Lunardi said Okie State is a lock with one more win, regardless of where and when.

Got a chance to speak with Joey Brackets today, and while I still don’t read his prognostications, I figured most of you do. So this is a work for you, the reader. All I did was put my phone speaker and listen to a bunch of newspaper men and women were holed up in their offices around the country and asking regional-related questions about their teams. I got three questions in, and I’ll let you guess on which ones those were.

Kind of funny: Lunardi said he had his final examination last night with his 10 students, which was held on a two-hour conference call. Yep, in case you forgot, he had a credit-legitimate class on Bracketology.

Here were some of his takes.

—Cal and the Pac-1o at-large: It’s in 8/9 range now and could get to a 6 or a 7. It’s in the field even if it loses twice more.

—UNI: Only losing in the quarterfinal would be how they MIGHT be out. He thinks they’re in the 7/8/9 seed range right now.

—Cornell will be disappointed by its seed. “They’ve receded from the buzz they had after the near-miss from Kansas.” He thinks the Big Red will be an 11 or a 12. Would Cornell fans really be angry with an 11?

—Illinois and Notre Dame: “Two teams going in opposite directions and ready to collide right around seed No. 65.” Illinois now has four RPI top 25 wins, and he didn’t believe any team with that many good wins had ever been left out. “The committee has evolved to a stage where that wouldn’t solely keep them in, though,” he added.

—On Florida: “I thought if they could’ve gotten a split off these last two games [Georgia and Vanderbilt] … but having lost them both, and you have to presume they’ll lose at Kentucky … they’re going to have to win a game or two in the SEC tournament.” I think Florida’s interesting. It’s definitely in with a win over UK. Does a road win @ UK = two wins on neutral floor in SEC? I think so. One is probably not quite enough.

—On tournament expansion/how feasible it would be to put together a 96-team bracket. “There’s no good basketball reason to do it. No team with a realistic chance to win the national championship is being excluded from the current system. This isn’t college football, where every year three or four teams can making a reasonable argument for being left out.”

Is expanding the tournament worth weakening the first rounds, championship week and late-season games, like what we’ve had this week? That’s his take on what ultimately decides it. Will the money make up for it, period. Lunardi thinks no. “I do think some expansion coming. I think it’s coming sooner rather than later … [deciding between team 96 and 97] to be honest, would be nothing short of a pain in the ass.” How could he even have a job doing this anymore?

—Any chance Kentucky could blow a 1-seed: lose out. But UK has shown for four months it’s clearly one of the four best teams, so “it’s minuscule.”

—Louisville: “They’re a team that wins and loses in alternating fashion.” He sees them a 10 or an 11. He still has them in as of this afternoon, but not absolutely safe. Also thinks they have little chance of reaching the second weekend.

—On disparity between teams in the ACC and the Big East: “Big East, to me, is only down relative to last year, when it got three No. 1 seeds. My eyes tell me that I’m not in the ACC’s corner and I’ve never particularly been a Big East guy. …. I think one way of looking at it is, Syracuse, Villanova, probably West Virginia would all win the ACC this year. I think they’re all better than Duke. If you want to go down in the middle of those leagues, I think there’s a lot of sameness. Like Georgia Tech, I think if they were in the Big East, they’d be like Notre Dame. The team I don’t have a handle on is Maryland. … If I had to guess which league would have more teams in the Sweet 16, it’d be the Big East.”

—What current double-digit seed has the highest ceiling or the best chance to shoot up to a 6 or 7 seed? He said Cal, if it’s a 10 now, could be that team. He also went off on Virginia Tech in a big way.

“I’ve done two Virginia Tech games and they didn’t even remotely look like an NCAA tournament team to me either time. I don’t know if Virginia Tech this year is better than Penn State last year — I’m guessing not.

—Is it the weakest field he can remember? “No, but the bubble is weaker than it has been.” (Obviously.) “Is it the weakest ever? I don’t know, because there’s something about my brain that erases past data. I would say if you’ve got a team like Mississippi State in the field at this point, it’s a weak bottom of the at-large pool. I don’t think the field itself is overly weak. I think what might be giving that impression is it’s composed differently. Like Xavier, Richmond and Temple are good and UCLA and Arizona aren’t. UNC isn’t. Indiana isn’t a factor. … So the brand-name quality of the field is off, but I don’t know that the overall quality of the field is especially off.” I completely agree with this, by the way, and it’s something a lot of people haven’t talked about.

—UConn: needs three wins, no matter how they get them.

—Butler’s seeding: a 4 or a 5 if it wins the Horizon and a 6 or a 7 if it doesn’t.

—On Purdue’s seeding conundrum: “We have no idea what [the committee] is going to do with Purdue. More than likely to get passed on the seed line by Ohio State and Michigan State or Wisconsin. It could happen and probably will.”

—Oklahoma State: still not a lock, but needs one more W to get it.

—On C-USA: Lunardi has UAB and UTEP in. If UTEP loses when the two play each other Saturday, it wouldn’t still lock in UAB, and he still doesn’t see C-USA getting more than two teams in unless Tulsa beats UAB in conference title game.

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