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I didn't quite follow Rick Pitino's argument against his matchup with Manhattan, stated below:

"I think the pairings sometimes lack common sense," Pitino told ESPN. "I don't think they would put somewhere down the road Duke-North Carolina so ... the matchups don't make sense to me. I'm OK with the seedings. I'm not OK with the matchups."

As evidenced by this year's tournament, the committee prefers to keep conference opponents in different brackets. That's a fact of the process and makes sense, unless Pitino's arguing that it might force a team into a lower or higher seed than they deserve, which he claims he is not.

Pitino then mentioned Manhattan, their opponent tonight and a team not in his conference but with a connection to his past. Did he really think the committee would eschew their matchup because the two coaches had a history? If that was the case in the NFL, Bill Belichek would never get to play a game, for nearly every one of his assistants has moved on to another team.

Somewhat ironically, a more justifiable attack would have been to question his seed. Questioning the other team, which plays a very similar game to theirs, seems counterproductive to his cause and perhaps even overly respectful.

"We press like him, we trap like him, his offensive sets are just like ours," Pitino said. "That's why I don't like the game. I don't think it's fair. I don't like it. I don't know why they would do it. I just don't like the game at all for either one of us. We won the national championship and obviously we're more heralded, but this is anybody's game. This is not a 1-16."

Looking back at Manhattan's schedule, Pitino should be worried. The Jaspers not only have an impressive record, but played tough in all seven of their losses -- an impressive ratio no matter the team/conference. They've also won 12 of their last 13.

Russ Smith was slightly more direct in his criticism of the NCAA committee, though he conceded their point of view.

"Not beating around the bush, but we've dominated our last few weeks of basketball since the loss to Memphis," Smith said. "We've been winning by a good margin. When you initially look at the University of Louisville, you see they've been winning by 20 or 30 or 50, they should be a 1 or 2 seed. But as an overall whole, we understood what our body of work was like."

Most interesting about Smith's comments was his mention of the Cardinal's large margins of victory. Given those huge wins (one by 60 points over Rutgers), you have to wonder if the Committee was sending Louisville and the rest of college basketball a message about running up scores. Maybe they wanted to show that wins and losses determined a resume -- not 60 point blowouts at the end of the season.