Bracket Talk v1.12

As the regular season has wrapped up, and some conference tournaments are underway, the time for hypothesizing, projecting, wishing, and hoping is over. For the most part, the field is set. Only a few teams remain on the bubble, and while bid stealers lurk, most of the prognosticating is around seeding and matchups.

I’m going to try and update this daily until Selection Sunday, and keep the format straightforward.

Auto-Bid/Conference Tournament Winners (22)

Bids secured from Single Bid Leagues (10)

• ASUN - Lipscomb

• Big South - High Point

• MVC - Drake

• OVC - SIU Edwardsville

• Summit - Omaha

• SoCon - Wofford

• Sun Belt - Troy

• CAA - UNC Wilmington

• Horizon - Robert Morris

• NEC - Saint Francis

• WCC - Gonzaga (multi-bid league)

Up for grabs tonight (3)

• Big Sky - Northern Colorado vs Montana

• Southland - McNeese St. vs Lamar

• Patriot League - American vs Navy

One-bid league title games coming up (9)

• Saturday

  • ACC (Multi-bid league)

  • America East

  • Big 12 (Multi-bid league)

  • Big East (Multi-bid league)

  • Big West

  • CUSA

  • MAAC

  • MAC

  • MEAC

  • Mountain West (Multi-bid league)

  • SWAC

  • WAC

• Sunday

  • A10 (Bid stealer potential)

  • American (Bid stealer potential)

  • Big Ten (Multi-bid league)

  • Ivy League

  • SEC (Multi-bid league)

At-Large Locks (38)

• A10 (1) - VCU

• ACC (3) - Clemson, Duke, Louisville

• American (1) - Memphis

• Big Ten (8) - Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Oregon, Purdue, UCLA, Wisconsin

• Big 12 (7) - Arizona, BYU, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Texas Tech, West Virginia

• Big East (4) - Creighton, Marquette, St. John’s, UConn

• Mountain West (1) - New Mexico

• SEC (11) - Alabama, Auburn, Florida, UGA, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Missouri, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt

• WCC (2) - Gonzaga, St. Mary’s

Bid Stealers (1)

Right now, I’m holding space for one bid stealer. I don’t see anyone not already in the field winning the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, or SEC titles, and there’s likely 22 conference’s guaranteed to only get a single bid, even if their favorite gets upset. That leaves just three other leagues where we could see bid stealers - the A10, the American, and the MWC.

• A10 - While VCU is the favorite and should have an NCAAT bid locked up, both George Mason and Dayton have had good years and pose a threat to the Rams. Dayton in particular has 3 Q1 wins, and is a program that is no stranger to making the NCAA Tournament.

• American - Do you trust Memphis? They’ve been the runaway best team in the American, but their quality metrics lag (53rd in the country). The Tigers only lost two conference games this year, but both were “lack of focus” type losses to the 7th and 8th ranked teams in the league. A slip up by Memphis likely opens the door for North Texas or UAB to get a bid.

• Mountain West - Boise State (as discussed below) is scratching at the door of the NCAAT as is. Nobody has been dominant in this league this season, but the Broncos along with Colorado State have showed they’re at most a half step behind the leaders.

The Bubble (7)

With 68 bids for the dance, that leaves seven spots left for teams on the bubble. That number will decrease for every multi-bid conference with a bid stealer (team that wins the conference title, but would not have made it as an at-large). How many teams are left in contention for those spots? By my count, nine.

• Arkansas

• Baylor

• Boise State

• Indiana

• Ohio State

• Oklahoma

• San Diego State

• Utah State

• Xavier

Right now, I have Xavier and Boise State as being outside the field.

Bracket Movement

• The big mover from last night is Gonzaga. Picking up two more Q1 wins in the WCC tournament (and securing a conference title) moves them from an 8-seed to a 7-seed, much to the appreciation of 1-seeds everywhere.

• Similarly, the loss moves St. Mary’s down to a 5-seed. I had been bullish getting them to protected seed status, but not pulling off the double or getting that last Q1 win is enough to drop them. There’s a host of teams on the 5-seed line waiting to jump into the top 4. We’ll see who grabs it, but for now I chose Oregon.