Welcome to Bracket Reveal Saturday
- The NCAA will be revealing the top 16 overall seeds in what has become an annual February tradition called the NCAA March Madness Bracket Preview. The show takes place today at approx. 12:30pm EST during the pregame show prior to Kentucky at Tennessee. The purpose of the reveal is to get the selection committee together to do a dry-run of the selection, seeding, and bracketing process. They will only work through the top four seed-lines for the interest of time. Reports have said they evaluated approximately 24 resumes to determine the top 16. This allows us bracketologists to get a glimpse inside the thinking of the new committee in 2020 and additional insight on the NCAA’s year and a half year-old metric, the NET.
Some questions I have personally:
Where will Dayton land? It has been difficult to pin-point where Dayton belongs, due to their lack of opportunities.
San Diego State is undefeated. Do I have them correctly #4 overall, or does the committee give them more credit?
Maryland won a big road game at Illinois tonight, is that enough to get them a 2-seed? (Hint: I say yes)
Who lands at #16 overall? I believe Penn State does, but an argument can be made for Kentucky or even Michigan State to a lesser extent.
Regardless of the reveal, it will be an amazing day of basketball. And an insightful opportunity to be even further prepared for Selection Sunday. I will also be participating in a teleconference hosted by Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhardt, which allows media members to ask questions to committee members about the Bracket Show. I will report back with updates and further information here on bracketeer.org.
Gonzaga at Saint Mary’s Coverage
The excitement continues here at bracketeer.org on Saturday with the game coverage of Gonzaga at Saint Mary’s, in what promises to be one of the biggest games I will cover this season. Tip-off is set for 10pm EST. Be sure to follow along here and on twitter.
Bracketology Notes:
- In this bracket update, the major move happened late Friday with Maryland gaining a much needed quality road win. After further comparison, I like Maryland’s body of work just above Florida State. It was just enough to get the Terps on the 2-seed line. FSU and Maryland were both already in the South region, so the change worked out to be a simple swap between two and the three seed lines.
- Another difficult decision between Ohio State and Marquette took place for the final six-seed. Ohio State has accumulated higher quality wins but also has more stains on their resume. By comparison, Marquette does not have as great of wins, but they’ve gone relatively unscathed with the only “bad loss” coming against Providence at Home. Historically, the committee will slightly favor a team with the bigger wins in these cases if all other parts are close to equal. That gave me just enough confidence to seed Ohio State as the final six-seed.
- Xavier and Rhode Island continue to crawl up the board. Both are playing very well and now hold the top two 10-seed positions. Xavier won at DePaul and Rhode Island won at UMass earlier this week.
- The last four teams for selection was as difficult as ever today. Virginia and Memphis held on to two of the spots, and Stanford tumbled into another spot after losing at Utah. That left Mississippi State, Arizona State, Purdue, ETSU, and VCU for the final spot. After a deep dive into all five resumes, Arizona State to me stood out due to what they’ve accomplished away from home. The Sun Devils have the most quality Away/Neutral wins out of the bunch, and this is always a key consideration for selection. Especially the final selection. So the Sun Devils win out for now.
- Cincinnatil broke into the field as the new AAC Auto-Bid representative, effectively replacing Tulsa. Cincy had a season-changing win at Wichita State on Wednesday evening and Tulsa got beat at home against UConn, which opened the door for the Bearcats to leap into a share of the conference lead. Since Cincy has beat both of their fellow co-leaders Houston and Tulsa, the Bearcats claim the inside track to the top seed in the AAC Tourney.
New Conference leaders since previous bracket. Represented below as Automatic Bids:
AAC - Cincinnati
Big Sky - Montana
CAA - Charleston
Ivy - Princeton
Bracket projections are based on 2019-20 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.
At-Large Bids Stolen: 1 (Cincinnati)
FIRST FOUR TEAMS OUT: Purdue, Mississippi State, VCU, East Tennessee State
NEXT FOUR TEAMS OUT: Minnesota, NC State, Richmond, Georgetown
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