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Message: [QUOTE="oldude, post: 3084270, member: 7511"] I will take a bizarre and somewhat contrarian position here. The Committee & ESPN actually want UConn in the FF. They also want 2 marquee matchups: Baylor vs MS St & UConn vs ND. They can’t give UConn the overall #1 seed and a potential matchup with the easiest Elite 8 opponent, Iowa. If UConn had won at least one of their two road losses, it might have been a different story. The problem was what to do with MS St. If UConn is the last 1 seed, then MS St, a bad matchup for the Huskies, is the 2 seed in Albany. If MS St wins, they potentially still get MS St vs Baylor, but no ND - UConn. If UConn wins, then we have an even worse matchup for the Huskies in the semifinals vs Baylor. By sending MS St out west where they have a chance to beat an Oregon team that’s shown some vulnerability in the last month, they setup the potential matchups they and ESPN want in the FF, and they send Louisville to Albany, where they will be an underdog, assuming they get by a Scott Rueck coached OR St. As a reminder, the last time Jeff Walz brought in a heavily favored Louisville team to the Albany Regional, the Cardinals lost to mid-major Dayton. [/QUOTE]