INDIANAPOLIS — How much do you know about how the NCAA tournament field comes together?

You know how to fill out a bracket. You might even know how to build a projected bracket. But do you really know what goes into the NCAA selection committee choosing 68 of the 351 Division I basketball teams?

Recently, some of us got a much better idea.

March Madness Media Coordinator David Worlock hosted select media types for a mock selection committee at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis in early February.

That might sound like March Madness fantasy camp, but we were given extensive access to Worlock—who's been in the room and knows how the sausage is made—along with Selection Committee Chairman Scott Barnes and other committee members and tournament executives. 

The event was run exactly as the real committee is run, with step-by-step guidance from those who are in the room while the real committee makes its decisions, and it offered some real insights into what goes into those decisions.

For instance, do you assume that the decision on what teams will be the "Last Four In" is excruciating? Nope. Turns out, the decision-making process doesn't change at all at that stage. No extra debate over two or three teams for the final spot, just the exact same method right down to the bitter end: pick eight, rank eight, elect four.

But that's getting ahead of things. From the beginning, here's what I learned about the selection process:

• To set the scene, the committee meets in a conference room at the nearby Conrad Hilton, and there are no TVs in the room—so it's not like the members are watching conference tournament games throughout the process. There are seven or eight TVs in the lounge, and committee members take regular breaks there. They also always go out to an Italian restaurant called Iaria's on the Wednesday before Selection Sunday, and they always have an ice cream sundae bar "on tap" throughout the week.

• "Lockdown"—as the selection committee affectionately refers to its time together leading up to Selection Sunday—begins on Wednesday morning of Championship Week. There are 10 committee members. Each committee member submits a ballot of the teams he or she believes should be in the field as at-large bids, as well as teams that deserve to be under consideration. Teams that get eight or more votes are placed into the field to be seeded later, and remaining teams that receive at least three votes go to the "under consideration" board.

• From there, here's the selection process for the rest of the teams: Each committee member selects eight teams from the "under consideration" board, in no particular order. The eight teams with the most votes are then ranked from top to bottom by each committee member. The top four vote-getters are moved into the field, while the other four are placed in holding while the committee goes back to the "under consideration" board to vote for what it feels are the eight best teams on the list. The top four from that round of voting join the four that were in holding, and then it ranks from top to bottom again.

• Then the committee does it again. And again. And again. And again. It's like Groundhog Day on steroids. There are more than 100 formal voting rounds—and plenty of informal ones during the "scrubbing process" (more on that shortly). Seeding the field is the same idea, except the top four vote-getters are placed into the field in order of votes received.

• Worlock said there has been no formal discussion of expanding the field since 2010. You can imagine why.

• Before, during and after these 100-plus votes is when all the debating and analyzing takes place. And, yes, there are frequent tiebreaking votes. The primary responsibility of the committee chair—this year, it's Barnes, athletic director of Utah State—is to control the pace of the discussions and to be the committee's face for interviews. His votes don't count for two points or anything like that.

• At multiple times during the week—partially to account for results of conference tournaments and partially just for quality assurance—the committee goes through a "scrubbing process." This consists of starting at the very top of the list and comparing No. 1 overall to No. 2 overall to decide if they should be swapped. Then it's on to No. 2 vs. No. 3, and so on down the line. If six of the 10 committee members vote for a swap, it happens, and then the newly higher-seeded team is immediately compared to the team now above it to determine if it should climb any higher.

• So how does the committee decide which teams are better? I asked various committee members in attendance and NCAA executives who have been in the room in the past and came up with a few consensus answers. To start, according to one NCAA executive, past seasons have zero impact. You might be hesitant to pick Gonzaga or Wichita State because of how they fared as No. 1 seeds in recent tournaments, but all the committee cares about is evaluating teams on games played this season.

• According to Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione, in the eyes of most committee members, who you beat is more important than who beat you. There's no cut-and-dried formula for how many bad losses can be canceled out by a great win, but it certainly sounds like a resume with two great wins and four bad losses is better than one with no great wins and no bad losses.

• Another executive said computer numbers—especially RPI (rating percentage index)—are nothing short of critical, but the eye test is just as big of a factor, which is something the committee has claimed for years. Each committee member watches hundreds of games each season.

• While some computer numbers take scoring margin into account, it's apparently otherwise not overtly discussed by the selection committee. In the argument over BYU as a bubble team, I noted that the Cougars had not been beaten by more than seven points in the entire season and that several of their losses were decided in overtime. One of the NCAA folks immediately interjected, "What you just said would never actually be discussed."

• Likewise, they said, a conference's overall RPI would never be brought up, nor would where teams finished in their conference standings. Conference record doesn't even appear on the "nitty-gritty sheets" (similarly formatted to ESPN's) that committee members use for overviews of teams. So any time you hear someone talking about a team needing to get to .500 in Big 12 play or needing 12 Big Ten wins to get in, feel free to ignore it.

• The moniker committee members use for teams whose "nitty-gritty sheets" lean too far right (filled with games against teams ranked outside the Top 150 in RPI), according to Worlock: "Romney Resume."

• The results of major conference tournaments—particularly the championship games played on Selection Sunday—also aren't nearly as drastic as many want to believe. Worlock said that even if Kentucky had beaten Florida (the No. 1 overall seed) in last year's SEC Championship Game, the Wildcats were still going to be the No. 8 seed in the Midwest Region.

