Bracketology

Bracketology 01.28.21

Ahead of an impactful weekend and behind a crazy set of mid-week games, let’s take a fresh look at where the bracket sits as if the season were to end today.

A special shout-out to the Appalachian State Mountaineers who claimed the top of the Sun Belt Conference Standings last night. Welcome to the projected field!

Bracket projections are based on the 2021-22 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.

Forecasted At-Large Bids Stolen: 1 (CUSA, Louisiana Tech)

FIRST FOUR OUT: Florida State, North Carolina, Florida, Notre Dame
NEXT TEAMS OUT: Mississippi State, Michigan, Belmont, SMU
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Bracketology 01.20.22

The time has come for the first mid-season bracket forecast. In all transparency, the first full exercise can be the lengthiest. Throughout November, December, and early January, I have a daily board that is tracked with each day’s results. I then perform a guess and check system using tools like KenPom, Torvik, and others to gauge the quality of wins and gather some upfront data to start sorting teams. Per usual here at Bracketeer.Org that is done by tiers to help better illustrate what position a team truly is in for the big picture. Check the Inside The Bracket tab for a full breakdown of the Seed List by tiers.

Once mid-January hits, it becomes time to roll up the proverbial sleeves on all things Bracketology.

That process began last weekend and has been pretty exhaustive, to the point where you are finally reading this today, Thursday. Almost an entire week later!

You may have seen the Top 16 Bracket Reveal on Monday during Halftime of the Purdue-Illinois game. If you missed it, here is where we were then:

As we all know, nothing stays the same in this beautiful sport. So a few things have shifted. Let’s look at the breakdown.

SEED SUMMARY

TOP SEEDS

Auburn comes in as the clear number one overall seed. The Tigers have collected road wins at Alabama and Saint Louis and beat Loyola-Chicago in the Bahamas. Perhaps most impressive is the Tigers’ accumulation of victories with 13 wins in games vs. the top three quadrants which is more than any other team in the country. An away/neutral record of 8-1 is superb as well. Lastly, the Tigers are tops in both resume-based metrics, the KPI and SOR.

The remaining top seeds will stay with Gonzaga, Arizona, and Baylor today. The Zags and Wildcats have done very little wrong and plenty of demolishing of opposition. Gonzaga’s two neutral-court wins over UCLA and Texas Tech provide us with just enough evidence to give them the second of the one-seeds. Baylor holds on for the fourth #1 seed. Despite a troubling week that consisted of two home losses, the Bears were able to bounce back and win at West Virginia on Tuesday. Prior to the losses, Baylor had already established a stellar body of work with wins over Michigan State, Oregon, Iowa State, TCU all away from Waco.

THE REST OF THE TOP 16 OVERALL TEAMS (SEEDS 2-4)

Johnny Davs and the Wisconsin Badger lead the nation with 10 wins over the Top Two Quadrants.

Kansas, Wisconsin, and Purdue are anxiously awaiting someone from the top-line to fall. All three have strong cases to be a 1-seed themselves. Wisconsin has an extraordinary resume brewing, now with a D1 high 10 wins vs. the top two quadrants. Kansas has excellent metrics and no real flaws themselves. And Purdue is coming off a critical double-OT win on the road at Illinois, plus we know that the Boilers have the surplus of talent to stay near the top.

The final two-seed will stay with Villanova for today. The Wildcats, LSU, and Duke all recently lost. Although Villanova’s may have been the most damaging (lost at home), they do boast tough road wins at Xavier and at Seton Hall to go along with their Tennessee win. Those top-end wins away from home are more than what LSU or Duke has to offer.

UCLA and Texas Tech round out the 3-seeds for today. The Bruins have a smaller set of games played due to a Covid pause and cancelations. However, the Bruins still grade out strongly in the predictive metrics. The Red Raiders have more substance with their win at Baylor, over Tennessee on a neutral, and of course over Kansas and Iowa State at home.

The final team to make this cut-off for Top 16 is now Alabama. The Tide has a wide range of mixed results that is headlined by a virtual road win (in Seattle) vs. Gonzaga. Bama defeated LSU at home last night, which gives them even more at the top of their resume. The losses to Davidson, Memphis, and Iona hold them back from getting higher than a four-seed for now.

MIDDLE SEEDS

Davidson Wildcats, fresh off their sweep of the Richmond schools on the road, are scorching hot and winners of their last 14 games in a row.

