Mark Dixon on the NCAA Tournament Field

The Baltimore Sun's Faceoff Blog caught up with Mark Dixon to get his thoughts on the tournament field. I thought this part was interesting:

Does Loyola deserve to be in? Yes. Do they deserve to be in more than Brown and Maryland? Some people might say maybe, but I don’t think anybody’s screaming bloody murder that Brown and Maryland are the two teams selected and Loyola wasn’t. I think people feel bad for Loyola and would have liked to see them play for the reasons I stated, but I don’t think it’s an egregious omission. I think it speaks more to a need for a more established criteria. Is it strength of schedule? Is it RPI? Is it quality wins? It can’t be what is seemingly arbitrary. In 2006, Harvard got in based on SOS and RPI, and Georgetown was left out last year due to SOS and RPI. So I think there needs to be a hard and fast criteria, two or three benchmarks. It can’t be a sliding scale.

Dixon also comments on who has the tougher and easier draws. The whole article is available here.