It’s our third season of running the Bracket Nonsense pool and we’re hoping to see every single one of our Twitter followers in this year’s contest.  Here’s the relevant sign-up information.

Name:  RTC 2011 Bracket Nonsense
Group ID#:  65846 (there is no password)

We always try to tie in our prizes to the location of the Final Four — you certainly recall that two years ago in Detroit we offered an American-made jalopy, and last year in Indianapolis the prize was a Hickory High letter jacket (word to Howard Hochman) — but other than oil, it’s not so easy to come up with a basketball-oriented prize associated with the great city of Houston, Texas.  So we got creative and decided to honor the venue by harking back to one of the more creative nicknames for a team that the sport has ever seen.

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Zach Hayes is RTC’s official bracketologist.

UPDATED: Sunday, 4:10 PM ET.

First 4 Byes: Illinois, Colorado, Penn State, Michigan.

Last Four In: Clemson, Virginia Tech, Alabama, Georgia.

First Four Out: Saint Mary’s, Southern California, Boston College, VCU.

S-Curve (italics indicate automatic bids)

• 1 Seeds: Kansas, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh
  
• 2 Seeds: Duke, San Diego State, North Carolina, Connecticut
  
• 3 Seeds: Florida, Texas, Louisville, Kentucky
• 4 Seeds: BYU, Purdue, Syracuse, Wisconsin
• 5 Seeds: St. John’s, West Virginia, Arizona, Vanderbilt
  
• 6 Seeds: Texas A&M, Kansas State, Cincinnati, Xavier
• 7 Seeds: Georgetown, Old Dominion, Missouri, Washington
  
• 8 Seeds: Utah State, Temple, George Mason, Tennessee
  
• 9 Seeds: UCLA, UNLV, Richmond, Gonzaga
  
• 10 Seeds: Florida State, Marquette, Villanova, Butler
• 11 Seeds: Michigan State, Illinois, Colorado, Penn State
• 12 Seeds: Memphis, Michigan, Clemson, Virginia Tech, Alabama, Georgia
  
• 13 Seeds: Belmont, Princeton, Oakland, Indiana State
  
• 14 Seeds: Bucknell, Morehead State, Wofford, Long Island
  
• 15 Seeds: Akron, Northern Colorado, St. Peter’s, Boston University
  
• 16 Seeds: UC-Santa Barbara, UNC-Asheville, Hampton, Arkansas Little-Rock, UT-San Antonio, Alabama State

• Despite Duke’s ACC Tournament title, in a head-to-head resume comparison with either Pittsburgh or Notre Dame, the Big East duo prevails. Two of Duke’s wins over NCAA Tournament teams came with Kyrie Irving. Duke has substantially less RPI top-25 and top-50 wins and their best road victory on the season is Maryland. Pittsburgh and Notre Dame finished 1-2 in the best conference in recent memory. I could see Duke get the final #1 just as they did last year over a Big East team (West Virginia), but if they do it’s the second straight year it’s undeserved.
• Kentucky moves up to a #3 seed with their SEC Tournament win. They’re playing at a very high level and the committee will have noticed, thrashing both Alabama and Florida. The Gators remain as a #3 seed with their commendable body of work.
• Richmond moves up to a #9 seed with their Atlantic 10 Tournament win. No bid stealer today. Georgia is my last team in the field.
• I have a hunch that St. Mary’s will sneak in over one of the ACC or SEC teams, but I can’t include them purely based on a feeling. Frankly, there’s no argument for St. Mary’s over Georgia. The only argument to leave Alabama out is their horrid non-conference. St. Mary’s has one win over the RPI top-50 and it came in November. That doesn’t cut it.
• Kansas is my #1 overall seed. It doesn’t really matter. They’ll go to the San Antonio region while Ohio State goes to Newark regardless.

Game #220: The eyes of the college basketball world are on Indianapolis for other reasons, today. But first, there’s the small matter of the Big Ten Tournament title game.

