Vic Bubas: The Ma
By HUBERT MIZELL St. Petersburg Times
Vic Bubas coached Duke into the Final Four (below) and now heads the NCAA Division I Basketball Committee.
In simple terms. Vic Bubas is chair of the committee that sends out invitations to the party. To this tumultuous party, the NCAA Division I basketball tournament, 64 are allowed through the front door, then the games begin. The number is shoutingly and tearfully bisected to 32 teams, then 16, then eight and four and two . . . until, on a high-voltage, high-fiving night in Lexington, there's but one.
Number One.
"After the automatic qualifiers have been identified, our job is to settle on the best, most-accomplished teams that are available," said Bubas, a former Final Four coach from Duke who chairs the nine-member NCAA Division I Basketball Committee.
Purge from mind any image that college basketball's Final 64 are voted upon in some smoke-infested, uproarious room where the politics are belly-deep. When Bubas and the committee are sequestered in a Kansas City hotel, the air is fresh, the mood almost as orderly as Roberts himself and the conference table neatly stacked with computer printouts and other research materials.
"The hairiest thing is picking the last six of 64 tournament teams," Bubas said. "We can get the first 50 schools in maybe half an hour. That's the easy part. The next eight can take another day. Then, for those final six teams, we could stay locked in that hotel room until July. At that stage, you're splitting hairs."
Members of the basketball committee are allowed to serve
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