Jerry Palm Quotations

The regular-season championship is going to mean something. Say Temple, Saint Joseph's or Xavier wins it, then that team plus George Washington could get in.

More than likely it's just for one week. They are not going to stay there long-term unless they get closer to USC in the human polls.

I'd be surprised. That's not typically what happens.

I would say their chances of making the NIT aren't good if they lose their first game.

Pitt still has some work to do. They are doing well in a pretty good league. They are in pretty good shape. They don't have a lot of good wins, but they also don't have any bad losses, either. They have good victories over Villanova and South Florida.

Votes like that hurt the credibility. Whether it's carelessness or ignorance, you can't have votes for Idaho. It only takes one guy voting for Idaho to ruin it for the rest of the 114.

The poll margin is enormous. Virginia Tech would have to be two spots ahead of Texas in the computers to get close. They need to hope those poll margins erode.

What it means is that you can't simply trust conference records to be a method of evaluating teams in the same conference. Everybody in that league will get a chance to play some good teams at some point, but not all 8-8's are the same.

This year, the conference is just better. They did what they had to do to earn national respect. They scheduled tough games and they won a lot of them. Even teams in the lower part of the conference, teams like Air Force, really improved their RPI.

Vanderbilt's got two Top-25 RPI wins, over Old Dominion and Western Kentucky. That's more than a lot of teams. But Arkansas is a bad loss. All the teams that have beaten Vanderbilt are pretty good except Arkansas.

USC is in the middle of a lull in the schedule. Texas is about to hit a lull.

Even if Ohio State is ahead this week, it's no more permanent than Southern Cal being ahead last week.

There's just a lot of mediocrity out there. It's going to be real tough year for the committee.

It would have been better for USC if Oklahoma had put up more of a fight.

I've seen they were in the poll and couldn't understand why. They haven't done anything special.

Texas played an opponent that is now 4-2. So that's going to help what has been a pretty weak strength of schedule so far.

Texas is a clear No. 2 this week -- and the foreseeable future, too -- as long as they maintain their big holds in the polls. They got to keep winning with style.

Tennessee is dropping like a rock. It's looking like whichever team ends up with the higher seed (UNC or Tennessee) will end up in Greensboro with Duke.

The more data you have, the better it is.

A win over Rutgers would have been a feather in their cap, but you can't have a loss to a team which you should beat.

Albany is a good candidate for that game as well. Also, the committee knows about everyone's injuries and those are a consideration.

You're already seeing signs that Virginia Tech is catching Texas.

You never want to be stuck in the middle, but I don't see them falling much further than that. They hurt themselves by losing two of their last three games, but their RPI is strong at 30 and they did a lot of great things this season.

They have a pretty nice collection of wins and no terrible losses. So if they take care of business, they could still be a No. 2 (seed), even if they don't beat Illinois.

There may not be any top 25 teams - but 26 through 40, six of them might be in that group. There's been an opportunity this year because of weaknesses in the major conferences, other than the Big East and Big Ten. It's just one of those things where all these (factors) came together at once.

They haven?t given a bid to a (team that finished) 3-7 in three years.

It's a paper-thin margin. It's irrelevant, because Virginia Tech is not going to catch Southern Cal and they have a faint hope of catching Texas. Virginia Tech isn't going to catch Southern Cal before they (the Trojans) catch Texas.

It's a nonevent. If you have to write 1,000 words on this, I feel for you.

It's all pretty much based on strength of schedule. Another thing you have to look at is all four of Pitt's losses have been on the road. In the new RPI formula, losing on the road is useful.

Don't be surprised if Virginia Tech is not only behind Texas but Georgia as well when the first release comes out.

The battle for number three is a lot closer than the battle for number two right now.

It worked out pretty well. We're going to get one of the most anticipated games in quite a while.

They are going to need to get higher in the polls than ninth or 10th, however that happens. Either teams ahead of them need to lose, or the pollsters would need to help them out.

They won't get much higher unless Memphis loses. It's hard to move up when you're already high. I don't see them moving past Duke, Connecticut or Villanova. They might have a chance to pass Memphis. It's harder to move at the end of the season.

The thing is, Texas is playing a decent opponent this week (No. 24 Colorado), and that will probably help Texas, at least this week. It would not surprise me if Texas fluctuates over the next few weeks.

Arizona in my bracket is a 10 seed because they haven't done anything against anybody who's worth a darn. Arizona might be a 16 RPI, but their tournament prospects aren't too good. Fortunately for them, their league stinks.

I'm kind of skeptical of that. They may not have the restriction, but it remains to be seen how many under-.500 teams start to show up in the tournament.

If Virginia Tech is the only one-loss team, then they make the Sugar Bowl. Otherwise, they don't.

If Virginia Tech ends up number one in all six computer polls, like Texas is now, and the Longhorns are number three in the computer polls, that would make up the current gap in the human polls. That's the best-case scenario for Virginia Tech. It's not like last year when Auburn was third in the human polls and third in the computer polls.

I think New Mexico has performed far too well to fall completely out, but the loss bumped them from about a six seed down to the middle of the bracket at eight or nine, where you're lucky to win one game, much less two.

The trouble with figuring out where New Mexico is going is that the women's selection committee's decisions are really tough to predict, and New Mexico has to fall in line behind BYU and Utah. Those teams have to get higher seeds and favorable draws close to home. New Mexico can't be in the same side of the bracket, so their destiny depends on how the selection committee views BYU and Utah.

The good thing for Pitt is that everyone will be taking on another loss in the last week of the season except for the conference champions.

The formula is out there. Anyone with a computer and too much time on their hands can do it.