BRACKET REVEAL PREVIEW - THE TOP 16
Purdue’s road woes continued on Thursday night in College Park, as the Terps handed Purdue its largest defeat of the season, 68-54. The result left the Boilers in some uncharted waters to this point of this season. Boilermakers are clearly behind Alabama in the arms race for #1 overall and now a strong case can be made for Kansas, who has 12 wins over forecasted tournament teams and several strong measurements. That was just enough today to vault the Jayhawks into the second overall position and into their much-preferred region of Kansas City.
Most interestingly, a case can also be made for Houston in comparison to Purdue. UH is basically the Dos Equis Man of the NCAA Selection Process. This is not a first. Playing in the AAC yields fewer opportunities and the chance to really crush the bottom feeders. You take a look at the Cougar profile and you will find a team with two total losses by a combined six total points with one of those against #1 Alabama. You look deeper and you will find the nation’s only perfect road record, 9-0, and a perfect 11-0 in away/neutral opportunities. Houston can easily be much higher than fourth overall, but also lack the volume of wins. For today, we are playing it safe and keeping Purdue as the #3 overall, and Houston fourth. Very curious to see what the committee tells us on Saturday during the reveal.
Houston is 11-0 in road/neutral games, the impressive achievement includes a win on Virginia’s home court.
The two-seed line is also somewhat of a beauty pageant. Texas fell earlier this week at Texas Tech, Tennessee scored an elite home win over Alabama, and the Arizona/UCLA combo handled its business. Baylor is the fifth team fighting to get into this picture. The order of these five could go a lot of different ways when the committee completes its voting. I still like Arizona the most for the five Quad 1A wins and all of those against teams landing on the first six seed lines in the bracket. Texas is our odd team out just due to the volume of six losses combined with slightly worse road performances, and road record. The Bears own the strong wins over UCLA and Gonzaga on neutral courts as well.
The cluster of Marquette, Kansas State, and UConn were difficult to separate. In order to simulate an actual committee exercise, the Golden Eagles are viewed as the Big East champions for now, which certainly gives Marquette a slight boost over the other two. This comp was done for the final three-seed. The Wildcats boast two elite road wins over Texas and Baylor, yet those are the only two significant road wins to date, as K-State is just 2-6 in the eight road games they’ve played in the top two quads. UConn, they have several things to like including metrics. The Huskies have the most room to grow still thanks to a perfect non-conference season. Much like K-State, Connecticut has a 2-5 road record in its tougher tests. Marquette is 3-4 in similar games. A lot was considered here, but in the end, we are rolling with Marquette because they do not have a bad loss (Wisconsin is a tourney team) and they have fewer overall losses than the Huskies and Cats.
The final spots in our Top 16 was not easy. Came down to a trio of Xavier, Miami, or Iowa State. Coming into this I like the way Miami is playing the most of late. However, it is all about the body of work. Unfortunately for the Canes, but they just haven’t had enough road damage to win the comps yet over the Cyclones and Musketeers. In three road games that would’ve moved the needle, Miami fell just short at Duke, at Pitt, and in OT at NC State. That left UNC, UCF, and Clemson as UM’s strongest road wins - which are not easy. However, Xavier has swept UConn and Iowa State has a road TCU win. It was very close between ISU and Miami in the end and I will not be shocked to see Miami’s name in the actual reveal on Saturday, but I’ve elected to go with Iowa State. Xavier is in the 15th overall position for the time being.
There is a catch Cyclones community, the last available destination is Orlando where you will be paired with Miami for a possible second-round matchup.
MID-WEEK SUMMARY
New Conference leaders today represented below as Automatic Bids:
Big East - Marquette (First Place alone)
Big West - UC Irvine (Split with UCSB, stronger resume)
Horizon - Youngstown State (First Place Alone)
IVY - Princeton (First Place alone)
MAAC - Iona (First Place alone)
SoCon - Samford (First Place alone)
New At-Large teams today represented below in the Field of 68:
Wisconsin (First Four)
BRACKET
Bracket projections are based on the 2022-23 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.
Forecasted At-Large Bids Stolen: 0 (Highly Unlikely, Annual Average = 2.3 Bids taken)
FIRST FOUR OUT:
North Carolina
New Mexico
Clemson
Charleston
NEXT FOUR OUT:
Wake Forest
Seton Hall
Oregon
Utah State
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