Women's Hoops Guru

(Guru's note: The final main story is below this post, and a simnulated local story is above.)

By Mel Greenberg

INDIANAPOLIS _ The Guru can't help but notice how well he did with his original 64-team ballot and the results from the NCAA mock women's tournament committee.

Remember, the command was to produce a list that included some advanced designated automatic qualifiers. Furthermore, the NCAA tossed a curve in that a few were so-called wrong winners as the committee often experiences while producing the draw.

In the Atlantic Ten, for example, we were given that Charlotte had won the confernce tournament -- the 49ers would not have been in the field otherwise. That forced us to make considerations on how many we might pick: George Washington, the projected winner was taken, as was Temple as an at-large. But Xavier, which might have otherwise made the field, was one of the last ones not selected for the field by the group.

Also, remember the Guru used some of his own philosophy, focusing on getting as close to the 33 at-large pick candidates.

The original ballot upper focus had 48 teams, including 17 automatic qualifiers.Additionally, three teams -- Baylor, Utah and Fresno State -- who were on our first-group considerations, got named automatic qualifiers by the NCAA during the exercise.

That left the Guru with 28 names in his upper group for definitive consideration.

In that group, he was high on Hartford, even if the Hawks would not have won the America East. Two more teams, of which he felt would merit a lot of discussion if they were not automatic qualifiers, were Wis.-Green Bay, the simulated regular-season Horizon champ, and Middle Tennessee, although he felt the duo were his weakest but put the team in the upper half, anyway.

Conversely, he felt Temple was a personal strong pick, but dropped the Owls to the second group, fighting for the last spots because he felt they would have mixed support.

Green Bay, the projected Horizon winner, lost out to Cleveland State in simulation and was not taken. The Guru would have thought that would be the case had it been in play that way at the time of his ballot. Middle Tennessee was another, although had he known of the team's loss Wednesday night he would have dropped the team to the general group.

Illinois State was also on the list if the projected Missouri Valley champions faltered and they did in the simulation. They were one of the top just-missed-the-cut teams, but if one less wrong winner had occurred, they might have made the field.

So having mentioned those waggles, the Guru is proud to report the remaining 25 off the prime choices of his 64-ballot all made the simulated field as at-large picks.
They are:
ACC- 4 - North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, Georgia Tech
Amer East 1 - Hartford
A-10 -1 - George Washington
Big Ten 1 - Ohio State.
Big Twelve 6 -- Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, Texas A&M
Big East - 5 - Rutgers, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Notre Dame, Syracuse,
Mountain West - 1 - Wyoming
Pac-Ten - 2 - California, Arizona State
Southeastern - 4- Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Georgia, Auburn,
Total -- 25

Now, out of the next group, to fill the final eight, the Guru would have and did advocated Temple, Iowa, De Paul, Louisville, UTEP, and Southerrn Cal, which brings us to 31.
Xavier did not make it, but was a top also ran.
Lost between the cracks when the Guru was doing some last-minute changing for the blog, were Kentucky and Purdue, which would have been. That gives us 33.

Depending how wants to score the Guru on the last two, his only at-large strikeouts were Xavier (which might have made it without the Charlotte simulation), and Illinois State, although with no strong emotion going in, might have just gotten the perfect score with the aforementioned Purdue and Kentucky.

-- Mel