2008 bracket nit

• With Selection Sunday a week away, staff writer Dirk Chatelain updates his thoughts leading up to the NCAA basketball tournament:
Drake is in for an interesting - and potentially maddening - Selection Sunday, whether it wins or loses in the Missouri Valley tournament final today.
Draw a number between four and nine out a hat - you could be holding Drake’s seed for the NCAA tournament.
While we can safely project most of the teams in the field within one seed, the selection committee is notoriously unpredictable with mid-major profiles like Drake’s.
In 2007, Butler earned a No. 5 seed. Southern Illinois was a No. 4. But Nevada, projected by almost every bracket guru on the market as a 3-5 seed, was a No. 7. What’s the practical difference? Well, SIU went to the Sweet 16 without an upset. Butler beat No. 12 Old Dominion and No. 4 Maryland to do the same.
Nevada had to deal with No. 10 Creighton in the first round, then lost to a high-powered, second-seeded Memphis, in the second round.
Drake’s problem: its 2008 profile looks more like Nevada’s than Southern Illinois’.
An even better comparison might be SIU in 2005:
Southern Illinois 2005

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