Bracket Notes:
Another thrilling weekend of basketball is now behind us. Where did the season go? Seriously. In a few short days, we will have part one of Championship Week tipping off. It is always a bittersweet time of year. It doesn’t get better than the excitement of postseason College Basketball come March, but is also hard to say goodbye to hundreds of teams that we’ve been tracking since the offseason. It’s always hard to say goodbye to each team, but this is why we love college hoops!
We witnessed six of the top eleven teams lose over the weekend from Friday’s update. The aftermath from those results allowed Seton Hall to climb into the 2-seed position. The Pirates had another big road win, at Marquette to seize the opportunity.
Speaking of big road wins, Michigan State really took it to Maryland on their home floor on Saturday. The Spartans led virtually from wire-to-wire and put themselves in position to be a top four seed today.
The 5-seeds are completely full of Big Ten teams, thanks in part to Colorado losing twice last week to create some additional room. The Wisconsin Badgers have simply played their way into the fifth seed after winning at Michigan last week and adding a win over Minnesota yesterday. For this to actually work within the bracketing rules and procedures, a potential second round pairing of the lone Big Ten 4-seed Michigan State and Ohio State was done intentionally. The Buckeyes and Spartans only play once on the regular season schedule, so this is still an option for the committee in an extreme scenario. Having a single conference occupy an entire seed line, qualifies as an extreme scenario in my book.
Virginia is finally beginning to emerge from a pack of mid-seeded teams (8-10) after holding on to a quality home win over Duke. The Cavs are well above .500 in the top two and top three quadrants which begins to stand out more and more when compared to some of the more mediocre power conference resumes in their seed range.
Oklahoma has gone from not selected in a bracket exercise here just ten days ago, to feeling really safe. How? The Sooners have positioned themselves as the highest 10-seed after a crucial win in Morgantown over a struggling West Virginia program and a critical win over Texas Tech at the beginning of last week.
Northern Iowa clinched the outright Missouri Valley regular-season Championship on Saturday. Their victory came on the road at Drake and propelled the Panthers up to #37 in NET at printing time. UNI now rests as the final 10-seed. Arch Madness begins this weekend and will contain great drama as always!
The final at-large bids today were not easy to forecast. It came down primarily to selection history and lessons learned from past committees. As it stands today, history is not on Stanford or Rutgers side for a final bid selection. The Cardinal are stuck with a NCSOS of 215. They likely need to be at least a couple of places inside the bubble to warrant selection. For the Scarlet Knights, I cannot envision a selection happening after not getting a single Q1/Q2 away win to date. They have one more shot before the Big Ten Tournament. Rutgers remains out of the projected field for now.
Utah State, Richmond, and Cincinnati claimed the last three selections. Keep in mind, I did not project any bid steals today, so this scenario is pretty unrealistic come Selection Sunday. My overall intuition tells me that the Atlantic 10 and MWC deserve a second team, although there is no rule saying this has to happen. Each league has a top five team (SDSU and Dayton), but no guarantees for an additional team. The Spiders have a more lucrative win over Wisconsin (hot of late) to accompany their win at URI. Cincinnati has four wins within the bubble (all against AAC teams), so I’m cautiously going with the Bearcats for the final selection. Check out the entire Big Board to get a good snapshot of the selection picture. From UCLA (current 11-seed) all the way through Texas (6th team out), my expectation is most of this will play its way out. Bid steals and quality wins away from home will help assist on who the final deserving selections belong to.
New Conference leaders since previous bracket. Represented below as Automatic Bids:
AAC - Houston
Big Sky - Montana
MAC - Akron
NEC - Robert Morris
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: 0 (Highly Unlikely)
FIRST FOUR TEAMS OUT: Stanford, Rutgers, Rhode Island, Mississippi State
NEXT FOUR TEAMS OUT: Memphis, Texas, Purdue, Alabama
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @roccomiller8