Tuesday saw three teams punch their tickets to the big dance, with the Horizon League, West Coast Conference, and Mountain West Conference having their tournament championships. There will not be a lot of movement in the bracket between now and Friday when Ivy Madness starts. All the higher seeds won on Tuesday, so the projected bracket remains the same as yesterday.
We will start at the top and work through some of the key points that led to the shape of this bracket:
No changes in the bracket at all.
The biggest beneficiaries of Tuesday’s results were Green Bay, Gonzaga, and Colorado State. The Phoenix, Bulldogs, and Rams all won their respective conference championships and will wait to hear their name called on Selection Sunday.
Wednesday’s Games with the greatest impact on the bracket
- Idaho vs Montana State, Big Sky Championship
Bracketology methodology
Here are some basic bracket rules that help influence my bracket:
- The top four seed lines in each region shall be from different conferences unless a conference has more than four teams in the top 16 (making this rule impossible to follow, as is the case with the SEC and Big 10 in my bracket).
- Teams from the same conference shall not be projected to meet until the Elite Eight if they met three times during the regular season, or the Sweet 16 if they met twice. Because we don’t know what will happen in conference tournaments, I am assuming every conference team will face each other one more time than what is on their schedule. I was able to keep conference teams apart until the Elite Eight.
- In order to comply with bracket rules, it is acceptable to move a team up or down one seed line. I did not have to do that with this bracket.
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Bracket Breakdown
Multi-Bid conferences
- Big Ten: 12
- SEC: 10
- ACC: 9
- Big 12: 8
- Big East: 2
- Atlantic 10: 2
Last four in:
- Virginia
- Nebraska
- Arizona State
- Richmond
First four out:
- BYU
- North Dakota State
- Utah
- Mississippi State
Next four out:
- Stanford
- Kansas State
- Texas A&M
- Indiana
Next Update: March 12th
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