I’d say don’t look now, but if you do you’ll be surprised by what you see. Three weeks from now the men’s NCAA basketball tournament will be underway. A week from tomorrow conference tournaments tip off, America East getting both it’s men’s and women’s tournaments underway at the University of Hartford, the women’s Big East Tournament starting a day later, the Big East men getting underway five days after that. In six weeks it will all be over. I’m convinced the speed with which it sneaked up on us has to do with the weather. You can’t have a long winter without having winter. We’ve been in spring mode for the entire season and suddenly it’s not too soon to examine the process that will seed the big dance. and there are some interesting twists. As was detailed last week, the newest twist has the ten member men’s selection committee, headed by former UConn Athletic Director Jeff Hathaway, publicly posting all the information that will go into their choices and seedings. Perhaps the greatest misinterpretation comes with the RPI, the ranking of a team’s strength of schedule. “It is a factor”, Hathaway said last night, “But not as big a factor as people think.” Another new wrinkle is the assessment of the way teams are playing heading into the tournament. “The last ten games used to be a criteria”, Hathaway confirmed, “Then it became the last twelve games, but they are no longer criteria, though it would be difficult for commmittee members not to take them into consideration. Trends are more important”, he added, “If a team had a six game winning streak, then lost six games, then won six, it’s important to analyze the factors that went into each streak and how those factors may affect a team at selection time.” While unhappy fans will always argue their teams were unfairly left out due to favoritism, the committee takes great pride in it’s objectivity when it goes behind closed doors, so much so that they don’t always stay behind those doors. Any committee member who has a seated position with a conference cannot be part of the discussion concerning a member of that conference. Hathaway, for instance, as a paid consultant with the Big East, will not be involved in the selection and seeding of Big East schools. Athletic directors are recused from discussions concerning their schools and any committee member who feels a particular favoritism toward an institution they are not connected with may voluntarily recuse himself from the discussion. In each case the recused party actually leaves the room. “The percentages are remarkably consistent”, said Hathaway, explaining that the numbers voting on each seeded team, even with members out of the room, show very little variance. The responsibility of his position isn’t lost on Jeff Hathaway, to the point of tinkering with the process for the sake of public information, but as much as he defends the fairness of that process he’s quick to paraphrase our 16th president. “You can’t please all the people, all the time.” In three weeks he’ll know just how true that is as the pundits and fans have their way with his brackets. With a comment from the sports world, I’m Scott Gray.