Speculating about Selection Sunday is part of the fun of being a college basketball fan, and no one evokes more speculation and predictions than ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, who more or less invented the concept of “Bracketology.”So when Lunardi recently suggested in one of his online posts that Kentucky was a strong candidate for a No. 1 seed, it generated a lot of discussion.Big Blue fans love it, but Lunardi said he’s received plenty of pushback from other college hoops followers questioning his reasoning. In an interview on “The Leach Report” radio show last week, Lunardi said he saw no reason to back down.Lunardi projects Duke to get a No. 1 seed, along with champions of the Big East and the Big Ten. After that, there would be several contenders for the other one seeds and he thinks Kentucky will have the kind of resume it takes to get it.”I think their best basketball is still ahead of them,” Lunardi said. “And you know what, who’s to say Kentucky doesn’t have, I don’t know, 26, 27 or 28 wins after the SEC Tournament. I think they’re going to be right there for a No. 1 seed, hence the prediction.”Although his analysis was posted prior to UK’s loss at Georgia (Lunardi’s latest projections can be found here), Lunardi was already thinking the Cats would lose at least three road games in league play. Georgia would certainly qualify as a “quality loss” at this point.”(Despite knocks on the SEC), it is still a solid, multi-bid league,” Lunardi said. “It may not be six or seven teams (deep), but it’s going to be four or five, I think, anyway. The winner of that league will particularly dominate the regular season and they win it by a game or two or three, which is what I think is going to happen for Kentucky. Again, that’s kind of the basis of putting UK on the short list of teams that can get a No. 1 seed two months from now.”Now, on to some other topics for Lunardi:Question: How do you like the expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 68 teams?Lunardi: I believe that when the TV negotiations occurred (last year), the NCAA was prepared to go to 96 and do it right now for this season. I know they have modeled it and they had done some mock brackets. But I think what happened was that the network partners, in this case TBS and CBS, were willing to give the NCAA the number, meaning the dollar figure they were looking for, without the additional inventory of games. So those of us who were opposed to expansion — and count me among them — got a little bit of a bonus I suppose, in that this little taste of expansion, which won’t dramatically alter the kind of complexion of the field and the way tournament unfolds. This expansion is going to create more bubble talk for the three extra positions, but it isn’t going to change for most viewers the way the tournament rolls out. So in that respect, I’m happy with it and I hope that the powers that be in the networks are happy with it so it doesn’t get any crazier than this down the road. Will it happen down the road? Probably. How many sports have contracted?Question: Are the national rankings important for a team to help its seeding?Lunardi: I think they are at the very top of the bracket. If you study these things, there’s a decent correlation between the best teams in the polls and the one, two and three seeds, let’s say. After that, it becomes more of a resume issue, where the committee members seem to find it a little easier to deviate from the polls. Generally, come Selection Sunday,  we can identify the three, four, five, six teams that are in contention for a one seed and then the conference tournaments tend to short that out if there’s a dispute. I’m still of the opinion that if you win the regular season and conference tournament in one of those top six power conferences, you’re going be hard pressed not to get a one seed. And that’s kind of why I like Kentucky. I just like the way their freshmen are playing, short of the one kind of stink bomb there in Hawaii. It’s been a pretty solid first two months for what is a very, very young team.Question: What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about the tournament and the process of selecting and seeding teams?Lunardi: Literally coaches call, directors call, commissioners call, in addition to e-mail and online comments from fans. You know, I’m mimicking a process that 10 really smart people spend a lot of time on. There’s so much scrutiny with the process now, by people like us, for that to take place.  I mean, these committee members work at it like a full-time job for four months. And while we may quibble with a decision here or there, by and large they get it right because they really have all of the data at their fingertips. You can question how they might interpret that data, and certainly I question it as anyone else, but the integrity of the process now is beyond repute, in my opinion. (Some fans) still think there’s matchmaking going on, deal-making going on, storylines for TV being orchestrated, that type of thing, and I’m here to tell you and to tell everyone that when you build these mock brackets, every week for three months as I do and a lot of people do, you realize following the principles and procedures that are in writing for the committee members is hard enough without playing match maker. It just can’t happen.