SEC Tourney - Georgia's NCAA tourney chances

The only sure fire way Georgia gets in the tourney is to win the SEC tourney in Nashville.

But what if Georgia wins three, including South Carolina and Kentucky but loses to A&M in the championship? Then what?

For my money, we'll still be outside looking it, mainly due to mid-majors that dominated their conferences, and to some extent the big OOC games they had, but failed to win their conference tourney. I'm thinking Wichita State, St. Mary's, Monmouth, Valparaiso, St. Mary's, Hofstra.  At least two of these teams are in (Wichita State and St. Mary's, for my money). Would the selection committee pick one or more of these?

NCAA tourney is grading on curve, but without an objective test. The selection committee will pick 36 teams for at large spots to fill out the tourney after the 32 automatic bids are in. For argument sake, you can draw a line at RPI top 30 and say any team above that without an auto bid is in. That'll be around 23 teams. You are hoping conferences with multiple teams in that group are won by a team in that group. Let's say George Washington wins the A-10 tourney; that takes another spot away from the 12-13 that the 'bubble' teams are fighting for. After W-L records, the selection committee is making fine line distinctions about 30 teams to get to that 12-13 left.

Right now, Georgia probably isn't above the cut line for the 30 teams the committed is talking about.

All that is to say it is likely three wins at the SEC tourney probably isn't enough to get them into the NCAA tourney. Maybe...MAYBE...if we get Kentucky in the semi's and house them on national TV with the committee watching, we are in the at large discussion. The problem is our RPI is pretty low (71 right now), so there is only so much better we can get with just two wins. Making an SEC tourney run will help, though, as we'll have won six of seven (assuming we lose the championship).

We get the RPI to 50 and play A&M tough? We are still sweating out other conference tourneys and rooting for them to be won by the favorites. Play Texas A&M very tight in the championship, we could slip to the last four in and play as an 11 seed in Dayton next Tuesday.
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