A few open tabs I needed to clear off my browser.

One of the better possible explanations for the way the NCAA Selection Committee seeded things:

Lots of people are saying the NCAA Tournament selection committee made major mistakes in seeding the tourney. But give the committee members some credit. They’re by no means stupid. It’s all a clever ruse concocted to make some money. Think about it — they’re going to clean up in their office pools. When everyone else is going with chalk, the committee members will have a No. 2 seed like Tennessee or maybe even UCLA going out early in their brackets, while they advance teams that were given undeservedly low seeds, such as No. 5 Pitt and No. 7 Georgetown. So, you see, they’re just trying to win a few hundred bucks in their office pools. That, or they have absolutely zero knowledge of college basketball. It’s one or the other.

Sounds about right.

Actually I’m sticking by my theory that Pitt got jammed into a 5 seed because they didn’t have a good fit to place Pitt in the 3 or 4 seed locations that wouldn’t result in a potential/likely early round match with another Big East team. This tidbit seems to lend some credence:

The team that seemed to move the most around the board was Pitt, which settled at No. 5 in the Oakland region.

Now I know many of you have seen the SI.com Oakland bracket preview that called Pitt “overrated” and the “media darling.” Outside of some love from Michael Wilbon in the Washington Post, there wasn’t that much in most early previews I had seen. I started seeing some eyeing Pitt for the 5-12 upset.

This evening, my worst fears were confirmed. On ESPN’s “Around the Horn,” Michael Smith and (shudder) Jay Mariotti both tabbed Pitt for the Final Four. Talk about a kiss of death. If there was any consolation, it was that all 4 of the yappers picked BC.