Michigan coach John Beilein, left, argues with official Mike Eades during a game against Michigan State on Feb. 5, 2012, in East Lansing, Mich.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Selection Sunday is for the NCAA tournament and the coaches and student-athletes who compete in the men’s basketball event each March. Selection Monday, however, belongs to the officials with the whistles.
It was March 30, the day after the Elite 8 games were complete and the Final Four field had been set, and Princeton native and veteran Division I hoops official Mike Eades was working out in his hometown. He had an incoming call, glanced at the screen and saw it was the NCAA’s supervisor of basketball officials, John Adams.
It was a call Eades had waited his entire career to receive — he was going to work his first Final Four game.
“I was extremely excited, pumped up, humbled,” Eades said Tuesday after officiating last Saturday’s Duke-Michigan State national semifinal game in Indianapolis. “You work hard for it. It was a good day.”
This is how the Final Four selection process works…