The time has come for the first mid-season bracket forecast. In all transparency, the first full exercise can be the lengthiest. Throughout November, December, and early January, I have a daily board that is tracked with each day’s results. I then perform a guess and check system using tools like KenPom, Torvik, and others to gauge the quality of wins and gather some upfront data to start sorting teams. Per usual here at Bracketeer.Org that is done by tiers to help better illustrate what position a team truly is in for the big picture. Check the Inside The Bracket tab for a full breakdown of the Seed List by tiers.
Once mid-January hits, it becomes time to roll up the proverbial sleeves on all things Bracketology.
That process began last weekend and has been pretty exhaustive, to the point where you are finally reading this today, Thursday. Almost an entire week later!
You may have seen the Top 16 Bracket Reveal on Monday during Halftime of the Purdue-Illinois game. If you missed it, here is where we were then:
As we all know, nothing stays the same in this beautiful sport. So a few things have shifted. Let’s look at the breakdown.
SEED SUMMARY
TOP SEEDS
Auburn comes in as the clear number one overall seed. The Tigers have collected road wins at Alabama and Saint Louis and beat Loyola-Chicago in the Bahamas. Perhaps most impressive is the Tigers’ accumulation of victories with 13 wins in games vs. the top three quadrants which is more than any other team in the country. An away/neutral record of 8-1 is superb as well. Lastly, the Tigers are tops in both resume-based metrics, the KPI and SOR.
The remaining top seeds will stay with Gonzaga, Arizona, and Baylor today. The Zags and Wildcats have done very little wrong and plenty of demolishing of opposition. Gonzaga’s two neutral-court wins over UCLA and Texas Tech provide us with just enough evidence to give them the second of the one-seeds. Baylor holds on for the fourth #1 seed. Despite a troubling week that consisted of two home losses, the Bears were able to bounce back and win at West Virginia on Tuesday. Prior to the losses, Baylor had already established a stellar body of work with wins over Michigan State, Oregon, Iowa State, TCU all away from Waco.
THE REST OF THE TOP 16 OVERALL TEAMS (SEEDS 2-4)
Johnny Davs and the Wisconsin Badger lead the nation with 10 wins over the Top Two Quadrants.
Kansas, Wisconsin, and Purdue are anxiously awaiting someone from the top-line to fall. All three have strong cases to be a 1-seed themselves. Wisconsin has an extraordinary resume brewing, now with a D1 high 10 wins vs. the top two quadrants. Kansas has excellent metrics and no real flaws themselves. And Purdue is coming off a critical double-OT win on the road at Illinois, plus we know that the Boilers have the surplus of talent to stay near the top.
The final two-seed will stay with Villanova for today. The Wildcats, LSU, and Duke all recently lost. Although Villanova’s may have been the most damaging (lost at home), they do boast tough road wins at Xavier and at Seton Hall to go along with their Tennessee win. Those top-end wins away from home are more than what LSU or Duke has to offer.
UCLA and Texas Tech round out the 3-seeds for today. The Bruins have a smaller set of games played due to a Covid pause and cancelations. However, the Bruins still grade out strongly in the predictive metrics. The Red Raiders have more substance with their win at Baylor, over Tennessee on a neutral, and of course over Kansas and Iowa State at home.
The final team to make this cut-off for Top 16 is now Alabama. The Tide has a wide range of mixed results that is headlined by a virtual road win (in Seattle) vs. Gonzaga. Bama defeated LSU at home last night, which gives them even more at the top of their resume. The losses to Davidson, Memphis, and Iona hold them back from getting higher than a four-seed for now.
MIDDLE SEEDS
Davidson Wildcats, fresh off their sweep of the Richmond schools on the road, are scorching hot and winners of their last 14 games in a row.
Each of the five seeds appears to be strong - Kentucky, Ohio State, Providence, and Illinois. They can all make the case to move up to the top four seed lines. The Friars have two massive road wins at Wisconsin and at UConn. However, in those games, Wisconsin’s Johnny Davis and UConn’s Adama Sanogo were both missing. Certainly not Providence’s fault, but will that matter to the committee? Kentucky has unbelievably good predictive metrics (currently 3rd in KenPom and 4th in Sagarin), yet still rank 22nd in Strength of Record. Five-seed feels right for today when it comes to the Wildcats.
On the six-line, we have upstart Marquette! A team that would’ve been a nine-seed on Monday has shot up with the impactful road win at Villanova. The Golden Eagles are scorching hot.
