North Carolina in, West Virginia out and more selection committee questions
The biggest subplot following Sunday's reveal of the NCAA men's basketball tournament bracket appears to be North Carolina's inclusion, right down to the fact committee chairman (and Tar Heels Athletic Director) Bubba Cunningham was joined for the customary interview with CBS by vice chair Keith Gill of the Sun Belt Conference.
North Carolina was a borderline call the whole time. The Tar Heels turned out to be At-Large Team No. 37 when they just as easily could have been seen as At-Large Team No. 38 on the wrong side of the cut line. That's simultaneously a big difference in practice, but not a huge one in terms of evaluation.
The real subplot was lurking in plain sight for the past three months, and it was alluded to at the very end of Sunday's final Washington Post bracket projection:
Repeating from Saturday: If there's a seemingly safe team that might be in more danger than most think, it's West Virginia. The Mountaineers did much of their best work before Tucker DeVries got hurt in early December.
Lo and behold, the Mountaineers were At-Large Team No. 38. West Virginia had six Quad 1 victories, two of them before DeVries was injured after eight games. The Mountaineers also lost to last-place Colorado in the second round of the Big 12 tournament last week, a misstep that seemed like it might relegate them to Dayton.
Instead, West Virginia got sent to the NIT. And the one-Quad-1-win twins, North Carolina and Xavier, get to play on in the middle of this week.
Among the biggest snubs and surprises from Sunday. …
The Tar Heels were the team that, in retrospect, should have been rooting harder for Memphis in the American Athletic tournament championship game. Had the Tigers lost to UAB, Hubert Davis' Heels would have been squeezed out of the field. Instead, North Carolina gets a matchup with San Diego State, a game that features a pair of recent tournament runners-up.
North Carolina didn't do much wrong; its worst loss was a one-point setback at home against Stanford. But it also didn't do much right, going 1-12 in Quadrant 1 games, the lone victory over UCLA. It beat two teams in the tournament field (Patriot League champ American was the other). Absolutely no one in Chapel Hill had any right to moan if the Tar Heels got excluded.
But they're in after winning eight consecutive games against teams other than Duke over the final month of the season. North Carolina (22-13) needed every last one of those victories to secure a reprieve.
The Tar Heels were the team that, in retrospect, should have been rooting harder for Memphis in the American Athletic tournament championship game. Had the Tigers lost to UAB, Hubert Davis' Heels would have been squeezed out of the field. Instead, North Carolina gets a matchup with San Diego State, a game that features a pair of recent tournament runners-up.
North Carolina didn't do much wrong; its worst loss was a one-point setback at home against Stanford. But it also didn't do much right, going 1-12 in Quadrant 1 games, the lone victory over UCLA. It beat two teams in the tournament field (Patriot League champ American was the other). Absolutely no one in Chapel Hill had any right to moan if the Tar Heels got excluded.
But they're in after winning eight consecutive games against teams other than Duke over the final month of the season. North Carolina (22-13) needed every last one of those victories to secure a reprieve.
If someone does have the right to complain, it's the Mountaineers (19-13). Yes, the DeVries injury lowered their ceiling considerably, and they were 8-11 after Jan. 4. They also won at Kansas without the 6-foot-7 wing, and also picked off Iowa State in Morgantown after DeVries was lost for the season.
That said, West Virginia was not a metrics darling (between 42nd and 53rd in six of the seven team sheet rankings), and the Big 12 tournament stinker against Colorado was a terrible last impression (especially when compared to North Carolina winning twice in the ACC tournament). Sunday's exclusion makes DeVries's injury an even bigger what-if than it already was.
If someone does have the right to complain, it's the Mountaineers (19-13). Yes, the DeVries injury lowered their ceiling considerably, and they were 8-11 after Jan. 4. They also won at Kansas without the 6-foot-7 wing, and also picked off Iowa State in Morgantown after DeVries was lost for the season.
That said, West Virginia was not a metrics darling (between 42nd and 53rd in six of the seven team sheet rankings), and the Big 12 tournament stinker against Colorado was a terrible last impression (especially when compared to North Carolina winning twice in the ACC tournament). Sunday's exclusion makes DeVries's injury an even bigger what-if than it already was.
How the committee found three teams worth of difference between the Musketeers and North Carolina on its seed list is the most perplexing part of the evening. Regardless, Sean Miller's team made it in after a late-season high-wire act that included seven consecutive victories, largely against the bottom third of the Big East.
This could have been much easier for Xavier (21-11) had it defeated Marquette in the Big East quarterfinals after holding a double-digit lead in the second half. Instead, the Musketeers will make the roughly hour-long drive north to Dayton for a play-in game for the first time since 2014. They should have plenty of support in the stands while facing Texas.
