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(Photo by John Clay)

I’m back in Lexington after we wrapped up the second and final day of the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament Mock Selection Exercise in Indiana. We selected the rest of the field, seeded the 65 teams (or about half of them), then put them into brackets. If the real committee does what we did today, Kentucky fans will be headed for New Orleans, and if two victories follow, then Syracuse.

Note: Eammon Brennan of espn.com was also a mock committee member who blogged on the happenings.

Note: If you missed it, here is my write-up on the first day.

Highlights from today, the final day:

• We started at 8:30 a.m. and were told that Georgetown had won the Big East Tournament and UNLV had won the Mountain West Tournament. That put two of the “at-large” selections into the “automatic qualifier” category, and brought the at-large total to the 34 needed. We were also told that Oklahoma State had won the Big 12 Tournament, and the Cowboys had been in the “under consideration” pool.

• A note about the conference tournaments. Once a team loses in the conference tournament, it is no longer a conference team. It is basically in the large pool of at-large candidates with the rest of the conference tournament losers, in all other conferences.

• Because some at-large teams would win their “mock’ conference tournaments, we had to select more at-large teams. After listing, and then ranking, St. Mary’s, Charlotte and South Florida increased the list to 37. We were then told that three of the “at-large” teams won their conference tournaments. That meant that the three we just picked we’re now in the tournament. The fourth team was Florida. We were told that Duke and Virginia had made the ACC Tournament finals. If Duke beat Virginia, Florida was in the field of 65. If Duke lost, Florida was out.

• We then returned to seeding. We ended up seeing New Mexico 13th, followed by Vanderbilt at No. 14, Temple at No. 15 and Texas at No. 16. Then we went through another seeding group and put Wake Forest at No. 17, followed by Pittsburgh at No. 18, Gonzaga at No. 19 and BYU at 20th.

• We were then told that Sam Houston State, Temple, Kentucky and Purdue had all won their respective conference tournaments. And, drum roll please, Duke had beaten Virginia in the ACC final. That put Florida in the NCAA Tournament.

• Turned out that California was the team with the highest RPI, No. 25, that we left out of the field.

• We then seeded Tennessee at No. 21, Georgia Tech at 22, Butler at 23, UNLV at 24, Baylor at 25, Texas A&M at 26, Richmond at 27 and Dayton 28.

• In the interest of time, because some of the mock members had flights to catch, etc., the NCAA staff did the rest of the seedings, from 29 through 65.

• Now it was time to do the bracketing. There were procedural rules to follow. For example, the first three teams in any conference had to be put in different regions. No conference matchups before a regional final. No team could play on its home floor, or a floor it had played on more than three times in a year, or where it was acting as a tournament host.

(Photo by John Clay)

• That last rule had a big affect on where we placed our No. 1 seeds. Being the overall No. 1 seed, Kansas was considered first. We put the Jayhawks in the St. Louis region. Next came No. 2 Syracuse. We couldn’t put Syracuse in the East Region, because Syracuse is the host. So we put Syracuse in Houston. Kentucky was up next. We could have put UK in either Salt Lake City or Syracuse. The committee chose Syracuse because, according to the mileage calculations included in the tournament software we were using, Syracuse was closer to Lexington.

• At this point, I asked the NCAA’s Greg Shaheen, who was guiding us through the process, and who will be “in the room” for the selection process for the 10th consecutive year, if a team’s propensity to bring fans was ever discussed. In other words, if this scenario happened with the real committee, would it be discussed that Kentucky always travels well, so it didn’t really matter if the Cats were sent to Salt Lake City. Sheehan said that yes, that sort of issue would be discussed, but that it was usually not a deciding factor. This year, 80 percent of the tickets are already sold at regional sites. That’s before the public knows which shools will be going to which regions.

• So with Kentucky in Syracuse, we put No. 4 overall seed Villanova in Salt Lake City. Next we had to assign each No. 1 seed to a first-round site. When we got to Kentucky, the mileage indicator showed that Milwaukee would be the closest first-round site. But some committee members pointed out that there would be several Big 10 teams that would be closer to Milwaukee, while there were few available teams close to New Orleans, another first-round site. We ended up assigning Kentucky to New Orleans.

• By our bracket, No. 1 East seed Kentucky would play No. 16 seed Coastal Carolina in New Orleans. If Kentucky won, the Cats would play the winner of No. 8 Marquette vs. No. 9 Clemson. A Kentucky-Marquette would be a repeat of a 2008 first-round matchup in Anaheim, something the tournament committee tries to avoid. But in this case, given the other teams and sites, we decided we could live with a second-round UK-Marquette.

• If Kentucky made it to the regional, and if the seeds held, UK would be playing No. 4 seed Temple in Syracuse. If the Cats won there, they would be playing No. 2 seed Georgetown in the East Regional final.

• For a pdf of the complete mock bracket, click here.

• For a pdf of the complete mock seed list, 1-65, click here.