PROVO — With Selection Sunday just days away, BYU, which fell to Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference tournament championship game, is one of the most intriguing teams perched on the NCAA tournament bubble.
It just so happens that BYU’s athletic director, Tom Holmoe, is in his first year on the NCAA tournament selection committee. Of course, Holmoe can’t be in the room when the Cougars are being discussed, nor can he campaign for his team.
Holmoe is one of 10 members of the selection committee, along with committee chairman Scott Barnes, the athletic director at Utah State.
The selection committee convened in Indianapolis on Tuesday to begin the selection process. From Tuesday through Sunday, the 10 committee members watch games, evaluate teams and debate amongst themselves as they work to select and seed teams as part of the bracketing process.
The 68-team tournament field will be released Sunday (4 p.m. MT) on CBS.
As a committee member, Holmoe replaced former West Coast Conference commissioner Jamie Zaninovich, who took a job with the Pac-12 last year. Holmoe will serve the final two years of Zaninovich’s five-year term.
Last month, Holmoe met with reporters and talked about his role on the selection committee.
“I’m one of three rookies. I don’t have all the answers, for sure. I’m going into this with one year of real intensive training,” Holmoe said. “They do a great job training the new members. We’re trained by the staff and the existing members. There’s some — I call them ‘hoopologists’ — on the committee. The staff is incredible. But the committee members, there’s a few people who really know their basketball and they really understand the NCAA basketball tournament as well as anybody I’ve ever talked to. I’ve been watching them.”
The committee met in November to prepare for the basketball season. Each committee member, except for the chair, has about seven conferences they monitor throughout the year. In January, the committee met again to discuss their opinions on the conferences they are monitoring. In mid-February, the committee went through a mock selection process, preparing it for Selection Sunday.
The other members of the 10-member selection committee are Louisiana State AD Joe Alleva; Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione; North Carolina-Asheville AD Janet Cone; Michigan State AD Mark Hollis; Conference USA commissioner Judy MacLeod; Stanford AD Bernard Muir; Creighton AD Bruce Rasmussen; and Northeastern AD Peter Roby.
What factors will Holmoe weigh most heavily as he goes through this process?He offered some insight into the way he views the job of bracketing the NCAA tournament.
“Going into this first year, I see all these formulas, and I know all the criteria, and I’m watching the teams,” Holmoe said. “I’m going to have my votes. It’s important to me. I’m not just going to tag along. I might change in the future, but for the time being, I’ve looked at more basketball this year than I have the previous ten years. Not that I haven’t paid attention, but I’ve really watched a lot of basketball. I’ve followed the lead of the other nine members. RPI is an important piece of information of research and statistical analysis that people look at. Each member, they don’t tell us how much we have to weigh every one of these pieces of criteria. For me — I can only answer for myself — it’s something that I look at. But amongst a lot of other statistics and my opportunity to watch the games.
“We went through this mock selection and they asked me, ‘Okay, Tom, talk about your conferences,’” Holmoe continued. “I’m not going to start dropping RPI, because everybody has that. What I can contribute to that committee is my feeling and my opinion about those basketball teams, the coaches and players. I love the film work. I love watching the games and analyzing the actual players. There is no statistical analysis that tells you how players are going to play other than averages per game. The thing that probably inspires me the most is big-time players and just the intangibles. There’s no stat for that. It will be interesting in the room this year how my one-out-of-10 vote fits.”