ESPN.com - NCB - Taking a peek behind committee's closed door

What does the committee do with Iowa? Losers of all but two games in the last nine without Luke Recker. How does the committee judge Missouri? Which has been average without Kareem Rush, who finally returned for some unproductive minutes Sunday against Kansas.

What about Duke, now that the Blue Devils have won without Carlos Boozer in the lineup? Gonzaga had issues without Dan Dickau during the season. The list can go on and on. Dealing with injuries was one of the topics committee chair Mike Tranghese talked about during a visit to the Bristol campus.


	How will Carlos Boozer's broken foot affect Duke's seeding in the NCAA Tournament.

"Injuries are a real big factor. We need to know which team is playing in the tournament. If a team is fortunate enough to get into the tournament with a complete body of its work, then how we seed the team is based on the team that is going to play," said Tranghese. "We could even have tougher decisions where a team is going pretty well and lose a player for a long time and then they don't perform as well. And then when we ask if the player is coming back or not, they tell us maybe."

That occurred a year ago. The committee didn't know that Arizona wouldn't be without Loren Woods. The committee still gave Arizona a No. 1 seed while Cincinnati got bumped to a No. 2 seed without Kenyon Martin.

"When Kenyon went down, no one doubted that Cincinnati wasn't the same team," Tranghese said. "We never got a chance to see Cincinnati without him after they lost him in the first round of the (CUSA) conference tournament. We had nothing to base our judgment on other than our best instincts. Bob Huggins was upset we didn't make them a one seed, but that would have made that bracket too easy. It was a very complex situation."

What about a team that is on the bubble with an injured player?

"It's one of the most difficult things we have to do," Tranghese said. "We've got more instances dealing with injuries than I've ever seen before."

Tranghese was adamant about dispelling a myth dealing with the number of teams from a specific conference. The committee wants the best possible tournament.

"The 34 best teams wherever they come from and there's no limit on conferences," Tranghese said. "Our job is for the 34 best teams and go with it. We can leap frog in a conference. You can pick a 7-9 team over an 8-8 team. Maybe the 7-9 team distinguished itself in non-conference and also many conferences don't play true round robin. They play different schedules. The 7-9 team might have played better teams and got better wins while the 8-8 team got most of its wins against the bottom.

We dissect the conference schedules with teams who are in conferences that don't play a true round robin."

The politics inside the meeting room this weekend will be taken out of the process for the first time -- at least allegedly. Critics have pointed out New Mexico got into the field with a disputed RPI (in the 70s) when AD Rudy Davalos was on the committee two years ago. Some have wondered how chair Craig Thompson of the Mountain West allowed UNLV in last year despite the lack of quality wins. The same arguments could be made against the committee this year with Iowa AD Bob Bowlsby if the Hawkeyes are a tough pick.

	“	The RPI has taken on a life of it's own. It's important but it doesn't get teams in. The elements that comprise the RPI are important. Your schedule, who have you beaten. Good wins, how are you playing at the end of the year. ”
		— Mike Tranghese, NCAA selection committee chair

The ADs are still supposed to leave the room when their team is talked about. But now they're not allowed to speak if a team from their league is on the table.

"We made a change this year," Tranghese said. "In the past, commissioners from a conference couldn't talk about teams in their league but ADs could. But we decided this summer to make a change. We're not going to let ADs talk about teams in their own league."

And the myth about conference tournaments is still out there. High majors wonder if they're important to making the tournament or getting seeded.

"They're important for bids and seeding," Tranghese said. "When teams are battling, it's a way to evaluate people. You're looking at neutral site games. You're not trying to assess how a team played on the other team's floor. It's a true neutral environment. It's a great evaluator."

And what about mid-majors?

"It doesn't help if they lose early," Tranghese said. "But it doesn't help anyone to lose early in the conference tournament. But in itself it doesn't keep you out. If you don't have enough credentials, then it hurts."

Is it harder to pick or seed the teams?

"Harder to seed," Tranghese said. "You can play your way out of a bad seed. If you're not in the tournament, you can't do anything."

Tranghese expects the 8 and 9 seeds will be just as difficult this year. Last year, Missouri, North Carolina and Kansas were all on those seeding lines.

"The Kansas-Duke game in the second round in Winston Salem might have been one of the two best games I saw all year," Tranghese said. "I think the teams who are in the 8-9 games are capable of winning second-round games."

But to get to the 8-9, is RPI the only factor? How important is the RPI?

"The RPI has taken on a life of it's own," Tranghese said. "It's important but it doesn't get teams in. The elements that comprise the RPI are important. Your schedule, who have you beaten. Good wins, how are you playing at the end of the year."

Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.

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