Indianapolis ? Some basketball players consider selection weekend as the crowning moment in a college career.

Joel Cornette equates it with some of his most tormenting memories. The former Butler star, now an assistant coach at Iowa, vividly recalls the euphoria he felt when Butler received an at-large bid in 2003, his senior season, and the agony of being left out a year earlier.

But it was the anxiety of living on the NCAA Tournament bubble twice that makes Cornette cringe when thinking about the teams about to endure those nerve-racking moments this weekend.

“It’s the ultimate lack of control of your own destiny that’s the most difficult thing,” he said. “The worst day is Sunday, watching the selection show and it never seems to be one of the first games they announce. It always seems to be the third or fourth bracket. It’s just awful.”

By this time next week, more than a dozen teams will have experienced the torment Cornette describes.

The NCAA Tournament selection committee is meeting in Indianapolis this weekend, tasked with the job of selecting the 34 best at-large teams in the nation, pairing them up against the 31 automatic qualifiers and then listening to the critics instantly pick apart which teams were left out.

That’s easy compared to the challenge of surviving bubble week.

The lucky teams go into the weekend with a chance to impress the 10-member committee by playing deep into their conference tournaments. The unlucky ones resort to watching tournament results, rooting for favorites, reading projections and praying committee members find them worthy of joining the 65-team field – all at a hefty emotional cost.

“People don’t talk about it, but you can see it on their faces,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said Thursday during the Big Ten tournament. “It’s one of those things … like not getting a job you’re supposed to get. But it’s part and parcel of the process. When you have a cut tournament, it adds meaning and you’re going to have joy and you’re going to have disappointment.”

While many television viewers witness the players’ raw reactions thanks to live feeds from college campuses, few see the tension that mounts during the days and hours preceding the selection show.

Teams prepare for unknown opponents in unknown destinations.

Assistant coaches crunch numbers and become amateur bracketologists, advising players of the potential ramifications of games being played. The distractions coaches admonish players to ignore during the regular season often become the main topic in the locker room and around town. And until the brackets are announced, the pressure only builds.

Among the teams faced that predicament this weekend are:

¢ Virginia Commonwealth, winner of 24 games and the Colonial Athletic Association regular-season championship. It lost in the conference tournament and must hope the selection committee is generous enough to give the Colonial two bids.

¢ Kentucky, finished strong and continued to win despite losing freshman Patrick Patterson to a season-ending ankle injury. A strong showing in the SEC tournament certainly would have helped the Wildcats, who are usually a tournament lock.

¢ Ohio State, last year’s national runner-up played one of the nation’s most difficult schedules but may have needed a strong showing in the Big Ten tourney to solidify its case.

¢ Villanova and West Virginia. Villanova helped itself by beating Syracuse in the Big East tournament Wednesday, which many considered an elimination game.