FEBRUARY THOUGHTS
Sure, we all know how fun college basketball can be. But February is a month where the dial gets cranked up. Quality teams are fine tuning for March. Separation between teams who are capable of making a run and the more inconsistent will further continue to unfold in front of us. Welcome to an intense month where the stakes become large. Defensive minded coaches are more than willing to muck things up to win games. Several schedules are backloaded into this month due to a plethora of cancellations. So buckle up, and get ready for a wild month.
BRACKET NOTES - Teams are selected, seeded, and bracketed as if today is Selection Sunday.
- The top seven remain unchanged. Houston holds a slim edge over Texas. We welcome Ohio State to the Two-seed line for the first time. The Three-seed line is headlined by Iowa and Illinois, but they were unable to stay in a perfect s-curve on the bracket due to Michigan and Ohio State already being bracketed. That sent Iowa to the Baylor/Alabama loaded region, and sent Illinois to the Villanova/Houston region.
- Oklahoma had a major resume improvement and metrics improvement over the past week. The Sooners also got some help by way of a FSU loss at G-Tech and West Virginia’s loss. The body of work for OU is in better shape at the moment than the Noles or Mountaineers, giving Oklahoma the final fourth-seed.
- Another squad making a big push is the Florida Gators. These same Gators were on the brink of not being in just two weeks ago. Now they’ve won four straight, including impact victories over Tennessee and at West Virginia. Florida is currently a six-seed today.
- Trying to compare Loyola-Chicago (a team with a shaky resume, but unbelievable metrics) to Western Kentucky (a team with strong wins and nice resume, yet shaky metrics) is not easy. But luckily for both programs, teams like Providence, Seton Hall, Marquette, Michigan State and others got out of the way with more losing. So there is enough room to include both teams in this moment of time. Arkansas nabs the final spot in the field. Hogs have good metrics, but no wins yet against anyone in the field. This could become a big problem if the Razorbacks strike-out this month against Mizzou, Florida, Bama, and LSU. The nice thing for Arkansas is that destiny is completely in their hands. Unlike WKU, for example.
- The first four teams out are Utah State, Georgia Tech, VCU, Richmond. Besides the Yellow Jackets, you’ll notice that more non-power league teams as the next to get in. This is occuring mainly because teams like Maryland, Providence, Seton Hall and Penn State are just to close to .500 or under the line. Until the committee says otherwise, I will be forecasting based on needing to be at least two games over .500 against Division I opposition, as history has taught me. Squads like Syracuse and Duke simply need to get more impactful wins away from home to pass the batch of non-power teams.
- Projected Automatic Bid anomalies are gone from the bracket this week. New Mexico State finally got on the court, which was great to see. However, NMSU was thrown into the fire immediately and lost twice at rival Grand Canyon. With Howard continuing to get more postponements, I decided to finally pull the plug and insert 4-0 North Carolina A&T as the MEAC representative.
New Conference leaders today represented below as Automatic Bids:
America East - Vermont
MEAC - North Carolina A&T
NEC - LIU
SoCon - East Tennessee State
Sun Belt - Louisiana
WAC - Grand Canyon
Bracket projections are based on 2020-21 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.
At-Large Bids Stolen: 1 (Conference USA, UAB)
FIRST FOUR TEAMS OUT: Utah State, Georgia Tech, VCU, Richmond
NEXT FOUR TEAMS OUT: Syracuse, Duke, Seton Hall, Maryland
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @roccomiller8