Bracketology. Here we are for another ride. Year #9 for me publically breaking down brackets and working for those elusive answers from Selection Committee members. The fun of thinking through endless scenarios within the infrastructure of unbalanced College Basketball scheduling began many months ago. Now it is time to reveal these thoughts.
We begin the 2020 campaign by looking at the projected one-bid leagues. One-Bid leagues are quite possibly my favorite and most frustrating part of doing Bracket work. I believe these leagues are not only intriguing to follow but in many cases overlooked by the committee when it comes to seeding. It is hard to imagine many or any debates between teams like Colgate, Gardner-Webb, and Bradley getting a 14 or a 15 seed in the committee room for example, but that is actually a pretty big deal for those leagues and the schools itself (it also can ding guys like me on Bracket Matrix scoring). The scales have been also tipped in more recent seasons for these leagues to not be able to schedule many or any opportunities for quality wins and it is increasingly more and more difficult to send more than one team to the dance from these 22 conferences specifically. Last season we saw breakthroughs with Buffalo, Wofford, Belmont all being inside the bubble and providing a two-bid opportunity for the MAC, SoCon, and OVC respectively. Only the OVC capitalized with Murray State winning the Auto Bid. We can only hope to find three leagues in this position in 2019-20. But it is really hard to predict where they will come from.
Many of my peer bracketologists will look at these leagues very quickly, and assume “okay this team is picked first” or “this team is currently in first” and just plug them into the bracket accordingly. Admittedly, once we get into conference play I do change my projections to reflect the league champion in each league based on who has the inside track to the Conference Tournament #1 seed. It also works as an agent to recognize more programs throughout the season instead of just plugging in the same team every new bracket post.
For preseason purposes however, I believe it is more effective and thoughtful to predict both outcomes: The Regular Season Conference Champion and the Conference Tournament Champion. Not all tournaments are created equal, FAR from it. Some are on campus, some are in neutral locations and the bracket format varies tremendously from league to league. For these reasons, I have two sets of predictions and the Auto Bid winners will be applied to my upcoming Preseason Bracket. For extra fun, I’ve also added a Darkhorse team to track this year and Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year picks for each conference.
One-Bid League Predictions: