With Selection Sunday having come and gone, the reaction to the 2011 NCAA selection committee's bracket is far from positive.
It's not hard to understand why, eiher. With mid-major teams like UAB and VCU beating out teams like Virginia Tech and Boston College, many are struggling to understand the thought process that went into these decisions. Especially in the case of Virginia Tech, it's hard to see what in either team's resume could outweigh the Hokies' win over a top-ranked Duke team just two weeks before the selections.
Perhaps, then, it's no surprise that Hokies coach Seth Greenberg was one of the most outspoken critics of the selection. Suggesting that Virginia Tech may have been the victim of internal politics, Greenberg's comments border on the paranoid:
You almost wonder if someone in that room has their own agenda and that agenda doesn't include Virginia Tech. Just plain and simple. I totally wonder it, if someone in that room has an agenda.
While ultimately future selections will come down to results--as this one likely did, in however convoluted a manner--if Virginia Tech should find themselves riding the bubble again, it's hard to see Greenberg having helped their chances. If there weren't any agendas in the room before, his comments may well have made some.
Perhaps it's because he's in his first year as the Eagles' coach, or simply because he thinks his team's resume is weaker than the Hokies', but for whatever reason, Boston College's Steve Donahue was more muted on the subject.
We're not angry. I told the guys before practice today that we've accomplished a great deal and we have a huge opportunity to continue to make great strides this year and, in the short run, to get away from the feeling we have in our stomachs about how poorly we played our last game.
That last game, a 70-47 thrashing at the hands of Clemson, already had many convinced that BC's chances to make the Big Dance were slim at best.
Still, with neither the coaches, nor the teams, nor the fans entirely happy with the selections, coach Greenberg's call for transparency may be worth thinking about:
Probably another reason they need to open up that room, or at least give each and every school, ‘This is our criteria. This is what it's going to be every year, and this is how we're going to make choices
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