Bracket Notes:
- The top seed line survived the weekend. Baylor, Gonzaga, Kansas, and SDSU all picked up wins. However, between the 2 thru 4 seed lines we saw a lot of chaos. Butler lost twice last week and fell into a 3-seed today, and also lost their position to play in St. Louis and/or Indianapolis. Louisville makes the biggest jump up after getting a colossal road win at Duke, which really polishes a resume that needed some help. Iowa snuck onto the 4-seed line after several teams above them lost over the weekend.
- Houston’s win in Wichita on Saturday put the Cougars away from the bubble-picture for now and into the meat of the bracket. They arrive today on the 8-seed line and they’ve surpassed weaker resumes like Indiana, Oklahoma, and Rutgers.
- Virginia Tech’s home loss against Syracuse puts them in the danger zone of missing the field. History tells us the Hokies poor non-conference schedule strength puts them at risk of being able to earn one of the final at-large bids. They are out as of today.
- Purdue would normally be our last team in, but we do have a bid thief for today. The Tulsa Golden Hurricane currently own the tiebreaker and would be the top-seed in the AAC Tournament if it started today. I prefer to capitalize on such scenarios to demonstrate the liklihood of a bid being stolen in March, and to learn a few things about more teams each week. So for today, congrats Tulsa and I’m sorry Purdue. Tulsa gets Memphis at home on Wednesday, so we will see if they can hang on.
We have a slew of new Conference leaders today represented below as Automatic Bids:
ACC - Florida State
AAC - Tulsa
America East - Vermont
CUSA - Western Kentucky
MAAC - Monmouth
Pac-12 - USC (See unbelievable highlights below, if you haven’t already)
Summit - North Dakota State
Bracket projections are based on 2019-20 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.
Bids Stolen: 1 (Tulsa)
FIRST FOUR TEAMS OUT: Purdue, Virginia Tech, Xavier, Washington
NEXT FOUR TEAMS OUT: Minnesota, Saint Louis, Virginia, Arizona State
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