Here’s the biggest reason why this will be an interesting one: Ohio State knows its status. It’s not just a 1-seed. It’s the 1-seed. Even a loss here won’t change that. They’re playing for the right to print t-shirts, cut nets, and to take home that big brass and wood trophy sitting about 30 feet from where I type this. Penn State is playing for all of that, and maybe even their Tournament existence. Can the Buckeyes avoid playing this game without one eye focused on a bracket that’s being pieced together mere minutes from here? You know where the Nittany Lions’ focus is. Join us just before 3:30 PM ET as we see how it plays out.

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Game #219.  The top two programs in the SEC meet on Sunday afternoon with a championship on the line.

In yesterday’s semifinal matchup with Vanderbilt, Florida guards Kenny Boynton and Erving Walker took over in the second half to recover from a 12-point deficit.  The two guards shot a combined 8-15 from behind the arc, an uncharacteristic number from a pair that often struggles from three.  The team as a whole shot 11-21 from three.  The Gators had to make a second consecutive second half comeback to get the win.  Kentucky on the other hand easily cruised past SEC West leader Alabama, leading at one point by as many as many as 26.  Kentucky Coach Calipari shrugged the performance off as one of those days where you just can’t go wrong saying, “We’d have smacked anybody the way we played today.”  He also expressed his displeasure with Kentucky’s seven turnovers saying that only having seven turnovers is a sign his team isn’t playing fast enough.  Not a lot of coaches out there demanding more turnovers.

Today in the SEC Championship we have the two best teams in the league.  They split wins during the season with the home team winning each time.  These two programs have learned a special disgust for each other.  Yesterday during the Florida/Vanderbilt game a picture of Joakim Noah was displayed on the giant screen as the SEC Tournament stars were honored.  That picture caused loud boos from the many Kentucky fans in attendance, so many that they drowned out the Florida cheers.  This should be an exciting matchup.  Kentucky wins it 71-68.

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Game #217.  These two teams have played once or twice before, right?  RTC Live will experience its first such battle.

Isn’t this the matchup that everyone really wanted deep down? Carolina and Duke, bitterest rivals, settling their split series in the conference finals. The Coliseum is going to be packed and it is going to be loud. Duke, despite the thumping they took in Chapel Hill, is still the better team on paper. Despite Jimmer and Kemba’s masterwork performances, Nolan Smith isn’t done making his case as the best player in college basketball. Yet a surging and emergent Harrison Barnes spell trouble for this Duke team. Carolina is playing like they believe they can’t lose and, given the finishes in their other tournament games, who can blame them? Singler may be the deciding factor. Duke doesn’t need a great game from him to win games, as they showed today against Virginia Tech, but it sure helps. Singler has struggled against the defense of Barnes and John Henson, both possessing the speed and length to match up effectively. Carolina has established itself as the better team on defense, but Duke is no slouch on defense and throughout this season, their offense has been consistently better. Duke wants to prove that they deserve a number one seed, and North Carolina wants to go from being a “dark horse” Final Four pick to an acknowledged member of this year’s most elite teams. Of course this is Duke and Carolina: There may be other stakes, but this games is about pride. For the rest of us, it’s one last scintillating spectacle before the Big Dance starts.

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Game #218.  Dayton could play bubble buster for any of a number of teams across the country, making this one of the more important games of Selection Sunday.

Two days of great basketball concludes this afternoon as two “sort of Cinderellas”, Dayton (22-12) and Richmond (26-7), go head-to-head for the Atlantic 10 Championship at 1:00 pm in Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, NJ. Cinderella may seem like a strange label – combined they have 48 wins and over 4,400 points scored over 60+ games this season, but both the #1 and #2 seeds in the tournament are gone, and the two teams left standing took them down. Dayton eliminated #1 seed Xavier 68-67, on Friday afternoon, and Richmond broke Temple’s 10 game Boardwalk Hall winning streak, 58-54, on Saturday. Dayton Coach Brian Gregory may use nine or ten players in his normal rotation, but expect to see All-Conference players Chris Wright and Chris Johnson for at least 33 minutes. Richmond Coach Chris Mooney, whose Spiders beat the Flyers 70-61 in Dayton in the team’s only meeting of 2011 will counter with seniors Kevin Anderson and Justin Harper and a supporting cast as solid and deep as Dayton. Join RTC Live at 1:00 pm in the Boardwalk Hall for the Atlantic 10 Conference Championship game.

