Tough Love From The Committee: Three Mid-Major Teams With A Case For A Better Seed

The general consensus is that the NCAA selection committee basically got the 65 teams right; though we at SBN figured Virginia Tech would be in, it's not exactly a disservice that the Hokies were left out. The eight at-large bids given to mid-major teams seemed fair and reasonable, and now we can focus on the tourney, hooray hooray.

Still, there's a few teams who can make the case that the committee buried them with inaccurately low seeds. Not surprisingly, they're all mid-majors:

Butler: 5 seed, West Region. The Bulldogs are fixtures in the tournament now, like the Gonzaga of the Horizon League. Horizaga? No, that's not a good one. We won't use that. Anyway, the Bulldogs are on a 21-game winning streak; they trounced Siena in the Bracket Busters; they beat Ohio State and Xavier in December; their worst loss is at a 23-8 UAB, and they're flat-out higher in the Pomeroy rankings than the 3 and 4 seeds in their own region (Butler, 26th; Vanderbilt, 36th; Pittsburgh, 30th).

San Diego State: 11 seed, Midwest Region. The Aztecs were probably hampered by a lackluster non-conference schedule, and it's a shame; they whipped Arizona, but it was quickly evident this season that Sean Miller's Wildcats weren't tourney material this season. Once in the Mountain West--a four-bid conference this season--the Aztecs were at least the equal of higher-ranked New Mexico and UNLV. The Aztecs split their regular season series with both teams... then rolled through both in the MWC tourney and won the championship. So they get an 11 seed while UNLV's an 8 and New Mexico's a 3? Huh? 

Cornell: 12 seed, East Region. Okay, they're not the 5 seed or legitimate Sweet 16 threat that Jay Bilas has been telling everybody about on ESPN. That must be Bilas owning up on a bet he lost or something. Still, the Big Red are legit; they've been to the tournament the last three years, they took Kansas to the brink in Lawrence, and they won at St. John's. Hey, laugh if you want, but Louisville can't say that. The Big Red have a tough game in front of them with Temple as the opposing 5 seed; shame, really, because there's a few 6 and 7 seeds that we could easily see Cornell taking out (Oklahoma State, Clemson, Marquette, Notre Dame--we're looking at you here).