• Then there are the games teams would like ignored. Sorry, Tulsa, but no luck. The Golden Hurricane's loss to D-II Southeastern Oklahoma State is not factored into their RPI or SOS (strength of schedule) numbers, but Worlock said, "It wasn't an exhibition, so it counts. The committee is certainly aware that it took place." In addition to that game's impact on Tulsa's resume, several committee members expressed the sentiment that scheduling D-II opponents—particularly more than one in a given season—does not look good for a team's intent to schedule quality opponents, and that losing one of those games is just a terrible idea. 

• According to Director of the Men's Basketball Championship L.J. Wright, there is a program in place to combat gamesmanship among committee members. At the time of the mock selection committee, Gonzaga vs. Wisconsin for the final No. 1 seed was a hot debate. If I really wanted Gonzaga as that fourth No. 1 seed and decided to put the Bulldogs at No. 1 overall and Wisconsin at the bottom of my ballot, it would send up all sorts of red flags.

• Committee members aren't coming in without preconceived notions. According to Worlock, on a weekly basis throughout the season, a plethora of ratings lists (RPI, BPI, Sagarin, KenPom, etc.) are sent out to the committee members. Requests by media members to be added to this mailing list were sadly declined.

• In addition to that weekly data, one coach from each conference submits a "Coaches Advisory Poll" on the first of each month, ranking the teams in his conference. It was mentioned that many coaches probably delegate the task to an assistant, but that Memphis' Josh Pastner takes this responsibility very seriously.

• Worlock mentioned that he monitors the Bracket Matrix throughout the week, but no need to fear that any Joe Schmo with a WordPress account might be impacting what the committee does. "It serves as a checks and balances," Worlock said via email. "I don't spend time looking at the individual brackets, but if a team is projecting as a 2 seed on the matrix and the committee has them as a 4, I'd talk about it with Dan Gavitt [VP of men's basketball championships]. The discussion might end there, but it could be something that Dan brings to the chair."

• He also uses the matrix, he said, "to try and anticipate what questions we will get from the media."

• Worlock said the committee is open to the idea of releasing in-season updates, similar to what the College Football Playoff committee did this past season. It probably wouldn't release full projections of the field, but it would consider something like what the women's selection committee did this February—announcing the four No. 1 seeds as well as the 16 next-best teams in no particular order.

• Each committee member is responsible for monitoring three to four specific conferences and becoming the subject-matter expert for debates involving those teams. For example, I acted as Stanford's Bernard Muir in the mock selection process and was responsible for monitoring the WCC, MAAC and Southland.

• Athletic directors are required to leave the room when their team is being discussed, and conference executives when any team from their conference is being discussed. They can't vote if their team or teams are on a ballot and can "only answer factual questions about their team," Worlock said. "When 24 or fewer teams are in the pool of teams from which we are selecting or seeding, and one of the teams is represented by a committee member, that person is not allowed to participate in that vote. And again, if the team comes up for discussion, they must leave the room."

• As an example of how that rule works, in representing Muir—whose Stanford team was one of the last four teams into our field in mid-February—I was unable to vote in anything other than tiebreakers for several hours, and I was not alone. With committee representation from BYU, LSU, Michigan State and Conference USA, there was one round of voting near the end in which only five of the 10 committee members were allowed to vote. In most seasons, this rule might seem necessary for avoiding questions of partiality. But this year it might mean as few as five people are deciding those important "Last Four In" decisions.

• The actual bracketing of the field usually doesn't begin until Sunday afternoon. There are sub-committees of three or four members for the first quadrant (top 16 teams), fourth quadrant (bottom 18 teams) and "First Four" who determine if there should be a debate for the full committee in regard to potentially swapping two teams in their respective section of the bracket.

• Geography is the supreme ruler during bracketing. Senior Web Developer Colin Chappell has designed a program (that I would pay good money for) that notes exactly how many miles a team would need to travel to reach the various options for regional and sub-regional locations. In addition to miles, there is a lot of discussion about how many time zones a team would need to travel. The top 16 teams are placed by region and then by sub-region.

• Where in previous years there was an "S-curve," in which (if possible) the top No. 2 seed was matched up against the bottom No. 1 seed, teams are now kept as close to home as possible while still remaining on their true seed line. So even if Wisconsin is the top No. 2 seed, get ready to see the Badgers in the Midwest Region opposite Kentucky. Cleveland would be the preferred regional location for each. 

• That seems like a good time for a geographical interlude: Did you know the University of Arizona is closer to Omaha than it is to Portland by more than 100 miles? This was the most gasp-worthy revelation of the week for those in the room.

• By the time we were building the bracket, there was very little debating and a lot of simply watching the pieces come together like a jigsaw puzzle. There's no room for conspiracies and creating "juicy" pairings (i.e. Kentucky and Louisville meeting in the Sweet 16 last season), no matter what the conspiracy theorists say. Asked the most surprising thing he learned from the experience, Will Haskett of the Horizon League Network said, "When it comes to placing the teams in the actual bracket, there is absolutely no way for the committee to create those conspiracies. There is no such thing as an orchestrated matchup."

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.