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Jay Bilas describes NCAA Tournament as ‘fairest thing possible,’ shreds West Virginia’s attempted lawsuit
By Paul Harvey
Published:
Jay Bilas might have disagreed with North Carolina reaching March Madness, but ESPN’s longtime college basketball analyst doesn’t want to hear any complaining from those teams who didn’t make the cut.
When Selection Sunday rolled around, most of the country was stunned to see the Tar Heels make the cut as the final team into the NCAA Tournament bracket. Meanwhile, West Virginia was a team expected to be a lock on the bubble that found itself on the outside looking in.
Bilas reacted to the move on Monday and admitted he did not expect to see UNC make the cut. He still believes the Tar Heels did not stack enough quality wins in comparison to the other teams on the bubble.
“I was surprised to see North Carolina make it into the field as an at-large. I expected that they were going to be right there at the bubble… but I figured teams like Texas, or West Virginia, Ohio State or Indiana would at least go in first,” Bilas admitted. “Because North Carolina played a hellacious schedule, but they just didn’t win enough against it relative to the other teams that were at the end of the line.”
While Bilas conceded his surprise, he still believes the process of determining which teams make the field is the fairest thing possible. Every team enters its conference tournament with a “win-and-in” scenario, so there is little to complain about if you get left out.
“Every team in DI has the same opportunity to make the NCAA Tournament. It’s the fairest thing possible. All you have to do is win your automatic bid in your league, against your peers, with the teams you decided to be in a league with,” said Bilas. “And if you don’t do that, you go into the pool with everybody else.”
Beyond that, Bilas took aim at the West Virginia governor for trying to orchestrate action against the selection committee. He described the idea of a potential lawsuit as “really kind of silly” and said his message to the Mountaineers would be to just win more of your games on the schedule.
Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.
