NCAA tourney selection committee picks Georgia

Well, the pretend one at least.

Each year, a few weeks before the real tournament field is selected, the NCAA invites some media members to simulate the process of selecting the field. And over the past couple days that mock committee met in Indianapolis, and just completed its picks.

Georgia (17-8, with an RPI rank of 46) did indeed make the field, as one of the last four teams in. So there you go.

The mock committee is mainly put together so media members (this year it had guys like SI.com's Seth Davis, Andy Glockner and Andy Staples) can have a better understanding of the process. Each media member is assigned the role of a real committee member, and can’t vote for “their” teams, or teams from “their” leagues.

But since it follows the eventual process so closely, it’s also a useful tool to see where teams are at this point. And the above media members were kind enough to give us a blow-by-blow of the process via their tweets.

As the field was whittled down, Georgia was among the final 12 teams being voted on for six-to-eight spots (which depended on conference tournaments. The mock committee had mock Sunday scenarios too.)

Those final 12 at-large candidates: Baylor (16-8, RPI of 64), Boston College (16-9, 42), Butler (18-9, 45), Cincinnati (20-6, 47), Colorado State (17-7, 39), Florida State (18-7, 51), Georgia, Gonzaga (17-9, 68), Marquette (15-11, 66), Michigan State (13-11, 48), Utah State (23-3, 24) and Virgnia Tech (17-7, 57).

Notable teams that didn’t make the cut for the final vote included Alabama (17-8, 83), Richmond (20-7, 69), Clemson (17-9, 79) and Oklahoma State (16-9, 52).

From that first group, Georgia was voted in on the first ballot along with Butler, Cincinnati and Utah State. The next at-large spots went to Florida State and Gonzaga.

One mock committee member, Jerry Palm of CollegeRPI.com and CBSsports.com, tweeted late on Thursday night: “Say what you want about Georgia, at least it takes a good team to beat them.”

Palm pointed out that “SEC teams sure know how to stink it up once in awhile,” citing that Alabama has lost to four teams ranked below the RPI top 100, Tennessee and Florida have three each of those too, and Vanderbilt has two.

Georgia, meanwhile, has lost all eight games to teams in the top 50. But it’s only beaten two teams in the top 50.

Still for what it’s worth, at this point in time Georgia’s lack of bad losses was impressive enough to make the field … sort of.