Each of the five seeds appears to be strong - Kentucky, Ohio State, Providence, and Illinois. They can all make the case to move up to the top four seed lines. The Friars have two massive road wins at Wisconsin and at UConn. However, in those games, Wisconsin’s Johnny Davis and UConn’s Adama Sanogo were both missing. Certainly not Providence’s fault, but will that matter to the committee? Kentucky has unbelievably good predictive metrics (currently 3rd in KenPom and 4th in Sagarin), yet still rank 22nd in Strength of Record. Five-seed feels right for today when it comes to the Wildcats.

On the six-line, we have upstart Marquette! A team that would’ve been a nine-seed on Monday has shot up with the impactful road win at Villanova. The Golden Eagles are scorching hot.

For the seven seeds, the Loyola-Chicago Ramblers landed here. LUC has been a great team to watch and continues to win at a high percentage. A couple of close calls in Overtime at home recently hurt a couple of their metrics, however, the resume is solid here. BYU also lands here and has a really impressive eight wins over the top two quadrants. The Cougars’ big win over Oregon is finally beginning to age well.

On the typically unwelcoming eight and nine seed lines - we have more upstart stories. Headlined by Davidson and Murray State. Hard to find two hotter teams than this. Davidson’s eight true road wins is tied for the most (tied with Auburn) for any team in the top 32.

BUBBLE FORMATIONS

Let’s get real, the bubble is still forming and will look entirely different by March. But don’t be surprised if a few of these teams hang around for the rest of the ride. When it comes to the last five or six teams selected for an at-large bid, the selection process is incredibly detailed and thorough. The committee will spend extra time diving into these teams to look for outliers and disqualifiers.

Today, we have some teams that I believe would be selected and largely because they’ve done no wrong (no losses to teams in Quad 2B or worse) aka a clean resume and have played a decent enough non-conference schedule:

  • San Diego State

  • San Francisco

  • Belmont

  • Iona (Also in as the Auto-Bid from the MAAC)

  • Saint Mary’s

  • North Carolina

On the flip side, history is not on the side of teams with a 275+ NCSOS. That could be big trouble in the examples of Tournament hopefuls like Wake Forest (currently #315 NCSOS per NET) and Texas A&M (currently #264 NCSOS per NET). Others such as TCU (332), Mississippi State (291), Arkansas (282), Boise State (247) Fresno State (252), SMU (318), Minnesota (311), Northwestern (254), Colorado (331), and perhaps UAB (218) have reasons to be concerned. It should be noted that Arkansas, Mississippi State, and TCU will all benefit from a bump up after the B12/SEC Challenge. Again, this is ONLY for seeds 10 and above. I do believe if any of the above play their way firmly into the at-large pool, their seed can greatly improve. The lack of non-conference schedule strength has a lengthy history in keeping teams out of the at-large pool. The aforementioned list of squads likely seems like a surplus of teams for now, however, with time the majority of these teams will either play their way into the field solidly or simply drop off as many are competing in tough conferences.

Belmont Head Coach Casey Alexander would love to see a two-bid OVC in their final year as a conference member.

AUTOMATIC ONE-BID LEAGUES

Annual explanation on how we select the team representatives:

  1. Preseason picks to win the conference tournament remains the rep until they lose and are entirely out of first place in the loss column. You’ll notice NC Central is in today’s bracket because they still have not played a MEAC game (coming Saturday we hope)!

  2. Once the preseason pick has dropped to 2nd place or worse, we then slot in the new conference leader.

  3. In the event of a two-way tie, the head-to-head winner is used. If they haven’t played yet or split the season series, the team with the better resume is the league rep.

  4. In the event of a tie between three teams or more, we’ll go to the best resume if the preseason pick is out of the mix.

Why do all of this maneuvering Rocco, you ask? Two important reasons are the answer.

  1. These shifts serve as a simulation of a real Championship Week bracket exercise. Doing it all season long gets me into that practice and keeps us laser-focused on these leagues. Because these are one-bid leagues, anything can and will happen in their respective conference tourneys. This gives me several different data points to review as the conference races shift and new brackets are built. It’s even more so when the multi-bids have a “bid theif” in first place. In that event, it actually makes the bracket more spicy and enjoyable.

  2. To recognize more programs throughout the run to March! Teams are fighting hard to win their regular-season titles, the least we can do is recognize them by getting them into Bracket updates. We are all about recognizing as many programs as possible around here! Besides, it is not interesting to plug in the same team each time there is a new bracket.

THE BRACKETING PROCESS

In principle, I follow the straight-forward 1-68 S-curve seeding process. This of course was done while following the conference affiliation rules for the top 4-seed lines and the early round rematch policies. It always fascinates me which matchups come together just by following the process to a T. Some of the intriguing matchups that came out of this:

  • EAST Region: (7) Loyola-Chicago vs. (10) Oklahoma. The Porter Moser Bowl.

