The NCAA men's basketball tournament is still a couple of months away, but it's never too early for ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi to project the 68-team field.
Lunardi was a guest Wednesday afternoon on "Press Row" on Chattanooga's ESPN 105.1 FM, where he talked about UTC, the Southeastern Conference and this season's multiple upsets of No. 1 teams.
Q: You have UTC as a 13 seed playing Louisville. The Mocs beat Georgia, Illinois and Dayton, but can they do anything to creep up further?
A: "I think creep is the right word, because at this point it's more about what the teams around them are doing. Presumably, they're going to win a majority of their games in the Southern Conference, and let's assume they go on and win the Southern Conference tournament. It's a different question entirely if we get into the at-large discussion, which given some of their wins is at least a reasonable conversation to have, but I just don't see that the outcome would be in their favor. For them to fall into the at-large pool would mean they are losing games at the wrong time to lower-rated opponents when the committee is watching, and we watched that story play out last year with Murray State. They had 27 wins and had won 25 in a row when they lost that heartbreaker to Belmont in the OVC final, and they ended up in the NIT.
"If I'm Chattanooga during championship week, I'm rooting for upset wins in some of the other one-bid conferences, because those teams would slide in below Chattanooga and Chattanooga could come up a bit, but probably no more than one line."
Q: You have four SEC teams (Texas A&M, Kentucky, South Carolina and Florida) in your field and two more (LSU and Vanderbilt) on the cusp. Can you tell if this is a strong or weak year in the SEC?
A: "It's a different kind of year than we've been accustomed to, because Kentucky is not the 800-pound gorilla in the league that they've been for three of the last four years. I would say that the SEC is good but not great. I do think that at least one more team will find their way in, and if I was setting four as the over/under, I would bet over."
Q: Is this year's tournament going to be more wide open than normal given all the No. 1 teams that have been going down each week?
A: "When I look at this year, there isn't a single team on the current No. 1 seed line (Oklahoma, Villanova, Kansas and North Carolina) that has the profile of any of the No. 1 seeds last year (Kentucky, Duke, Villanova and Wisconsin). I have a way of aggravating this over a period of years, and last year was the second-best group of No. 1 seeds on balance since I've been doing this. The only time it was exceeded was when all four No. 1 seeds advanced in 2008, and that was when Memphis lost that great final to Kansas.
"Do I think a couple of ones this year will make it? Yes. Would I be picking chalk if I had to bet a mortgage payment on my bracket? Absolutely not."
Q: Could UTC be one of those teams nobody nationally will be talking about in March but should be?
A: "Certainly Chattanooga would be on the short list. I was in Dayton for a game last Friday, and they know all about Chattanooga. I did the St. Joe's-VCU game about a week and a half ago, and Will Wade has certainly paid attention to his former squad. They may be a little more highly regarded on the national scene than you might think."
Q: If you had to pick a Final Four today, who would be in it?
A: "I think I would start with Kansas and North Carolina. I think they're the two most talented teams in the country. Then I would throw in a couple that you don't expect, like an Iowa and a West Virginia. Look down a line or two in those power leagues, and that's where those extra Final Four teams are going to come from."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.