Wiedmer: For 67 Schools, The Selection Committee Got It Right. Then There’s Auburn

Though Tennessee fans have yet to benefit from this, men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes has been to the Final Four before. It was when he was coaching at Texas in 2003. But what Volniacs might want to focus on this week as the 2024 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament gets under way is how the Longhorns entered that 2003 tourney - they had just lost to Bobby Knight’s Texas Tech team in their opening game of Big 12 tourney.

Sound familiar?

“At the end of that game, Coach Knight told me, ‘Now go win (the NCAA tourney),’” Barnes noted Sunday when the Vols’ spot as the No.

2 seed in the Midwest Region was revealed.”We didn’t. But we did get to the Final Four.”

So even as the Big Orange may be coming off its most dispiriting loss of the year in falling 73-56 to Mississippi State in its openingt game of this year’s SEC Tournament last Friday, the only thing that matters now is the next game, which will come against 2022 tournament darling St. Peter’s at around 9:40 Thursday night in Charlotte.

If there’s a coach among the 68 lucky ones who made the field who should be upset with the draw today, it has to be former UT coach and current Auburn coach Bruce Pearl. The Tigers were viewed as a No. 4 seed heading into the SEC tourney, won their three tourney games over South Carolina, Mississippi State and Florida by an average of 19 points and were rewarded for this impressive achievement by the Selection Committee by not only remaining a No. 4 seed, but being placed in the East Region with overall No. 1 seed and defending champ UConn.

Not that it has yet, but it would seem the committee would have some explaining to do, since the overall No. 1 is supposed to get the weakest No. 4 and there’s no way Auburn is the weakest 4 among the No. 4 seed quartet of Auburn, Duke, Alabama - which has lost four of its last six games - and Kansas, which has lost four of its last five.

Beyond that - and this seemed to make Pearl more upset than not moving up a seed line - was where the Tigers must play their first game, despite being in the East Region. They’ll play their opening round game against Yale in Spokane, Washington, on Friday, 2,400 miles from Auburn’s campus.

“Are we paying the price for getting Birmingham last year and having an incredible opportunity against Houston last year (in the round of 32)? Perhaps. (But) this is also the third time they’ve shipped us off a long way from our fans.”

Indeed, when Auburn reached its first-ever Final Four in 2019, the Tigers’ first games were in Utah. They’ve also been sent to California, which makes it prohibitively expensive for most members of its “Jungle” - as the Tiger fan base has come to call itself - to travel to watch them play.

If this was payback for last year - when a ninth seeded Auburn unfairly got to play in Birmingham - maybe someone could say turnabout is fair play. But the committee also swears up and down that every year is different, that a team, or conference’s past performance has nothing to do with the next year.

To continually prove that point, they annually fall over backward to please the Big Ten, which hasn’t overachieved since Indiana and Michigan reached the 1976 title game and IU produced the last undefeated season in the sport (32-0).

Case in point: This year’s Michigan State Spartans, who have 19 wins and FOURTEEN losses. Really? REALLY?

The committee did give Auburn one break. When the Tigers won the 2019 SEC tourney, they not only had to travel West, they had to play on Thursday after winning the SEC tourney on Sunday. At least this time the Spokane site is a Friday-Sunday.

Yet aside from Auburn, it seems a fair and fairly well thought out bracket. No one can complain much about the No.1 seeds - UConn, Purdue, Houston and North Carolina, though Big 12 tourney champ Iowa State is arguably a stronger team on the 19th of March than the Tar Heels.

But that’s a small quibble to what usually comes out of Selection Sunday. There’s also at least one exceedingly feel-good story to the opening round, though it’s hard to believe it could last beyond that.

Dan Monson was once the Washington Wizard when he guided previously unknown Gonzaga to the Elite Eight in 199 before losing to eventual national champion UConn by five points. He parlayed that unlikely tourney run into the Minnesota job, then took over Long Beach State prior to the start of the 2007-2008 season. That was 17 years ago. Just last week, prior to the start of the Big West Conference Tournament, LBSU and Monson announced they were mutually parting ways at the end of the season, but Monson would coach The Beach - they were formally known as the 49ers - in the conference tournament.

Well…

Wouldn’t you know it, The Beach won the tourney and now Monson gets to ride off into the sunset guiding his final Long Beach team into March Madness. Too cool. Unfortunately, Monsoon’s reward is facing second-seeded Arizona on Thursday afternoon in Salt Lake City.

A second sidebar to this story: When Monson was still at Gonzaga he hired Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd as a grad assistant.

So who cuts down the nets in Phoenix?

Let’s go with a Final Four of UConn, Tennessee, Houston and Mississippi State. Let’s go with Tennessee and UConn in the final with the Huskies repeating as champs. Why pick the Vols to come out of the Midwest? Easy. Purdue is the weakest No. 1 seed, the Vols almost beat them in November in Hawaii, and the Big Orange is much better now. They’re just not good enough to top the Huskies. But until around 4 p.m. Thursday, I’ll be pulling hard for Dan Monson to orchestrate one final hurrah at Long Beach State, where he was always one of the classiest and most honorable coaches in the game.