How the committee found three teams worth of difference between the Musketeers and North Carolina on its seed list is the most perplexing part of the evening. Regardless, Sean Miller's team made it in after a late-season high-wire act that included seven consecutive victories, largely against the bottom third of the Big East.
This could have been much easier for Xavier (21-11) had it defeated Marquette in the Big East quarterfinals after holding a double-digit lead in the second half. Instead, the Musketeers will make the roughly hour-long drive north to Dayton for a play-in game for the first time since 2014. They should have plenty of support in the stands while facing Texas.
The Cardinals (27-7) ranked 28th or better in all seven team sheet metrics, and while their Quadrant 1 record wasn't fantastic (4-6), they were 11-1 in Quad 2 games and didn't lose to anyone outside that group. It's hard to believe Pat Kelsey's bunch is on the No. 8 line.
Louisville is the most blatantly underseeded team in the field. The good news? They'll open the tournament in nearby Lexington and have a chance to pack archrival Kentucky's arena. The bad news? They likely will face Auburn in the second round. That's a much tougher ask than facing a No. 3 or No. 4 seed, even if that would have required some extra travel.
The Cardinals (27-7) ranked 28th or better in all seven team sheet metrics, and while their Quadrant 1 record wasn't fantastic (4-6), they were 11-1 in Quad 2 games and didn't lose to anyone outside that group. It's hard to believe Pat Kelsey's bunch is on the No. 8 line.
Louisville is the most blatantly underseeded team in the field. The good news? They'll open the tournament in nearby Lexington and have a chance to pack archrival Kentucky's arena. The bad news? They likely will face Auburn in the second round. That's a much tougher ask than facing a No. 3 or No. 4 seed, even if that would have required some extra travel.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
15 minutes ago
- New York Post
NY's ‘Italian American of the Year' shares dream of Smithsonian museum — and why he's rubbing elbows with MLB stars
Rome wasn't built in a day, either. New York's 'Italian American of the Year' has big aspirations to spotlight the powerful paesans who have been the nation's backbone for generations: a Smithsonian museum dedicated to culture Italiano. 'It's not about the Sunday sauce,' Chris Vaccaro, founder of the Italian American Heritage Society of Long Island, told The Post. Advertisement 6 Chris R. Vaccaro grabs a slice at Little Vincent's Pizza in Huntington, N.Y. on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post 'I have this really personal quest to make sure that we don't take for granted the journey that they made here…I'm living their American dream — and their American dream is to not forget Italy.' Vaccaro, a 38-year-old dad of three who also teaches media at Hofstra University, strives to leverage success on Long Island for the broader goal of achieving nationwide recognition in DC. Advertisement It is an initiative shared with the Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, which comprises approximately 70 individual branches across America. 'The bottom line is, it would be great if Italian Americans had a national museum,' Vacarro said. 'It would be important for our heritage group.' 6 Chris R. Vaccaro poses for a portrait by the Columbus statue in Huntington, N.Y. on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post Advertisement The Lake Grove man, who also runs the Suffolk County Sports Hall of Fame, was given the annual honor of 'Italian American of the Year' by the New York Conference of Italian American Legislators in late May. It was a no-brainer, considering he is known to enjoy espresso with Mets Italian legend Mike Piazza in a baseball dugout — when he has spare time from running conferences, speaking to schools, and organizing collaborative events showing that Italy is anything but little on LI. 'This is one of the most populated areas of Italians outside of Italy in the world, and that's something that we should all recognize,' said Vaccaro, whose family came from Palermo, Sicily, in the 19th century. 6 Chris R. Vaccaro wears pocket squares with the colors of Italy while posing for a portrait in Huntington, N.Y. on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post Advertisement 'There are nearly a million Italian-Americans here,' added Vaccaro, who notes radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi operated out of Babylon, and the nation's first Italian-American elected to Congress, Francis B. Spinola, was from Suffolk County. A real hit The way that Vaccaro gets people to connect more with their heritage is a method close to home — plate, that is. He knocks it out of the park in the sports world as a board member of the Italian American Baseball Foundation, which works with a majority of MLB teams to spray the tricolore around diamonds with special heritage nights at the ballpark. 