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[thesixthwoman]

From "The State of the Championship" Press Conference. Full transcript can be found on ncaa's website.

Q. I know some people were surprised to see Tina Napier officiating yesterday. Can you go over how the officials are chosen for the Final Four, what the criteria are.
JUDY SOUTHARD: I think the most important thing I would say to you up front is there's a great need to understand that the regular season competition is governed by conferences. Our conferences train and put together their own core of officials. They all have their own conference coordinators of officials who do the assignments for their conference events. And, in most cases, and I would say it may be unanimous
in cases, they also control the assignment for officials for nonconference games for their membership.

As far as the championship is concerned, we have a national coordinator of officials who reaches down at the conference level to conference coordinators and she requests recommendations for those individuals who should be advanced forward to post-season competition.

There are 31 conferences, so we receive a recommended slate of candidates for officiating in the national championship from each of those conference coordinators. We have a number of officials, a great deal of our officials call for multiple conferences. They're not affiliated with one conference or only two conferences and in many cases they'll officiate three, four, five different conferences across the board.

Our national coordinator received a slate from each conference coordinator. That list was pared down. It was brought forward to our officiating subcommittee for the committee, and then a slate was advanced for the officiating. I would tell you that we considered Tina Napier, along with all the individuals who came into our championship, to be outstanding officials.

They are advanced based on their merit as they move through the tournament. And, again, I would tell you that both the Big East and the SEC had an opportunity to move forward a slate of candidates.

The other thing I would say to you, and I'm sure the reference as it relates to the question, would go back to the issues that happened in the Tennessee-Rutgers game. I don't think there's any secret we can read between the lines there. The one thing I would tell you is the officials that were involved in that basketball game continued to call both Big East and SEC games throughout the regular season and throughout their conference
championship season before many of them and, in the case of the ones that have been moved forward, were moved forward by various conference commissions for consideration for championship play.