Projecting the NCAA Tournament field

It’s that time of the year. There are 34 days until Selection Sunday, which is slightly more… It’s that time of the year. There are 34 days until Selection Sunday, which is slightly more important in my date book than Christmas and my birthday.

With each February comes attempts to master the perfect bracket. This effort, the study of brackets and the NCAA Tournament, is called “Bracketology.”

Any big basketball fan reads ESPN.com’s Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology or CBS Sportsline’s version of the bracket.

Either way, it’s a fun way to start debate over which teams deserve higher or lower seeds and which teams do or do not deserve to even be in the NCAA Tournament field.

There are 65 slots available in the Tournament field. Thirty-one of those bids go to conference champions. These teams earned automatic bids by winning their conference tournament or, in the Ivy League’s case, winning the regular season.

The other 34 spots are awarded to teams with quality overall and conference records, impressive or respectable road and neutral site records, quality results against the Top 25, a decent or strong strength of schedule and a decent or impressive RPI ranking.

The RPI, which is college basketball’s answer to college football’s BCS rankings without so much clout, uses all of the aforementioned factors and more to tabulate a computer-based percentage.

The formula to find a team’s RPI includes three main pieces: The team’s winning percentage, the team’s opponents’ winning percentage and the winning percentage of the opponents’ opponents.

This umbrella includes most of the things considered part of a team’s NCAA Tournament resume.

Where they’ll play

There are eight sites for the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament. They are Little Rock, Ark., Anaheim, Calif., Denver, Colo., Omaha, Neb., Washington, D.C., Birmingham, Ala., Raleigh, N.C., and Tampa, Fla.

Regional semifinals and finals will be played in Houston, Tex., Charlotte, N.C., Detroit, Mich., and Phoenix, Ariz.

The Final Four and national championship will be played in San Antonio, Texas.

There are 32 first-round games. The NCAA pairs up four teams and, based on the highest seed in that pairing, sends them to the closest site for those rounds.

For example, in this Bracketology, Memphis is a No. 1 seed.

The Tigers’ Memphis, Tenn., campus is closest to Little Rock, so they would travel to play in Little Rock. The No. 8 and No. 9 seeds, whose winner is slated to play Memphis in the second round, plays in Little Rock, too.

The assignments to stadiums are given to the top 16 teams in the Tournament, a.k.a. the No. 1 through No. 4 seeds.

What influenced your choices?

I looked for teams that played tough nonconference schedules that included games on the road or at neutral sites against relatively difficult teams.

Pitt’s games at Dayton, Duquesne and Washington, along with the huge win at the Madison Square Garden against Duke, which is my overall second-best team in the Tournament, meant a lot.

Obviously, the conference in which a team plays also is a key factor.

An 8-8 record in the ACC means a lot more than an 8-8 record in the America East.

The 18-game slates in the Pacific-10 and Big East are the hardest conference schedules in the country.

The ACC is close behind, with the Big 12 fourth, the Big Ten fifth and the SEC sixth.

The Atlantic 10 is the seventh-best conference in the nation, while the Mountain West, Missouri Valley, Colonial Athletic and West Coast conferences follow suit.

Conference difficulty prevented Houston, from the Conference USA, and Western Kentucky (Sun Belt) from making my field.

So who just snuck in?

Mississippi State, Oregon, Maryland and Saint Joseph’s were the last four to make it into the field.

Mississippi State is No. 52 in RPI and has the No. 55 strength of schedule, but the Bulldogs are 7-2 in the SEC, 7-4 in road or neutral site games and have a win against Mississippi.

Oregon has won several key road games, including at Kansas State, Arizona and California.

The Ducks also defeated Stanford at home, and were competitive against UCLA, USC and Washington State. The Pac-10 is the toughest conference around, and Oregon’s 5-6 record helped.

Despite some questionable losses in its nonconference schedule – Ohio and American at home – Maryland has wins at North Carolina and at Charlotte.

The Terrapins are 6-3 in the ACC, and their No. 23-ranked strength of schedule helped a ton.

Saint Joseph’s is 6-3 in a new and improved A-10, and the Hawks have important wins against Massachusetts and Villanova.

The 9-4 record on the road or at neutral sites helped, too.

Who just missed out?

North Carolina State, George Mason and Houston were the three teams I barely kept out.

NC State’s best win is against Miami (Fla.), a team that has struggled mightily of late. The Wolf Pack are 5-6 on the road or at neutral sites, and 4-5 in the ACC.

George Mason has big wins against Dayton and Kansas State, but four losses in the Colonial Athletic Association are not helping.

Plus, the Patriots have the No. 123 strength of schedule.

Houston is in a similar boat.

The Cougars missed out on chances for big wins against Arizona, Massachusetts, Memphis and VCU. Also, a win at Kentucky could mean more if the Wildcats keep improving.

And Pitt is