality wins, five top-50. How much of a challenge was it to try to weigh that and figure that out? GENE SMITH: Well, you're hitting on part of the conversation that we have relative to everyone's résumé. There's pros and cons to everyone's schedule, everyone's résumé. They had some great, great quality non-conference wins. They had five wins against the top-50, as you said. They actually ended up having five wins against teams during the tournament. They're a very good ballclub, played extremely well, with a very good schedule. So they just got enough votes to get in. Q. On Saint Mary's, they had some games against top-30 teams. Didn't win a lot of those. How much is scheduling intent a factor in this? GENE SMITH: Scheduling intent is not really a factor. It still goes back to who did you play, where did you play them, and how did you do. So whether you inherit a schedule or whether you put the schedule together yourself, within that schedule you still have to be successful. You have to execute. So ultimately when that résumé is compared to everyone else, then your résumé differentiates itself because of the success that you had in executing in that schedule. So for Saint Mary's, again, a very good ballclub. A lot of discussion about Saint Mary's. They just did not get enough votes to get into the field. Q. There's been a lot of national criticism here about UAB getting in. What specifically factored into their selection and how much impact did the committee place on them winning the regular-season title? GENE SMITH: UAB was obviously one of the last teams to get in. We scrubbed them, looked at them very, very hard. They're a strong ballclub. They played a very good schedule. They executed it well within that schedule. They're just a very good ballclub. When we compared them against the others, considering all the different criteria we looked at, we felt they were a team that should be in, and that was the vote of the committee. Q. Who was the last team to get in? GENE SMITH: I can't even remember. I can't remember. I don't know. I actually can't remember. All teams in the first four, whoever they are. Q. What went into the process of putting those top four teams in the Newark region? That's probably the most stacked top four anywhere in the bracket. GENE SMITH: It was just the regular normal seeding process. When we select all the teams, we have them on the board, we go through a voting process to get the seeds going. I was not in the room when Ohio State was discussed, so I have no clue about that particular case. But when we go through the process, it's just the normal process. When you get into the bracketing, it just falls into place. So we try and do everything that we can when we get into the bracketing in the top four lines to take geography into consideration and try and achieve balance. But it's always a difficult thing to do. Q. You've been around the selection committee for a while. Can you remember a region where the top four were as strong as they are in Newark? GENE SMITH: No, I think every year that issue's brought up, without a shadow of a doubt. Every year you can take a particular region. Sometimes we get caught up in brands and don't pay attention to the other teams in the other regions because they may not necessarily have brand names. I think the East is, of course, a very strong region, but so are the others. They may just not have the brand names that the East has. Q. The first four games, that's so new to the tournament, do you have any sense to see if it's an actual advantage for those teams to have a game under their belt going into the tournament? How closely did you pay attention to the team that you were matching up in the second round with a team that played in the first round? GENE SMITH: Every year we evaluate what we do in the previous tournament. So we'll do that in May and June and look back at it and determine if there's anything we need to tweak. But you can debate that from a competitive point of view a lot of different ways. There's obviously the view if you're playing multiple games in a short window of time, you feel like you're on a run, you can win. Then there's a lot of coaches that believe, I'd rather have my kids have rest, keep my legs rested, be ready to face my competition. So those are the last four at-large teams slotted into the first four. It's a great opportunity for them to be in. Something new. We'll evaluate it in the summertime. From a competitive point of view, you can go different ways on that issue. UConn had a great run, played five days in a row. Georgia a couple years ago won four games in three days. We can go and talk about teams that had plenty of rest and ended up winning. I don't know if you can get into that debate. Q. How many decisions were made on Sunday dealing with either selection or final seeding? GENE SMITH: There were a few selection decisions early on Sunday. There was a lot of time spent on seeding. We had the field pretty much seeded on Saturday. But we obviously finished on Sunday morning and went through what we call our scrubbing process, where we compare 4 against 5, 5 against 6, 6 against 5, 6 against 7. You go through that process. It's a really tough process. Then in the bracketing process, there was a multitude of decisions. I can't even begin to count. It would be an interesting stat for us to figure out. It all starts on Wednesday. As you well know, there are a lot of different decisions made throughout the week. Q. Dayton beat Richmond this afternoon. How many of the results were you waiting on Sunday before you finished the bracket? There was the Big Ten today, the SEC, ACC, the A-10. Of those four, how many were you waiting for before you finished the bracket? GENE SMITH: All four. Q. Dealing with seeding? GENE SMITH: Yes, seeding and selection. Q. You said you couldn't remember who was the last team in. The last four were UAB, Clemson, USC and VCU. Which one of those four was the last one in? GENE SMITH: You know, we really don't reveal that. Q. Can you reveal which was the first team out? GENE SMITH: No. Q. Did Richmond need to win today to get in? GENE SMITH: No. DAVID WORLOCK: Thank you, everyone. We hope you enjoy the tournament which begins in 48 hours with the first four coming to you from Dayton. We'll see you on the road to the Final Four. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|