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RTC is pleased to announce that we’ll be covering all of the major conference tournaments this year — the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, and SEC — in addition to the strongest two high-middies, the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West.  Each day for the rest of this week, we’re asking our correspondents to provide us with a Daily Diary of the sights and sounds from the arena at each site.  Equal parts game analysis and opinion, the hope is that this will go beyond the tiresome game recaps you can find elsewhere and give you an insightful look into Championship Week.  Yesterday’s coverage:  ACC, Atlantic 10, Big East (pending), Big 12, Big Ten, Mountain West,  Pac-10 & SEC.

ACC Tournament – by Kellen Carpenter

• Despite a collective freak-out Nolan Smith is obviously fine. He torched Virginia Tech en route to a 27-point performance. He played 39 minutes and didn’t limp. After the game he said that he had woken up and felt pretty good, was given a shot for the pain and that was that. Smith also basically admitted that there was no injury that was going to stop him from playing the last, precious few games of his college career. Bold words.
• There were other bold words that came from a raucous Coliseum crowd. An insistent six year-old Duke fan had one message and one message alone for Virginia Tech’s star whenever he went to the free throw line: “Delaney! Give me your money! Give me your money!” A Hokies fan, noting that an inordinate amount of time seemed to be taken up wiping the floor, was adamant in his commands to the Plumlee frontcourt: “Stop peeing on the floor, Plumlee!” This apparently applied to both. The winner of the impromptu ACC semifinals heckling contest, however, was an older Clemson fan. For some reason that I do not know, this fan spent the entire game heckling. He didn’t heckle the Tar Heels and he didn’t heckle the referees as a group, but rather singled out referee Les Jones. For forty solid minutes, he yelled at “Leslie” about every single thing. It was weird and oddly masterful. Kudos to you, demented stranger.
• The Tar Heels sent out a mixed message. Dexter Strickland joked on Twitter this afternoon that they were calling his team “The Comeback Kids,” after UNC turned yet another double digit deficit into an overtime win. Kendall Marshall, who played forty minutes, simplyannounced, “I’m tired.” Harrison Barnes didn’t tweet anything, because he is too cool for Twitter.
• Harrison Barnes, in the best individual performance of the tournament, hung 40 points on the Tigers. That’s impressive enough, but the really impressive part is how he did it. He scored his 40 on a mere 17 shots. He made 6 of 8 three-pointers and 10 of 11 free throws. He had 8 rebounds, four of which were offensive boards. When you play like that, you are, factually, too cool for Twitter. Carolina fans will lift a drink to play that speaks for itself.
• After both games were finished, the buzz around the Coliseum was palpable. It’s been ten years since Duke and North Carolina have met in the ACC finals, and the town, as a whole, seems legitimately excited about it. A rubber match to the split series is something that everyone involved with both teams’ desires. With a number one seed potentially at stake, and a not insignificant amount of pride, both seem poised to deliver a memorable showdown. Given North Carolina’s apparent propensity for dramatic tournament finishes, the chances of a great game happening seem awfully high.
• While the rivals exult, Virginia Tech and Clemson fret. Both improved their NCAA stock, but neither was able to seal their destiny with a signature win. There is a degree of optimism for both teams and Seth Greenberg joked that he wasn’t going to sleep because he was so excited about the Hokies chances. A solemn Malcolm Delaney just shook his head and firmly disagreed: After all that had happened over his four years at Virginia Tech, he going to expect the worst and wasn’t going to believe it until he heard it himself. While I’m hopeful for Virginia Tech’s chances, I’m with tough and wise Delaney on this one. That said, I wish him the best. That kid is too tough and too good to never make it to the Big Dance.

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***** – quit your job and divorce your wife if that’s what it takes to watch this game live
**** – best watched live, but if you must, tivo and watch it tonight as soon as you get home
*** – set your tivo but make sure you watch it later
** – set your tivo but we’ll forgive you if it stays in the queue until 2013
* – don’t waste bandwidth (yours or the tivo’s) of any kind on this game

Brian Otskey is an RTC contributor.

