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.