  • MIDWEST Region: (4) Alabama vs. (13) Ohio U. Nate Oats takes on an old MAC rival.

Bracket projections are based on the 2021-22 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.

At-Large Bids Stolen: 0 (Highly Unlikely for future reference)

FIRST FOUR OUT: TCU, St. Bonaventure, Wake Forest, Minnesota
NEXT TEAMS OUT: Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Saint Louis
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2021-22 Preseason Bracket Forecast

Breaking down the Selections

The road starts here! The oldest season of College Basketball (by age of players) is set to commence. That’s right, many coaching staffs at all levels of College Basketball are finally paying attention. The recent national champions were built on older teams: Baylor, Virginia, Villanova. They are also teams coached by x’s and o’s geniuses and play fantastic defense. With the exception of a few select teams - Age, coaching, and defense have been a wonderful trifecta of a formula in the past decade for success.

Entering the 21-22 season, more staffs have scrapped the heavy recruiting model and loaded up on experienced transfers. The additional Covid season has amounted in a surplus in proven players looking for new homes. And they’ve found them. Outside of the top ten or so teams, parity is going to be strong and deeper this season. Sub Top-50 teams will be very capable of knocking off Top 25 teams on any given night. Leagues like the MAC and Sun Belt are going to be full of fierce battles. That will be outstanding to watch play out, but unfortunately cost those leagues in all likelihood a chance at two bids. We’ve spent the past few days breaking down all 32 conferences. Now let’s break down the bracket.

The road to New Orleans begins today!

The Bracketing Process in 2022

One of the many nuances of Bracketology is learning all of the bracketing rules and procedures. Nothing to worry about here, we have mastered those. However, each bracketing exercise creates its own unique challenges. In the first exercise of 2022, I found the following areas to be challenging:

  • Texas was sent to Fort Worth for the first two rounds. Should Kansas and Baylor finish higher on the seed list, they should in theory be the teams headed to Fort Worth. Conventional wisdom says that the committee may try to pull a fast one (as represented here) and send the Jayhawks to Milwaukee, in order to get the more regionalized Longhorns and Baylor to the DFW metroplex.

  • Blue Bloods galore in the South Region. Going through the process left me stuck in a situation where it was necessary to have Villanova, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Indiana all in the bottom half of the South Region, with Kansas leading the top half. A lot of these dilemmas don’t last throughout the year, but sometimes they do. We shall see if this continues to be a challenge.

  • The Oregon situation. Oregon has a great thing going for them with Portland hosting the opening two rounds. Out of all the forecasted teams, only Gonzaga prefers to play in Portland, leaving that second opening there for the taking. That would set the Ducks up well for a sweet 16 run. However, if they want to be in the West Region, they’ll likely need to finish higher than UCLA and highest in the Pac-12, otherwise, they will be sent elsewhere for regionals (we have them in Chicago).

  • Buffalo playing in Buffalo! The MAAC conference is the host, we see no rules against this as long as the Bulls can earn a 12-seed. If they were a 13-seed, then they would be sent elsewhere due to the opposing 4-seed being protected from a homecourt disadvantage. The 5-seed does not receive those privileges, and we have a Buffalo vs. Florida State first-round game forecasted to be played in Buffalo, part of the loaded South Region.

  • Some other natural slam-dunks for the committee to aim for:

    • Get UCLA to San Diego

    • Get Illinois to Milwaukee

    • If St. Bonaventure has the huge season, get them to Buffalo

    • Get West Virginia to Pittsburgh (didn’t work out here)

Bona would love to have their rabid fan base watch them play in the NCAA’s in nearby Buffalo.

Seed Review

The #1 Seeds - Gonzaga, Michigan, Kansas, Purdue
It was not an easy call after the first two teams. Kansas has a ton of weapons and really addressed the guard-play issues by adding Remy Martin and Joseph Yusefu in the offseason. And Purdue gets the nod. Boilers have a uniquely loaded younger team that is all about to hit their talent development climax it seems. Just a ridiculous front-line and plenty of scoring in West Lafayette.

Protected Seeds - I have full trust in this Houston program under Kelvin Sampson to repeat as AAC Champions and do well against a challenging non-conference schedule (probably the favorite to win the Maui Invitational). Memphis is the toughest team to project by a mile. A 4-seed is a bit of a hedge, they have the talent to get much higher. Duke and Kentucky look to rebound in a big way after a disastrous 2020-21 campaign. Both teams are entirely reloaded, and I felt safe for now projecting them as 3-seeds.

