The two-seed line is also somewhat of a beauty pageant. Texas fell earlier this week at Texas Tech, Tennessee scored an elite home win over Alabama, and the Arizona/UCLA combo handled its business. Baylor is the fifth team fighting to get into this picture. The order of these five could go a lot of different ways when the committee completes its voting. I still like Arizona the most for the five Quad 1A wins and all of those against teams landing on the first six seed lines in the bracket. Texas is our odd team out just due to the volume of six losses combined with slightly worse road performances, and road record. The Bears own the strong wins over UCLA and Gonzaga on neutral courts as well.
The cluster of Marquette, Kansas State, and UConn were difficult to separate. In order to simulate an actual committee exercise, the Golden Eagles are viewed as the Big East champions for now, which certainly gives Marquette a slight boost over the other two. This comp was done for the final three-seed. The Wildcats boast two elite road wins over Texas and Baylor, yet those are the only two significant road wins to date, as K-State is just 2-6 in the eight road games they’ve played in the top two quads. UConn, they have several things to like including metrics. The Huskies have the most room to grow still thanks to a perfect non-conference season. Much like K-State, Connecticut has a 2-5 road record in its tougher tests. Marquette is 3-4 in similar games. A lot was considered here, but in the end, we are rolling with Marquette because they do not have a bad loss (Wisconsin is a tourney team) and they have fewer overall losses than the Huskies and Cats.
The final spots in our Top 16 was not easy. Came down to a trio of Xavier, Miami, or Iowa State. Coming into this I like the way Miami is playing the most of late. However, it is all about the body of work. Unfortunately for the Canes, but they just haven’t had enough road damage to win the comps yet over the Cyclones and Musketeers. In three road games that would’ve moved the needle, Miami fell just short at Duke, at Pitt, and in OT at NC State. That left UNC, UCF, and Clemson as UM’s strongest road wins - which are not easy. However, Xavier has swept UConn and Iowa State has a road TCU win. It was very close between ISU and Miami in the end and I will not be shocked to see Miami’s name in the actual reveal on Saturday, but I’ve elected to go with Iowa State. Xavier is in the 15th overall position for the time being.
There is a catch Cyclones community, the last available destination is Orlando where you will be paired with Miami for a possible second-round matchup.
MID-WEEK SUMMARY
New Conference leaders today represented below as Automatic Bids:
Big East - Marquette (First Place alone)
Big West - UC Irvine (Split with UCSB, stronger resume)
Horizon - Youngstown State (First Place Alone)
IVY - Princeton (First Place alone)
MAAC - Iona (First Place alone)
SoCon - Samford (First Place alone)
New At-Large teams today represented below in the Field of 68:
Wisconsin (First Four)
BRACKET
Bracket projections are based on the 2022-23 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.
Forecasted At-Large Bids Stolen: 0 (Highly Unlikely, Annual Average = 2.3 Bids taken)