We finally made it. It’s Selection Sunday and one of the best Championship Weeks ever played concludes today. I’d like to thank any reader out there who has read even just one of these daily features this season. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe even learned something you didn’t know about a team(s) from following Set Your Tivo. All rankings from RTC and all times Eastern.

ACC Championship (at Greensboro, NC): #5 Duke vs. #6 North Carolina – 1 pm on ESPN (*****)

Barnes and the Heels Could Snag a 1-Seed Later Today With a Win

The greatest rivalry in college basketball for the third time this year on the last day of the season? Sign me up. In an ACC year full of mediocrity, the two top dogs stepped up and have successfully found their way to the title game today. As you know, these teams split the regular season series with each winning on their home floor. The rubber match will be in Greensboro today, about an hour west of each campus and right in the heart of Tobacco Road.

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Around this time of year we like to yield the soapbox to representatives of bubble teams and give them the opportunity to explain to the hooping nation why their team should be granted admission into the NCAA Tournament. We encourage them to be as irrational and nonpartisan as they want. As always, feel free to tell us how you think they did in the comments section. If you’d like to make the case for your school, send us an e-mail at JStevRTC@gmail.com and we’ll hear your preliminary arguments.

Joe Stapleton of The Michigan Daily now makes the case for the Michigan Wolverines.

So, this is an interesting place we Wolverines find ourselves. In January, Michigan lost to Minnesota at home — badly — after dropping two ugly road losses in a row against Indiana and Northwestern. It appeared the team was dead in the water. It seemed this season would go how the majority of Wolverine nation thought it would from the beginning, given the team’s youth and inexperience: not very well. The idea that they would win their next game — Michigan State in East Lansing — was laughable.

Then they did it. They downed the Spartans and absolutely took off. After beating Michigan State at the Breslin Center, the Wolverines won eight of their last 11 games (their only losses being at Ohio State, at Illinois and Wisconsin at home) to enter the Big Ten Tournament as one of the hottest teams in the field.

Do Beilein's Boys Deserve a Spot?

And as it stands now, the Big Ten Tournament appears to offer them a golden chance to make the NCAA Tournament field of 68. After poring over projections from Crashing the Dance, Bracketology 101, Joe Lunardi and all the rest, it appears there is a consensus: if Michigan would have lost its first-round game to Illinois, it still would have been 50-50 (bordering on unlikely) that the Wolverines made the Tournament. If they beat the Illini, they’re in. They beat the Illini.

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Throughout conference tournament weekend, we’re going to pop in with some BGTD-style analysis at least twice a day.  If you are interested in the action earlier today check out our afternoon post.

• 5 for 5. The UConn Huskies capped off a historic run winning their fifth game in five nights with the last four coming against ranked teams in scintillating fashion knocking off a game Louisville team. Led by another solid performance by Kemba Walker who was nothing short of sensational the past week in Madison Square Garden the Huskies likely played themselves into a #3 seed and a favorable regional placement. While Jim Calhoun may be dealing with some significant professional struggles he has a team that is capable of making a run deep into the NCAA Tournament behind a solid, but inexperienced group of role players and a superstar in Walker. On the other side the Cardinals are probably looking at a #3 or #4 seed as well and Rick Pitino should be looking forward to making a push towards Houston.
• The Aztecs stand up to Jimmer. The closing moments of the Mountain West Conference final will be remembered for Kawhi Leonard jawing at Jimmer Fredette, but in reality the Aztecs had been making a statement to the Cougars for the previous 40 minutes. In avenging their two losses to BYU (the only two blemishes on their resume this season) San Diego State showed signs of a being a team that could make a run to the Final Four. While Fredette still got his 30, the Aztecs dominated the Brandon Davies-less Cougars on the inside outscoring them 38-14 thanks to big games out of Billy White and Leonard. The Aztecs and Cougars are likely headed toward the 2 and 3 lines respectively, but the two teams appear to be headed in opposite directions as the Aztecs have few glaring holes and Cougars still have a big one in the middle.

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