Arkansas in is flat-out ridiculous, so is Drexel being out. All the national pundits are peeing their collective pants over Sycacuse not making with a 10-6 Big East record, blah, blah, blah. Here's Syracuse's Big East wins (including its one Big East tourney victory over UConn) with NCAA tourney teams bolded. Wins: at Marquette, at Rutgers, Villanova, Cincinnati, DePaul, St. John's, at South Florida, Connecticut, at Providence, Georgetown, Connecticut. Not impressive, not one little bit, especially when the only nonconference win worth half a shred of a damn is Holy Cross. That unbalanced Big East schedule is a bitch isn't it? The committee got that omission right. Sorry farmerjerome, et al.
Three of Indiana State's 13 wins were against tourney teams, two of them were out of conference. They got fucked!
Digger Phelps sucks. His whole argument regarding Kansas State and Arkansas was their performances against Texas Tech. Ditto Vitale. These old dudes can't stop screaming coaches' names when making picks. You can tell the actual former players in the studio are doing their best to stomach their "This team is good because I am friends with their coach!" stupidity. Also, if Drexel wanted to get in, then perhaps they should not have finished fourth in a mid-major conference.
Here's the thing about the ACC this year, though ... I'm still not convinced it isn't being wildly overrated. Maybe it's a fuction of traditional teams shitting the bed, but your tournament byes were earned by UNC, UVa, VT and BC. Feels like a down year, but RPI says otherwise. Of course, if you think the ACC was going to get shit on AGAIN after last year ...
I don't think Arkansas is flat-out ridiculous. I didn't have them in, but they got to the final of the SEC tournament and finished with a top 40 RPI. I have a LOT more trouble with Stanford than Arkansas.
How did they get shit on last year? The ACC deserved four, it got four. The SEC deserved four, but Arkansas made it to the finals -- the only way it got in. The Big Ten doesn't deserve six (hope the committee members remembered to gargle), it deserves four. Getting what they should have isn't getting shit on.
Sorry about the wording. While you, me and everyone realizes it only deserved four, the folks on the committee (and folks influencing the committee) were not about to hang another four on the ACC. Just my opinion.
Arkansas' inclusion is pretty bad. It finished the regular season 6-9. Its "run" in the SEC tournament included wins over South Carolina and Mississippi State. It also has 13 losses. That's not a tourney team.