6 Vaccaro also runs the Suffolk County Sports Hall of Fame. They've also honored Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe, among others like Piazza, and work closely with former Bronx Bomber Francisco Cervelli to operate a youth training academy in Tuscany. He's involved in the Mets' AA affiliate, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, turning into 'The Southern Tier Spicy Meatballs' for a few saucy games this upcoming August, as well. 'We have a hell of a lot of fun doing it,' said Vaccaro, who is hoping to toss out the first pitch for one. 6 Vaccaro is a board member of the Italian American Baseball Foundation. Advertisement He also boasts that the inadvertent influence of Italian food 'has been celebrated to the grandest scale' on social media and is another ideal lure for people to scratch beneath the surface and learn the boot's true culture brought to the states. He lauds the work of fellow Italian American of the Year Dr. Joe Scelsa, who operates NYC's Italian American Museum, and said success there will ideally pave the way for something in the nation's capital. Vaccaro also has an ambition to work with the third and final winner of the Empire State's spaghetti superlative, pal Christopher Macchio of Holbrook — known more widely as President Trump's favorite tenor — on a White House Columbus Day commission ahead of October. 6 Chris R. Vaccaro poses for a portrait at Little Vincent's Pizza in Huntington, N.Y. on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post Advertisement More locally, however, the objective is to stop stunads from stereotyping and instead recognize how Italians built Long Island from the ground up for decades — literally. 'When you're looking at our roads, our buildings, the railways and expressway, the Italian-Americans had a really major piece of that…that has now evolved into Italian-Americans succeeding in all areas of American life,' he said. 'There's a very important piece of 'you work very hard, you come from this family that worked hard to get here,' and let's keep that going.'
Miami Herald
17 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Ilona Maher Talks 2028 L.A. Olympics After Winning Bronze in Paris
American rugby player Ilona Maher was one of Team USA's breakout stars of the 2024 Paris Olympics - and with the 2028 summer games coming to Los Angeles, Maher is contemplating whether she wants to compete. "I am going to try to," the athlete, 28, told Kylie Kelce on the Thursday, June 12, episode of Kelce's "Not Gonna Lie" podcast. "I think it would be so cool to play in a home olympics. That is my goal, but I am still in a phase of trying to figure out what my love of it is. Like, my 'why' for rugby because I feel very fulfilled after the Olympics, getting a medal and doing all that." The bronze medalist helped lead the United States to its first-ever women's rugby medal last summer, and since then, she's kept plenty busy - not just as an athlete, but as a social media influencer, model and even contestant on Dancing With the Stars. She finished second on season 33 alongside pro partner Alan Bersten. "Playing while I still love it and not like it's a chore, and also I still feel good, is what I'm battling now," she continued. "I love doing this. I love doing the social media, the swim weeks and the shows, so I hope that I go back in a couple years and I'm like, 'I can't wait to work my ass off to put in the grind.'" Maher, however, is aware that playing in the Olympics is about more than just sports. "With the Olympics, this wasn't just for myself," she told Us Weekly exclusively in December 2024. "The Olympics was to get a medal for my team, to get a medal for our program so we could continue having a program so young girls could dream about being an Olympian and playing rugby in the U.S. So that's pressure." Since coming home from Paris, Maher has embraced her platform as a role model, becoming an advocate for body image and inclusion on and off the field. Along with everything else she has going on, she revealed in May that she has also been working on writing a memoir since 2022. "I was like, 'I don't have anything to write about,'" she told guest Mamrie Hart on an episode of her "House of Maher" podcast. "'What am I gonna write about?' And then one day, I opened up a Cutwater … I was at home and I just started typing and realized you have so much more to say than you realize sometimes." "There's so many little fun stories to share," she continued. "So it's been really cool to write and cathartic, in a way." Copyright 2025 Us Weekly. All rights reserved.
