In-season rankings possible from selection committee

[skyscraper]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nc ... /19277795/

The Division I men's basketball committee is paying attention.

That committee, which is tasked with selecting, seeding and bracketing the 68-team NCAA tournament, doesn't reveal a bracket prior to Selection Sunday.

But after seeing the way the Playoff rankings are being received, the hoops committee is considering unveiling some early information of its own. The basketball committee met here last week primarily to select sites for future tournaments, but the topic of early looks at potential seeds also came up.

"We did talk about it and certainly have been monitoring what the football committee has been doing," Dan Gavitt, the NCAA vice president of men's basketball championships, told USA TODAY Sports. "Even going back to last year, before football started doing what they're doing, we had some ideas of possibly taking more steps with what I think has been a real good effort over the years in transparency in the process — additional things we could do in that regard, but also possibly take advantage, as the football committee has, of the promotional/marketing value of that as well.

"It's tricky because you've got to make sure to balance those two things. There's the integrity of the process that needs to be maintained."

Gavitt said, if the men's basketball committee were to release information ahead of Selection Sunday, it would not be a full bracket.

"There was some discussion of four (one seeds) or sixteen (total seeds), the top four seeds in the four regions," he said. "The way the committee left it was, we'll discuss it again (at meetings) in January. There wasn't enough time to fully vet it. But I'd say there's certainly some consideration being given to it."

[SMU 86]

That would be good to see where teams stand at that point in the season.