One Fan's UCLA Basketball Blog
News, analysis, and commentary about the UCLA Bruins basketball program
Sunday, March 13, 2005
 
we're heading back to Tucson...
to face Bobby Knight's Texas Tech Red Raiders, who have been playing well the last couple of days. We will play on Thursday. if we win, we play the winner of Gonzaga versus Winthrop. Our loss to Oregon State looks to have hurt our seeding, but luckily, we 'll be in a familiar atmosphere and we won't have to travel too far for our first game. i'm curious to see if fans in Tucson will root for or against us.

I'm also wondering if our 11-seed is really indicative of us being one of the last three teams in, as the networks are suggesting. could we have been moved to make matchups better or to get us closer to home in tucson? perhaps we were originally supposed to be in the Syracuse region, where there is no Pac-10 team, instead of being in the same region as Washington. if we really were one of the last teams in, i'm guessing our relative lack of high profile wins (Washington being our only one) and poor conference tourney performance hurt us considerably.

it looks like other teams' seeding was impacted by their performances in conference tourneys as well. Bob Bowlsby, head of the selection committee, said that Kentucky would have been a one-seed had they won the SEC tourney. Also, washington won the pac-10 tourney and ended up a one-seed, while Arizona dropped all the way down to a #3. duke winning the acc tourney seems to have vaulted them past Wake Forest in the seeding, despite Wake finishing two games ahead of Duke in the conference regular season.

notable teams left our are Notre Dame, Maryland, Indiana, Miami of Ohio, Depaul, and St. Joe's. the talking heads are particularly upset that a Big East team like Notre Dame got left out (and no, it's not just Digger that's complaining).

Check out the bracket and matchups.
Comments:
Exactly. The worst was when Vitale came oh so close to claiming there was a conspiracy against Notre Dame. He brought up the fact that America has a love-hate relationship with Notre Dame (he compared them to the Yankees), and then he mentioned how ND got left out last year too. Yeah, Notre Dame's stature is PREVENTING them from getting into the tourney. unbelievable.
 
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