There was an eerie silence after the seedings were announced last night for this year's NCAA tournament, a feeling that Kentucky athletic director C.M. Newton and his nine-man committee had done their homework and left few, if any, with legitimate gripes.
And, in making the 34 at-large choices to go along with the 30 automatic qualifiers, the selection committee had sent a clear message for others to follow in the future: it's not who you are, or what league you play in, it's who you play and how you do.
It resulted in the first spread-the-wealth tourney since the field was expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
None of the power conferences received more than five bids, while the Midwestern Collegiate Conference will send three teams for the first time in the league's 19-year history and the Mid-American Conference will send two for the first time since 1987.
"What we've been telling our coaches is that part of the schedule you control, so you should go out and play people," MCC commissioner Jon LeCrone said last night from his league's office in Indianapolis. "[Detroit coach] Perry Watson said the problem is that some people won't play you."
That's only part of the equation. Though neither Detroit nor Illinois-Chicago won this year's MCC tournament -- Butler did -- they had impressive nonconference victories and narrow non-league defeats to quality teams.
Both teams beat Michigan State. UIC also beat Illinois State and Valparaiso, two other teams that would qualify for the tournament, and lost by one to Illinois. Detroit lost to Michigan by one.
"They picked some good teams to play -- and beat," Newton said.
In reality, Newton's last year as the committee's chairman was made easier by three factors: the dominance by the four teams that became No. 1 seeds, the lack of huge upsets in the conference tournaments, and a few teams taking a nose dive over the weekend.
The biggest loser was Arizona State (17-13), which after beating Arizona last month and nearly beating Kansas early, suffered an embarrassing season-ending defeat at Southern Cal on Saturday.
Ball State (21-7) got left out despite beating fourth seed Mississippi and twice beating 11th seed and at-large choice Western Michigan.
And then there was Missouri. Though Norm Stewart will certainly complain that the Tigers (17-14) beat two of the top 16 seeds -- Kansas and Maryland -- they didn't win a single game this season away from home.
