FIELDING THE 68 SHOW LIVE
Join Us at 5PM ET today for Fielding The 68. Will be a full deep dive into all things NCAA Tournament related and we will field your live questions in the chat.
Begins Live March 3rd at 5 PM ET. The link will work for re-watching purposes as well.
MOCK SELECTION WEEKEND IS HERE!
The festivities began yesterday with a group of six of us beginning to discuss teams and breakdown resumes. 30 teams were voted into the field by the Mock Committee. The meetings will continue throughout the weekend, and on Sunday the group will build a final seed list and bracket.
If you are engrained and want to learn more about the NCAA Selection process, we follow it to the letter of the principles and procedures. Also, taking live questions on the chat as well. We appreciate the support and believe this is an invaluable exercise to gain additional perspectives on NCAA Tournament hopefuls and come to a committee decision.
Here is the link for the YouTube feed, you’ll be able to check out past years on this page as well. The group will begin tonight for Session 2 at 6pm ET. I will be joining a bit later due to our Fielding The 68 Show. Sessions 3 and 4 will be early. 9 AM ET tomorrow and Sunday. Grab some coffee and join us.
TODAY’S FORECAST - BRACKETING
To switch things up today, bracketing is going to take center stage. It is oftentimes where you will see someone struggle to build an acceptable bracket based on the many rules in play. Conference expansion and realignment has caused many to fear that bracket rules will need to be broken or seed lines will need to be compromised.
I am here to share some good news and offer some transparency. I build the bracket each exercise using the NCAA principles and procedures. I also do this for Field of 68’s consensus bracket that you see on social platforms. Happy to report, there haven’t been too many struggles as of yet and I think we should be able to get a clean bracket. BYU was moved down to a 6-seed last year due to Thursday/Saturday only religious rules, but I am sure the committee is doing everything possible to prevent that from happening again.
For anyone less familiar, bracket building begins at the top of the Seed List, and goes in order 1-68. That simple. Auburn will be the top team and head to the South Region and open the tournament in Lexington, then we assign Duke, rinse repeat until we’re done.
We will use today’s bracket to call out a few noteworthy items for every seed line..
1-seeds Auburn (South) and Duke (East) get their preferred locations throughout the tournament. Florida (Midwest) will open the tournament in Raleigh, and Houston (West) opens in Wichita. All teams being sent to their preferred opening weekend destinations and Houston gets the remaining region- West.
2-seeds Fairly simple with Alabama edging out Tennessee, the Vols open the dance in Cleveland and will be in the West Region. These are the third and fourth teams in the bracket from the SEC. By rule, they have to go to the open region where no SEC team is until full. After this, our following SEC teams will have more flexibility. Michigan State (Midwest) gets its preference of Cleveland to start, then Indy for regionals. Wisconsin (South) opens in nearby Milwaukee, and takes the last open region.
3-seed Assignments almost went smooth here. Texas A&M to the preferred South and opening in preferred Wichita. Kentucky gets the Midwest in nearby Indianapolis, Wildcats do have to open in Milwaukee, but not bad overall. Texas Tech (closer to West) opens in Denver and St. John’s (prefer East) gets to start in Providence. Not so fast my friend! Texas Tech and St. John’s had to be flipped because Houston from the Big XII is already in the West, and the East didn’t have a Big XII team. Both teams open in the same cities, but should they make the second weekend its now Tech to Newark and Johnnies to San Francisco.
4-Seeds. Iowa State gets the Midwest and final pod in Denver. Then Purdue takes the East and starts in Providence. Purdue/Oregon could not go to the Midwest or South because of previous assignments of Michigan State and Wisconsin. This is only a rule that applies to the first four teams from the same conference who go into the field on the top four seed lines. Once we begin the 5-seeds this goes away. Finally, we had Arizona go to the South because Houston already has West, Texas Tech has East, and Iowa State took Midwest from the Big XII. Lastly, Oregon gets its natural spot in the West. Both Arizona and Oregon open the tournament in Seattle. It actually looks really clean here for the moment.
5-seeds Maryland was shipped to Denver, due to Purdue already have the 4-seed in Providence. Clemson lands in Providence. Same half of the bracket as fellow ACC-member Duke, but no rule against it. Michigan heads to Seattle as part of the South Region. And Saint May’s gets the natural spot in the West with a path of Seattle, then San Francisco.
The 6-seed line starts with the policies preferring to send Ole Miss away from the SEC if possible, Rebels land in Denver (East Region). That only left the West for Mizzou. Next was Memphis, who preferred Wichita and slots in there. UCLA lands in remaining Milwaukee, opposite Kentucky.
The 7-seed line features the committee’s favorite team, BYU! Since the Cougars are limited to Thursday/Saturday only action, they immediately go to Lexington (East) as the only available option. Marquette looked to avoid Wisconsin (rematch) and Michigan State (2023 NCAA’s) and lands in Cleveland - West Region. Louisville also lands in Cleveland, part of the Midwest. Kansas heads to the South, opening in Milwaukee.
The 8-seed and 9-seed line features three SEC teams plus you have two SEC teams as one seeds. So Nine-seed Vanderbilt ended up in the same pod as Florida. A team they only faced once during the season, so it is a soft rule to make this permissible. 8-seed Mississippi State (East) lands in the Duke pod in Raleigh. 9-seed Georgia (West) lands in the Houston pod in Wichita. Everyone else slotted into place.
10-seed Baylor and West Virginia of the Big XII needed to go to Midwest and West due to two Big XII teams (Kansas and BYU) on the 7-seed line. That left Arkansas and Utah State to find homes. Arkansas played Kansas in the 2023 NCAAT, so they are permissible to place in the same pod with Alabama. Ark-Bama only played once this year. Utah State heads to the South and opens against Kansas in Milwaukee.
The 11-seed line includes one of the play-in games. The Indiana/Xavier game worked best to send the winner to Wichita. The other options were not working due to Big Ten and Big East teams already there. From there VCU, San Diego State, and UC San Diego were assigned in order. Later, we had to replace Xavier with Boise State because Boise State has already played Saint Mary’s before. Moving Xavier to the 12-seed play-in game to face Oklahoma.
The 12-seed line starts with the Xavier/Oklahoma matchup. The committee doesn’t prefer to send a winner to Seattle (far from Dayton), but it was the only solution today because Seattle is a Friday-Sunday site. After this, Drake, McNeese, and Liberty were slotted in order.
The 13-seed line starts with Yale, who is close to Providence (86 miles away). I tend to think the committee will send them farther to avoid the protected seeds. Yale ends up in Denver to face Iowa State. High Point takes advantage and will take that Providence slot. Akron and Lipscomb both have to go to Seattle. Akron played Saint Mary’s this year, so they had to the South and Lipscomb gets the West.
14-seeds were a no-brainer for slotting. Everyone went in order.
15-seeds Robert Morris could not be in the same pod as West Virginia (rematch), so RMU was dealt to Lexington where they face Alabama. All others slotted in nicely, including Omaha staying somewhat regional in Milwaukee.
16-seeds saw Play-in destinations go to Wichita and Raleigh based on dates and proximity to Dayton. SEMO was swapped with Quinnipiac in Dayton to help SEMO avoid a pod with Vanderbilt (rematch). All others fit well.
There you have it! A clean bracket. See, it’s not that crazy. Just need to go one step at a time and consider a bunch of rules. No biggie. Let’s take a look at our work:
BRACKET
FIRST FOUR OUT: North Carolina, UC Irvine, Ohio State, Nebraska
NEXT TEAMS OUT: Wake Forest, San Francisco, SMU, North Texas
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