NCAA Tournament Bracket – 2010

The Tournament Bracket came with explanations by Guerrero about “at large” schools, specifically UETP and Utah State.
“Q. UTEP and Utah State got in as at larges, didn’t have the non conference body of work. How much did the committee respect them winning convincingly their regular season titles of their respective conferences? Secondly, I know you try to avoid a little bit of a home advantage in a first round. An 11 seeded Minnesota is playing in nearby Milwaukee.”
“DAN GUERRERO: You’re right as it relates to Utah State and UTEP. Frankly, we felt that they were both outstanding teams. You know, they had great runs during their season; in fact, both of them had significant winning streaks. In fact, probably the longest winning streaks in the country till they both were upset in their conference tournaments.”

“But, once again, these are teams that had I think eight and 10 top 100 wins respectively. The committee had high respect not only for what they did in conference but certainly what they did on the road, which was significant, and that’s why they got in.”
“As relates to Minnesota’s group, you know, it just so happened that, once again, you’ve been in the mock selection process, so you understand how that works, the pod that they’re in just created a situation that allowed them the opportunity to be sent there. You know, we protect only the first five lines, as you well know, in the first round. So this gave us an opportunity to put them where we did against Xavier as a 6 seed.
The good news is that the NCAA Basketball Tournament comes to towns across the U.S. over the next few weeks. Tickets are reasonably priced.