Selection Sunday rattles brackets

Prior to Selection Sunday, if someone had told you his NCAA Tournament Final Four picks consisted of North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisville and Notre Dame as a dark horse, you wouldn't have raised an eyebrow.

All have big victories. All have great players. All have the coaching and talent to reach college basketball's final weekend.

At least they did until the tournament selection committee dimly decided to place all four in the East Region, meaning only one will advance.

Are you kidding me? What did UT coach Bruce Pearl, UNC coach Roy Williams and Louisville's Rick Pitino do to these guys? Leave them off their Christmas card list? Fail to kiss referee Teddy “T” Valentine's ring finger? Tell CBS that if Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski isn’t doing halftime interviews they're not, either?”

C'mon. UCLA gets placed in the West with second-seeded, height-challenged Duke, questionable third-seed Xaver and fourth-seeded UConn and the Big Orange conceivably has to get past surgeon-precise Butler, Louisville in the Sweet 16 and the Tar Heels in the regional final. How can that be?

Midwest top-seed Kansas gets Georgetown — which lost the Big East title to Pitt, which was playing its fourth game in four days — plodding Wisconsin and overmatched Vanderbilt.

Meanwhile, the Vols get tossed into a region that has three schools — UNC, Indiana and Louisville — with multiple NCAA titles?

What happened to Selection Committee chairman Tom O'Connor's eyesight? Were his corneas burned by Pearl's bright orange sport coat to the point he could no longer see that the Vols entered this past weekend with the No. 1 RPI and No. 1 strength of schedule in all of college hoops?

And even if the Vols weren't quite a No. 1 seed, how does that justify placing them in UNC's bracket, which should have meant that the committee viewed them as no more than the fourth No. 2 in the field, since the committee reportedly uses an S-curve? Shouldn't the Vols — if not regarded as the fourth No. 1, but rather the first No. 2 — been placed out West with UCLA?

“Geographically it made sense to send Tennessee to Charlotte (site of the East Regional finals),” said O'Connor during a Sunday night conference call.

Of course, geographically it would have made sense to send San Diego to Anaheim, Calif., for a first-round game instead of Tampa, Fla. It would have made sense to send Winthrop to Raleigh, N.C., instead of Denver. Or Arizona to Denver instead of Washington, D.C.

And not that South Alabama is probably going to fill up the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center — which, by the way, was the path UT used to travel to the Sweet 16 in 2000 — but the Vols will have to buy up a lot of tickets between now and Sunday to out-shout the Jags if they get past Butler in the opening round.

Then again, the Vols must get by American.

This isn't to say that nothing made sense in the pairings. UNC, Memphis, Kansas and UCLA all deserved No. 1 seeds if only because they all won their conference tournaments while the Vols couldn't even reach their tourney finals.

And among the No. 2 seeds of Tennessee, Texas, Duke and Georgetown, only the Dookies seem to be a bit high, since they lost four of their last nine games.

One could also wonder about the fairness of North Carolina playing their first two rounds 25 miles away in Raleigh and the regional final in Charlotte. Or South No. 2 Texas potentially reaching the regional final in Houston against No. 1 Memphis. Think the Longhorns wouldn't have an edge?

As for the yearly whining about the 66th best team in the country, Virginia Tech, Arizona State and Syracuse all have arguments, but in a tournament that may be the weakest in years, they don't have much of one.

Actually, the best idea of the night may have come from new ESPN analyst Bob Knight. The General suggested that the current 65-team field be expanded to 128. Let the top 64 teams play the opening round on their home court, then re-seed the winners for a traditional six-round tourney. Yes, the 129th best team in the land might be unhappy, but Dick Vitale will grow more hair than Joakim Noah before either 128 or 129 wins on Numero Uno’s home court.

Of course, O'Connor also said, “winning away from home” is important for seeding, and no one could top the Vols winning at Xavier, in Seattle against Gonzaga and at Memphis.

And maybe Pearl can plant big enough chips on the Big Orange’s shoulders to carry them past (perhaps) South Alabama in Birmingham and both Louisville and North Carolina in Charlotte.

But the suspicion here is that the Final Four will consist of UNC, Texas, Kansas and UCLA, with Roy Williams' Tar Heels knocking off his old employer Kansas in the title game.

But at least Pearl can always claim his 2007-2008 season was done in by one of the toughest regional draws in NCAA history.