THE CHATTER
As conference tournaments begin play, one staple of TV broadcasts will be analysts projecting bubble teams into the NCAA tournament based on an early-round victory against a ranked team or a deep tournament run. Georgia Tech athletic director Mike Bobinski, who served five years on the NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee and was the chairman in 2012-13, heard it, too.
“It doesn’t work that way at all,” he said.
The committee takes into consideration a team’s entire season, not weighting recent games more heavily than earlier ones.
“We always tried very hard to not let that recency effect of what’s happening right now, right before your eyes outweigh the 30 games you’ve already watched,” he said. “There’s a whole season’s worth of evidence that you’ve got to consider, and a team having a great or really bad performance right at decision time shouldn’t be overly weighted.”
The only time a team’s most recent results would have the sort of impact that media members and coaches believe, Bobinski said, is “if, in fact, the games that they won to get there really put that team in a different light than the whole season that we watched them play.”
— Ken Sugiura
CATLANTA
Kentucky fans (all those people who will be wearing blue around town by Friday, you can’t miss ’em) can catch the Big Blue spirit at 2 p.m. Friday at the Hawk Walk inside Philips Arena. There will be music, door prizes, raffle items, merchandise vendors and fun with fellow Wildcats fans. The first 500 fans to enter the event will receive a free T-shirt and the Kentucky band and cheerleaders will make a special appearance. There’s a catch: entry is $15 per person, $10 for Kentucky students with valid ID. Children 10 and under are free. Enter from CNN Center.
TWEETABLE
The top-seeded Florida Gators are the first team from a major conference to go 18-0 in league play since Indiana in 1976.
BY THE NUMBERS
0-14 Alabama's record away from home. The Crimson Tide were 13-4 at home, but 0-11 on the road and 0-3 at neutral sites.
317 Missouri's rank among NCAA Division I teams in assists.
CELEBRITY TWEET
@UGABasketball #GoDawgs See you in Atlanta! Lock in and get ready for battle! #BulldogTough — @DWilkins21 (Dominique Wilkins)
WHERE DID YOU GO?
Basketball attendance in 2013-14 is on pace to be the lowest for the SEC since 1984-85.Here is a look at each school’s attendance this season, with the corresponding increase or decrease from last season:
School; Attendance; Pct. change
Kentucky; 22,964; minus-1
Tennessee; 15,475; minus-7
Arkansas; 14,597; plus-6
Florida; 11,471; plus-7
Alabama; 10,754; minus-4
South Carolina; 10,074; plus-17
Vanderbilt; 9,534; minus-10
Missouri; 9,402; minus-22
LSU; 8,910; plus-16
Ole Miss; 7,328; plus-21
Mississippi State; 6,875; plus-2
Georgia; 6,429; plus-4
Auburn; 5,823; minus-7
Texas A&M; 5,367; minus-15
Source: AL.com
HE SAID IT
“Your dome settings are always unique in terms of playing. I’ve been in here a couple of times with a couple of different teams, and you’ve just got to go play the game. … We’ve got to play the way we’re capable of playing and do things we’re capable of doing and worry about what we can control.” — Missouri coach Frank Haith
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