The rule is in there for a purpose and that's to avoid inciting the crowd. I don't know if it was done purposely or if it was just somebody who was not aware of the rules or did not apply them properly.

There's still several games and in some cases several weeks yet to go plus conference tournaments so the evaluation process is not anywhere near to being completed. If there is a message to be relayed today, it's that it is still too early to say what will happen.

It's only a coincidence that they happen to be from one conference. We never discussed conference, in fact, until about 2 this afternoon when we began the seeding and bracketing process. I would not have been able to tell you how many from this conference or that conference were in the field at that point in time.

On a personal level, I've known Jon since his days back in the '80s as a staff member of the ACC. He's a guy who listens, processes information and then, I think, makes very good judgments in terms of the things we may be discussing at a particular point in time.

After the automatic qualifiers are named, conference affiliation really plays no part of the process. To look at it in terms of the Missouri Valley being comparable with any other league, we don't look at it in terms of that. We look at what each and every school has done.

If a situation is tight, if we're comparing six to eight teams, and two of those six to eight teams have put together a schedule with rigor, and they've been balanced in terms of playing games both home and away from home, the tiebreaker in that kind of situation is going to go with the teams that have scheduled and have challenged themselves.