USA Today
22 minutes ago
- USA Today
Tennessee's attempt to undermine settlement is a red flag in new world of college sports
Tennessee's attempt to undermine settlement is a red flag in new world of college sports Show Caption Hide Caption Which NCAA baseball teams could blow up the bracket The Montgomery Advertiser's Adam Cole and The Southwest Times Record's Jackson Fuller break down who could wreck the tournament bracket. Katherine Crytzer, a 41-year-old federal judge appointed by President Trump to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, saved the college sports world a huge headache on Thursday. By denying an injunction that could have granted former Tennessee basketball star Zakai Zeigler a fifth year of eligibility, thus opening the floodgates on athletes potentially earning NIL money far beyond their college lifespan, the NCAA's ability to enforce its four-year rule seems somewhat safe – for now. 'This Court is a court of law, not policy,' she wrote. 'What the NCAA should do as a policy matter to benefit student athletes is beyond the reach of the Sherman Act and (Tennessee law) and by extension, this Court.' But Zeigler's petition should set off major alarm bells for this new world of college sports – not because he filed it (which is his right as an American), but because Tennessee's athletic department seemed to support an idea that would spark the kind of chaos power-conference schools have spent months trying to fix. On Saturday, one day after Judge Claudia Wilken approved the landmark House vs. NCAA settlement, Tennessee's senior deputy athletics director/chief revenue officer Ryan Alpert filed an affidavit telling Judge Crytzer that Zeigler would have a 'guaranteed spot' on its 2025-26 basketball team, which would of course also mean a large NIL payment coming his way via the terms of the House settlement. We assumed from the beginning that Zeigler being granted a fifth year would mean a return to Tennessee, where he played 138 games and graduated, thus extinguishing his eligibility. But to see it on the record from a Tennessee official in this context can only be interpreted one way: Tennessee was willing to undermine a key component of the House settlement on behalf of a player it wanted back on its basketball team. It's especially stunning given that Monday of this week, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey joined four of his colleagues on a call with the media to discuss the settlement finally going into practice. Undergirding the settlement, which grants schools the ability to pay college athletes from an initial $20.5 million pool of revenue per school, is a new College Sports Commission being formed by the four power conferences that will be charged with enforcing the salary cap and other regulatory duties. Everyone understands the only hope to bring order to the last several years of NIL and transfer chaos is if schools take the terms of the settlement seriously and not look for ways to get around it by lining up sham NIL deals for recruits. That's why schools have pledged to sign a document affirming the CSC's authority and forfeiting the ability to sue if things don't go their way. 'I've asked at every level … our university presidents and chancellors, our athletics directors, our head coaches: If you want an unregulated, open system, just raise your hand and let me know,' Sankey said. 'And universally, the answer is: 'No. We want oversight. We want guardrails. We want structures.' 'Those individuals don't have the luxury to just say that in meeting rooms. Period. They don't have the luxury to just be anonymous sources. They have a responsibility to make what they've sought, what they've asked for – to make it work." But, as the entire history of college sports has shown, push comes to shove when a coach or an athletics director has an opportunity to go around the rules and add a player to their team who will help them win more games, thus enhancing their job security and increasing their bank account. Easy to say you're committed to the new system in a meeting with the SEC commissioner, but hard to put in practice when tangible stuff is on the line. We can already see that in Tennessee's support for Zeigler's eligibility case, which was just a blatant attempt to blow up a longstanding NCAA rule that the vast majority of administrators support. I reached out to Tennessee for clarification of its position on Thursday morning, coincidentally, a couple of hours before Zeigler's injunction was denied, and then again after. They're not going to comment on his case. What Tennessee officials would likely say if they did comment is that they had nothing to do with Zeigler's case and that they filed the affidavit simply out of loyalty and support to their former player. Fair enough. But everyone needs to understand how big of a red flag this is already for the new world of college sports. For various reasons, a large number of college athletes are going to feel wronged or aggrieved in this new system or simply search for ways to make more money beyond the salary cap. And unless Congress passes a law with some kind of antitrust exemption, which doesn't seem likely anytime soon, they will have a legal right to challenge it with an army of lawyers ready and willing to take their cases. Like Zeigler, they have little to lose and potentially millions of dollars to gain. In some cases, they also have state legislatures like the one in Tennessee making laws that say NCAA rules don't apply in their state. You can't blame the athlete for that. But you can blame a school that puts into the legal record that it would be willing to, at minimum, violate the spirit of the system it built that was designed to give rule-making and enforcement power back to the schools. Schools have a choice: They can either have the system they say they want, or they can have rogue legislatures looking to build competitive advantages for good old State U into their laws. They can't have both. When Sankey shakes his finger at the media, talking about how his member schools are fully bought-in to coloring within the lines of the House settlement, the rest of college sports rolls its eyes. At the end of the day, are the people at Alabama or Georgia going to really be OK with losing a big recruit to a school with more salary-cap space? That's what we're talking about here. That's the whole deal. And if that doesn't work, the House settlement isn't going to be worth the paper it's written on. An SEC spokesperson did not return a text message asking for the league's interpretation of Tennessee supporting Zeigler's attempt to get a fifth year by guaranteeing his roster spot. And now, thanks to Judge Crytzer, this specific issue is moot. But it's merely a canary in the coal mine. There are going to be more Zeiglers, more Tennessee athletic departments and more Tennessee legislatures, constantly challenging the terms of the House settlement and the College Sports Commission's authority to do its job because, in the end, those actions will help them win games. Will schools stand firm on their own principles? Maybe in meeting rooms with Commissioner Sankey. But in the real world? Good luck.
