I like UConn and Winthrop too. I keep going back and forth on USC. Liked them and then read something about how they have no guards, crumble under pressure, and play in a bad league. I don’t hate Purdue actually. I could see them getting bounced early or making a mini run.
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Another huge benefit for the B1G was playing the BTT in Indy - which was under the microscope as guinea pig for MM. Also no additional travel. Almost like the basketball gods are trying to get a B1G team across the finish line this year 
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Don’t know of anywhere that has them before the games. Just posted on the stat trackers when games are about to tip.
Okay, I was looking for a past game assignment tracker for Officials. Used to be “phillyref.com” but they stopped tracking pre-pandemic. Was going to track which tourneys those 6 refs had been working.
Oh, KenPom has that.
Kissinger, Natili and Higgins are Big 12 I believe.
Valentine and Ayers are ACC.
Gaffney did Big East tourney.
It looks like Ayers also did the A10 final with the Bonnies.
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Found a site that lists the selected officials for the tourney:
The site also shows that the original plan was 60 selected officials & 15 alternate officials. Normally there are 96 officials selected, but this is an abnormal year - obviously.
The math (4+32+16)*3 = 156 officials would work out to 3 games/week for 52 refs. So probably a few working 2 games/week.
GT had their game against Virginia cancelled because of UVA’s COVID issues in the ACC tourney.
Man, I was high on GT even before their conf tourney run…up until they drew Illinois as a second round opponent. Curious to see how this plays out, and SO HAPPY that our guys don’t have to travel at this point
Has Florida State returned test results yet?
The bracket is “locked” as of 6 pm tonight, correct?
Looks like they arrived at 2:24 PM on Monday (https://twitter.com/FSUHoops/status/1371527849950248962) so I’m not sure they’d be out of quarantine but not sure of the specifics.
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Really don’t get why the NCAA push the start of the tourney back a week just to give some cushion. No reason it had to run up against the conference tourneys and their fallout.
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The major disadvantage, IMO, is having the student athletes being sequestered in their room an additional week or two. I’d be bouncing off the walls after a week, let alone six.
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I’d rather take the anticipation of waiting out another week over the doomsday feeling of a test potentially costing your whole team a shot at participating.
My major issue is that teams had conference tournaments as they normally would in most conferences. And that just seems crazy to me, especially with the normal turnaround for the NCAA tourney.
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I’m not disagreeing with you from a fan’s standpoint.
My assumption is whatever makes the most money for the NCAA and sponsors, at the least cost, will always prevail, regardless of optics or team sacrifice. I would think they already think the public has a big asterisk next to this season anyway. Cash in where the cash is.
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Agreed. It’s really hard to be stuck in a hotel room. My work trips are infrequent but are 2-3 weeks long. After that first weekend I’ll do anything to get out of the hotel room. (And, I long to go back to the normal world in which this is a problem I actually have…)
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I didn’t have time to research these refs previous assignments since it involved clicking through individual box scores on ESPN. But Ayers worked both the Bonnies (w/Smith & Hampton) and FSU (w/Smith & Armstrong). I imagine Teddy V was on the cancelled UVa game, so he just did the FSU-GT title game. Higgins worked OSU-Texas (w/Kimble & Sirmons) and OSU-Baylor (w/Natili & Pollard). Kissinger worked OSU-WVU (w/Kimble & Wells).
Pretty sure all their ref partners were selected for MM, and both Bonnies & FSU are in our immediate path. A few more days, and we should be out of the possible hot-spot issues - hopefully.
CBS scheduling against the Masters is your answer - plain and simple. This whole thing is predictable and insane when you think about it.
Let’s have these amateurs stay in a hotel room by themselves for weeks, and pay for it, but not compensate them, and let’s have teams all congregate against each other in groups, then fly across the country and do it again with bigger groups in a smaller setting… We’ll be lucky if the first round goes off as planned.
While I disagree with it, I understand why everyone wanted their conference tournaments. I also understand why we’re going to get a tournament no matter how much of a farce it becomes. I don’t understand why someone didn’t think of a better way to schedule it. Dumb.
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