Sports: Pac12 and March Madness

It is a down year for the Pac12.

The question on the minds of Pac12 fans (and in my case a UCLA fan) is how many teams the Pac12 will get into the tournament?

As of today, Lunardi has three teams in:  Stanford as a 9 seed, California as an 11 and Colorado a 14.  Lunardi has Colorado in only because it is currently atop the Pac12.  If that were not the case, I think he would only have two Pac12 teams in.  However, he has Arizona sitting in the first four out group; thus, Arizona could get in under the right circumstances bringing the Pac12 invites back up to three.

The winner of the Pac12 tournament automatically gets into March Madness.  

I would guess that if the Pac12 tournament winner is not the regular season champion, the regular season champion would get in as an at-large.  This would be the best path for UCLA.  I suspecting for UCLA to finish number two in the regular season and lose in the Pac12 tournament might be risky unless the loss is in the Pac12 championship game against the #1 seed.  UCLA has no quality wins in its out-of-conference record and two terrible losses (LMU, MTSU).  Thus, UCLA needs a dominant performance within the Pac12 to have a shot at an at-large if they don't win outright.

The worst case scenario for the Pac12 is if the regular season champion has five or six losses and loses in an early round in the Pac12 tournament.  If this is the case, could the selection committee opt to take only one Pac12 team?

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