Selection Sunday: Great teams lacking

"I think that's silly," Lunardi said. "I really don't know how else to say it, and that's no disrespect to the 13th team. . . . From a basketball standpoint, [expansion] is absolutely not necessary. No team that has a legitimate chance of being a national champion is excluded now. It's not like we need a bigger field to make the champion more legitimate.

"I hope they give it considerable thought. How great is it when a late regular-season game has so much meaning or a conference tournament game has so much meaning? To a large degree, that will be diluted if the most dramatic expansion plan goes into place."

Said Bilas: "It would be a huge mistake. We'll devalue the regular season. The unintended consequences are the scary thing. Right now, basketball for the masses is a two-month endeavor. Hard-core fans watch from the first dribble, casual fans after the Super Bowl. Why devalue the most interesting time of the year?"

Why indeed.

For this tournament, Kansas, Syracuse, and Kentucky will be the favorites, but someone else - like Michigan State - could sneak in there and take it.

"It's a short 40-minute window," Dunphy said. "If you're the underdog, you have a chance."

That's never been truer than now.

"The public has proven to be attracted to dynasties - the Yankees or North Carolina or, dare I say, Tiger Woods," Lunardi said. "The tournament in its early rounds gets its charm from upsets, and I think this year we might have a lot of them because there might not be a lot of difference between a 6 [seed] and an 11 [seed] in the first round."

As for that upset at the very end of the dance? Jennifer Hudson will sing "One Shining Moment," the first woman to sing CBS's college basketball anthem. Of course, whom she's singing about might be an even bigger upset.

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