For the seven seeds, the Loyola-Chicago Ramblers landed here. LUC has been a great team to watch and continues to win at a high percentage. A couple of close calls in Overtime at home recently hurt a couple of their metrics, however, the resume is solid here. BYU also lands here and has a really impressive eight wins over the top two quadrants. The Cougars’ big win over Oregon is finally beginning to age well.
On the typically unwelcoming eight and nine seed lines - we have more upstart stories. Headlined by Davidson and Murray State. Hard to find two hotter teams than this. Davidson’s eight true road wins is tied for the most (tied with Auburn) for any team in the top 32.
BUBBLE FORMATIONS
Let’s get real, the bubble is still forming and will look entirely different by March. But don’t be surprised if a few of these teams hang around for the rest of the ride. When it comes to the last five or six teams selected for an at-large bid, the selection process is incredibly detailed and thorough. The committee will spend extra time diving into these teams to look for outliers and disqualifiers.
Today, we have some teams that I believe would be selected and largely because they’ve done no wrong (no losses to teams in Quad 2B or worse) aka a clean resume and have played a decent enough non-conference schedule:
San Diego State
San Francisco
Belmont
Iona (Also in as the Auto-Bid from the MAAC)
Saint Mary’s
North Carolina
On the flip side, history is not on the side of teams with a 275+ NCSOS. That could be big trouble in the examples of Tournament hopefuls like Wake Forest (currently #315 NCSOS per NET) and Texas A&M (currently #264 NCSOS per NET). Others such as TCU (332), Mississippi State (291), Arkansas (282), Boise State (247) Fresno State (252), SMU (318), Minnesota (311), Northwestern (254), Colorado (331), and perhaps UAB (218) have reasons to be concerned. It should be noted that Arkansas, Mississippi State, and TCU will all benefit from a bump up after the B12/SEC Challenge. Again, this is ONLY for seeds 10 and above. I do believe if any of the above play their way firmly into the at-large pool, their seed can greatly improve. The lack of non-conference schedule strength has a lengthy history in keeping teams out of the at-large pool. The aforementioned list of squads likely seems like a surplus of teams for now, however, with time the majority of these teams will either play their way into the field solidly or simply drop off as many are competing in tough conferences.
Belmont Head Coach Casey Alexander would love to see a two-bid OVC in their final year as a conference member.
AUTOMATIC ONE-BID LEAGUES
Annual explanation on how we select the team representatives:
Preseason picks to win the conference tournament remains the rep until they lose and are entirely out of first place in the loss column. You’ll notice NC Central is in today’s bracket because they still have not played a MEAC game (coming Saturday we hope)!
Once the preseason pick has dropped to 2nd place or worse, we then slot in the new conference leader.
In the event of a two-way tie, the head-to-head winner is used. If they haven’t played yet or split the season series, the team with the better resume is the league rep.
In the event of a tie between three teams or more, we’ll go to the best resume if the preseason pick is out of the mix.
Why do all of this maneuvering Rocco, you ask? Two important reasons are the answer.
These shifts serve as a simulation of a real Championship Week bracket exercise. Doing it all season long gets me into that practice and keeps us laser-focused on these leagues. Because these are one-bid leagues, anything can and will happen in their respective conference tourneys. This gives me several different data points to review as the conference races shift and new brackets are built. It’s even more so when the multi-bids have a “bid theif” in first place. In that event, it actually makes the bracket more spicy and enjoyable.
To recognize more programs throughout the run to March! Teams are fighting hard to win their regular-season titles, the least we can do is recognize them by getting them into Bracket updates. We are all about recognizing as many programs as possible around here! Besides, it is not interesting to plug in the same team each time there is a new bracket.
THE BRACKETING PROCESS
In principle, I follow the straight-forward 1-68 S-curve seeding process. This of course was done while following the conference affiliation rules for the top 4-seed lines and the early round rematch policies. It always fascinates me which matchups come together just by following the process to a T. Some of the intriguing matchups that came out of this:
EAST Region: (7) Loyola-Chicago vs. (10) Oklahoma. The Porter Moser Bowl.
MIDWEST Region: (4) Alabama vs. (13) Ohio U. Nate Oats takes on an old MAC rival.
Bracket projections are based on the 2021-22 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.
At-Large Bids Stolen: 0 (Highly Unlikely for future reference)
FIRST FOUR OUT: TCU, St. Bonaventure, Wake Forest, Minnesota
NEXT TEAMS OUT: Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Saint Louis
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