Oh Billy, Digger, and Jay - Get Ready

[Dallas Brave]

I was looking at Gary Parrish's NCAA field projections as of Dec. 10.

http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/story/9805295

Here is a listing the projected bids by major conferences along with some of the more-mentioned mid-major conferences. After each conference, I incuded the perecentage of teams in that conference that are projected to go to the dance. So while the Big East has 8 teams projected to go, that number only represents 50% of the total 16 team conference. The only conference with a higher projected percentage of teams projected to go than the MVC is the B10.

8 - Big East (50%)
6 - Big 10 (55%)
6 ???ぎ??? SEC (50%)
5 - MVC (50%)
5 ???ぎ??? Pac 10 (50%)
5 - ACC (42%)
5 - Big 12 (42%)
2 ???ぎ??? Atlantic 10 (14%)
1 ???ぎ??? West Coast (13%)
1 ???ぎ??? Horizon (11%)
1 ???ぎ??? Mountain West (11%)
1 ???ぎ??? WAC (11%)
1 ???ぎ??? Colonial (8%)
1 ???ぎ??? Conf USA (8%)
1 ???ぎ??? MAC (8%)

[Dallas Brave]

I see Jay Bias is still an unbowed perp.

Listen to him talk in circles on Andy Katz' podcast

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/index

Bias tries to use examples to support his "I Would Rather Know Nothing" stance. He mentions Bradley a lot. But why??? This year, WSU, UNI, MSU, and SIU are the ones kicking tail. Oh, and yes, Bradley did kick DePaul's rear, but Bradley is picked to finish 8th in the conference. Instead of talking about WSU's wins at LSU and Syracuse or MSU beating Wisconsin, he talks about Bradley getting beat by 30 at Michigan State. The guy is a real weasel.

He claims that there is a double standard and that mid-majors are not penalized for losing to BCS schools but BCS schools get hammered if they lose to a mid-major. That is a crock. It looks like Wisc, LSU, and Syracuse are still in the top 25. After losing to Nebraska, Creighton slid off the polls immediately. I would say it is the reverse, that the mid-majors are penalized more.

Fortunately, Andy Katz and Kyle Whelliston were there to provide some lucid opinions and Whelliston boiled it down to the one undisputed truth - it is all about money. Big market teams get big market coverage and that helps drive the polls.