Middle Seeds - St. Bonaventure and San Diego State both landed in the 8 and 9-seed areas when the evaluation process concluded. The fact for the Bonnies is that they will need a 2020 Dayton-like season to reach the top-end seed area. Which requires a mostly flawless non-conference schedule. We will be watching the Bonnies closely, particularly their metrics to see if they are staying with the heavyweights. SDSU or the Mountain West winner should land around a 7 or 8-seed in all likelihood. Three really solid programs are entering the season, and the winner figures to have a shiny resume - we chose the Aztecs. Also in this area is Virginia Tech. The Hokies have a solid team and coach back on paper. However, it was tougher to put them in due to so many canceled games a year ago. It was really difficult to know how good they truly were. And there are several teams right behind them in the ACC ready to replace them.

First Four - USC, Nevada, Providence, Richmond
Due to Oklahoma State being banned - the Spiders crawled their way into the field. By the way, we have Oklahoma State at #28 entering the season, for those wondering. I do firmly believe the A-10 will get at least two teams into the field. So the decision was not difficult to include Richmond. Nevada getting in as the third MWC team had a little more scrutiny. In the end, it felt very realistic that the third team of the MWC trio would be sent to the First Four (also could go to WCC). We like Providence to be a strong team late in the season after Coach Cooley gets a full three or four months with his Friars. If it doesn’t happen the door is open for Butler and Xavier to jump up. And USC should have enough to get back to the dance despite losing a generational talent in Evan Mobley.

Auto Bids - The big news is a forecast that calls for Northern Iowa to cut down the nets in Arch Madness. Drake was already evaluated as an at-large team, so this gets two teams in from the Valley and takes a bid away from the at-large pool. As covered in the One-Bid League Preview - we have a handful of other surprise tournament winners (Stephen F. Austin, North Dakota State, Weber State, Clevland State, Charleston, Wofford, and Texas State are the headliners).

Bracket projections are based on the 2021-22 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.

Projected At-Large Bids Stolen: 1 (Northern Iowa, the annual average is 2.4 per season)

The 2022 Preseason Bracket.

Selection Sunday - AM Bracket

BRACKET NOTES
Teams are selected, seeded, and bracketed as if today is Selection Sunday.

Selection Sunday is here! It is a special day for many in the College Basketball world. After not making it this far last season, I am feeling extra appreciative overall that the 2020-21 season was able to be played in some capacity. It has not been a smooth ride for anyone involved. Great sacrifices were made by thousands of people to get these games played and several stumbles certainly occured. I truly hope next season is a much improved experience and we can have teams play an entire regular season safely and with a more authentic experience for the players and staffs. In the mean time, we are close to the finish line here in 2021. So let’s review whats left for the committee to do.

- Most of the major decisions on seeding (top four seeds) should be wrapped up now. I have Houston getting that final 2-seed today, with a contingency that they drop the Cougars to the final 3-seed with a loss to Cincinnati. Speaking of the Bearcats, they hold all of the cards today. If Cincy can pull up off the major upset over Houston, another bid is gone - and that likely spells doom for Wichita State’s hopes of inclusion. Other decisions in the middle of the seed list and bottom of the seed list were likely deliberated all evening long last night. I will conitinue to evaluate these decisions myself leading up to the 6PM EST deadline.

- Bubble picture: I think there is an argument to made for three teams for the final spot. I believe those three teams are Wichita State, Syracuse and Ole Miss. The Shockers are getting destroyed in a couple of the listed predictive metrics (BPI-96, POM-74) on the team sheet, however they do have solid resume metrics (KPI -33, SOR -42). The Shockers also boast a regular season championship and an attractive 6-3 Away/Neutral record. Syracuse has solid metrics across the board, which makes the Orange very tempting to include. However, Syracuse only has one top 100 road win and an Away/Neutral record of just 3-8. Based on all factors, I think Wichita State would be the more favorable choice for the committee. Ole Miss is a wildcard in play here. Rebels do have four losses in Quad 2B and below (including to Wichita State) hurting them. In contrast, the Rebels have the best collection of road wins and the strongest road win (at Mizzou) of the bubble contenders. So, you can make a case for any of the three here. I am going with the Shockers for now. For Colorado State, unfortunately I do not see a path for selection any longer.

- More work to do in 13-16 seed area is ahead for me. A lot of new faces emerged and some deeper comparisons are going to be done today. Look for some tweaks potentially later this afternoon.

Bracket projections are based on 2020-21 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.

Projected At-Large Bids Stolen: 2 (Georgetown - BIG EAST, Oregon State - PAC-12)

Bracketology 03.14.21.jpg

NCAA ALTERNATE TEAMS: Syracuse, Ole Miss, Colorado State, Saint Louis
NEXT TEAMS OUT: Xavier, Seton Hall
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