INDIANAPOLIS — Sunday night and the deed is done. The hotel room on the 15th floor, where the NCAA tournament selection committee crunched its numbers all weekend, is messy with paperwork, data sheets, dark computer screens and half-eaten sacks of M&Ms and potato chips.

From the window, you can see the Indiana Capitol below. On the board at the front of a room is a list of schools under the heading "Why not us?" with statistics beside each, apparently there to focus why those teams were being left out. Air Force. Bradley. Drexel. Illinois.

Hold it. Illinois is in the field, playing Virginia Tech in Columbus, Ohio, on Friday. But their name on the board suggests the Illini might have been teetering at some point. Hard to say, since one NCAA official walks briskly to the board and swiftly erases all the words. Not for outside eyes.

Committee chairman Gary Walters is answering media questions over the phone, from hither and yon. A caller from Arizona wants to know why the Wildcats are a No. 8 seed. A TV reporter from Philadelphia wants it explained why Drexel was left out, even with its 14-5 record away from home. A New Yorker asks what Syracuse did that was so wrong, after winning six of its last eight games and beating Georgetown.

"Jim Boeheim is a very good friend of mine," Walters says of the Syracuse coach. "I hope he's still a good friend of mine."

It has been a long weekend. The bracket was finalized later than it ever has been. The decisions were agonizing with 104 teams in the country with at least 20 wins; far more than there had ever been. And so many of them looked alike.

Someone mentions only six at-large teams have come from the mid-major leagues, fewer than last year. So much for the George Mason Effect.

Just a coincidence, Walters says. "When we start our process, we throw conference affiliation out the window. It just shakes out how it shakes out.

"It's painful for us to have to choose."

He calls the bracket "quintessential Americana." The privileged teams that automatically qualified reflect Jacksonian democracy. The teams from the masses that wrangled at-large bids are more Jeffersonian.

You get this sort of thing when the committee chairman comes from Princeton.

AT FIRST GLANCE

Here is the bracket, and these are some of the things that strike you first:

Defending champion Florida seeded No. 1 in the entire field and given a very agreeable regional road back to the Final Four in the Midwest. Top-ranked Ohio State might grumble about not being No. 1 of the No. 1s, but Dec. 23 should not be forgotten. So let's don't: Florida 86, Ohio State 60.

North Carolina drawing the most arduous road of any of the No. 1 seeds. The Tar Heels share the East with Georgetown, a No. 1 seed masquerading as a No. 2, and No. 4 seed Texas with the inflammable Kevin Durant.

San Antonio is a lovely city, but not the place anyone would want to play a Texas A&M team that was the last opponent to beat Kansas with five of its six losses coming by two points or less. But that is what might await both Ohio State and No. 2 seed Memphis.

No love for Notre Dame. The Irish might have surged down the stretch, but they were shipped to Spokane, Wash., to play Winthrop, the choice du jour to be this year's George Mason.

The good news for Stanford is that it slipped into the field with an 18-12 record, easily the worst of any at-large invitee. The bad new is the Cardinal will play Louisville in Lexington, Ky.

Duke is seeded No. 6 but it is hard to understand why it is so high. The Blue Devils finished 4-7 with three straight defeats. Virginia Commonwealth will be a popular upset pick.

Kentucky has no easy assignment in the first round against Villanova. And just when Tubby Smith could use a win to turn down the blast furnace in Lexington.

Old Dominion vs. Butler. Sounds like an ideal Bracket Buster game. But it's the first round in New Orleans.

SHUNNED AND STUNNED

Then there were the shunned. Drexel's road performance was honorable and courageous, but it also lost by 37 points in two games against Old Dominion. Syracuse had to be stunned.

Too bad about Air Force, because service academies don't get the chance very often. And Florida State, with every loss to a top-50 RPI team. And Missouri State, which last season had the highest rated RPI (No. 21) ever excluded.

And maybe most of all, Akron, its hopes ruined by a bank-shot prayer at the gun by Miami (Ohio) in the MAC championship game.

So there were grimaces to go with the cheers, frustration with the excitement. It was Selection Sunday. Turn out the hotel room lights, the party is starting.