A week to bust the bracket

Four weeks from now, chances are you will be holding the perfect item in sports: a new, none-of-my-teams-has-lost-yet NCAA tournament bracket. For me, the biggest question in anticipation of Selection Sunday is just how big a dent will be made in the recent hegemony of the BCS conferences.

We all know the trend: Last season, just four of 34 at-large tournament bids went to teams outside the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-10 and SEC. And it might have been three of 34 had Cleveland State not upset Butler in the Horizon League tournament.

Today's discussion is not about the worthiness of majors over mid-majors. That's a dead horse, at least until after the season, so let's tackle a topic in which some legitimate analysis can inform the debate: With the success of the Atlantic 10, Mountain West and others in 2009-10, just how many non-BCS schools can we realistically expect to be among the "34 best" in the next NCAA tournament field?

To see Joe Lunardi's breakdown of which teams from non-BCS conferences have the best odds of making the NCAA tournament, you must be an ESPN Insider.

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Joe Lunardi | email

Senior Writer, ESPN.com

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• Resident college basketball bracketologist for ESPN
• Contributor to SportsCenter, ESPN Insider
• Published first public bracket in 1995