Is there anything better than the NCAA Tournament?

For the past week, i've blogged about who I thought was still alive and what they had to do to quailify for the NCAA tournament. I wrote down the 65 teams I felt would make the tournament. 31 of them were automatic. The rest were pretty easy to figure out also. In the end I predicted 64 of 64 teams correct (98.5%). The only one I got wrong was Virginia Tech instead of Florida. I also have some other thoughts on the selections.

1. How does Florida get in ahead of Mississippi State, who beat them in the SEC tournament on Friday? Florida had 3 quality wins this season (Mich State, Florida State and Tennessee). They also beat Miss State in the regular season. Miss State didn't have much heading into the SEC semi-final match vs Florida. But the Bulldogs beat them. They also beat #22 Vanderbilt to advance to the SEC final vs Kentucky. They were 0.4 seconds from winning the auto bid. But a slim OT loss doomed Miss State to the NIT. I still don't understand how Florida gets in. Even Illinois had a better body of work, beating 5 Top 25 teams.

2. Miss State, Va Tech and Illnois were the biggest snubs this year. Miss State and Illinois were screwed by Houston and New Mexico State winning their conference tournaments and stealing bids. Va Tech lost their spot by playing a terrible out of conference schedule and losing to Miami in the ACC semis.

3. Duke should not have been seeded higher then Syracuse. Duke should not have an easier region than #1 overall seed Kansas. Further proof that Duke is getting a cakewalk, they get Arkansas Pine Bluff, who played tonight. The over/under is 45 point win for Duke. God i hate their fans.

4. How does Washington and San Diego State win their conference tournaments and get lower seeds (11) than the teams they beat, California and UNLV (8)?

5. Finally, why do two conference tournament champions play in the play in game? If they really wanted to have an intruging game, play the last two teams into the tournament against each other. The game should have been Utep vs Utah State. If you want to expand the field, go to 68 and have the last 4 in play the last 4 out.