Selection Sunday: 2014 NCAA Tournament field now set

A lot of people thought the SMU Mustangs were going to make the NCAA Tournament this year -- the Ponies finished the year 25-9, 12-6 in a top-heavy AAC, and were ranked No. 25, and no ranked team had missed the NCAA Tournament since 2004.

But they lost their last three games of the year, including an AAC Tournament game against Houston. And although things are turning around for Larry Brown and co., they were left out of the tournament in favor of NC State, who only one of 78 bracketologists thought was worthy of a spot.

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The 2014 NCAA Tournament bracket is now set, and it’s time for sports fans around the nation to make their picks and fill out their office pools. This is the one week each year that workers actually enjoy filling out spreadsheets.

This year, it all starts with No. 1 overall seed Florida in the South Region. The Gators haven’t lost since December, ran the table in the SEC regular season and captured the conference championship with a 61-60 win over Kentucky on Sunday. Florida will face the winner of Albany and Mount St. Mary’s -- the Great Danes and Mountaineers will meet in the First Four in Dayton.

But just because the Gators are the top seed overall doesn’t mean they can coast into the Final Four. The South is a particularly tough region this year, also featuring No. 2 seed Kansas, No. 3 seed Syracuse and No. 4 seed UCLA. The Bruins, who could meet Florida in the Sweet 16, upset Arizona on Saturday night for the Pac-12 championship.

The Wildcats finished the regular season 28-3, running undefeated through their non-conference schedule and winning their first 21 games before an early February loss to Cal. The Wildcats only boasted one win in the regular season against a team that was ranked at the time, however -- a six-point neutral-site victory over Duke.

Here are the full West Region matchups:

The NCAA Tournament bracket has been released, and the University of Florida headlines the South Region as its No. 1 seed. The Gators were awarded the top seed after an impressive run to close out the season.

Florida finished 18-0 in SEC play, including two wins against Kentucky during the regular season, and won the 2014 SEC Tournament. The Gators finished 4-2 against ranked teams in the regular season, holding wins over Kansas and Memphis in non-conference play. The only losses for Billy Donovan’s team this season were to Wisconsin and UConn, and the Gators have won 26 straight games. Florida point guard Scottie Wilbekin was named the SEC Player of the Year, averaging 12.9 points and 3.9 assists per game.

Today is March 16, 2014, and that’s significant for a few reasons:

The Selection Sunday special is broadcast on CBS, but it will also be available to stream online at March Madness Live, either on your computer’s browser or on an app available for free download for your iOS, Android or Windows device.

The field of 68 will be unveiled on CBS’ Selection Sunday show at 6 p.m. ET. For those of you who are not able to be in front of a television on Sunday, CBS has decided to stream the bracket unveiling live on its website via March Madness Live. Fans can also watch the bracket release on the March Madness Live app, which is available for Apple, Android and Windows devices.

It was a wild year in college basketball, thanks in part to a couple of terrific seniors going out with a bang and emerging freshmen lighting up the highlight reels on a nightly basis. Florida ended the regular season with a 23-game winning streak and the top spot in the top-25. Arizona spent a school-record eight consecutive weeks atop the polls. And don’t forget Wichita State, which finished the season with a perfect 34-0 mark after winning the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament last week.

Although it has the stigma of being the place where the first losers head, the NIT provides a postseason home for those teams that the selection committee did not deem worthy enough to partake in the Big Dance. It’s also the perfect place to send a message to the selection committee that it made a mistake in leaving out certain teams. Baylor was snubbed by the committee last year and proved everyone wrong by becoming the NIT champion.

The NIT is also the people’s tournament. Teams that won their regular-season conference titles but lost out on the automatic bids in their conference tournaments get an automatic qualification into the NIT. After that, the committee fills out the remaining 32 spots with the best teams out there. The squads battle it out all the way to Madison Square Garden, where the NIT Champion will be crowned on April 3.

With just a few conference tournaments to be finished, the announcement of the field of 68 looms. And while most of the field has probably been determined by now, there’s just no way getting to that near-finished product has been easy.

Five name brand college basketball programs produced inconsistent results this season, and it’s given way to bracketologists speculating far more than in previous seasons, with arguments focused specifically on five teams.

I’ll have a bit more on Sunday’s action after today’s full bracket and rundown. ALL CAPS mean automatic qualifier, except for BYU and VCU.

Also considered: Missouri, Belmont, Toledo, Iona, N.C. State, Georgia, Clemson, Georgetown

Note: All RPI/SOS data is courtesy of Basketball State ($) and reflects only games played against Division I opponents through Saturday, March 15, 2014.

Vitals: 20-12, 11-7 SEC; RPI rank: 42; SOS rank: 18; Non-conf. SOS rank: 40

There might not be an unofficial holiday on the sports calendar that captivates the nation the way Selection Sunday does. Sure, the Super Bowl is a bigger deal because it’s the day that America crowns the champion of its most favorite sport (and because money money money), but college basketball’s big day demands just as much attention and generates nearly as much buzz, just for different reasons. It’s a very The Godfather-The Godfather Part II situation.

As glorious as the day the brackets are unveiled is, there remains one giant problem with it that should have been addressed years ago: the major conference championship games that everyone stops caring about the moment the first No. 1 seed is revealed.

Selection Sunday is upon us, and the season-long fight for the 32 automatic berths and 36 at-large bids will be settled by the time the selection committee finalizes its picks and hands them over to CBS to reveal to national television audience.

CBS’s selection show will last an hour. Greg Gumbel will anchor the broadcast as the host, joined by Clark Kellogg, Doug Gottlieb and Seth Davis. Ron Wellman, chairman of the selection committee, will also make an appearance. When the selection show ends, the coverage will shift to to TruTV—the channel you haven’t watched since last year’s tournament—for another hour of in-depth bracket analysis. The Selection Sunday on truTV will be hosted by Ernie Johnson. Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Gary Parrish will serve as analysts.