It’s finally here! After months of games, the bracket will finally be revealed later today. For basketball fans, today is like Christmas morning. The committee let us open one present early on Saturday by announcing the top 16 seeds in alphabetical order. This caused a small shake-up in the bracket, and that’s before we even got to the upsets in our conference championship games.
We will start at the top and work through some of the key points that led to the shape of this bracket:
With the committee’s announcement of their top 16, we saw Minnesota receive a hosting spot while Maryland was left out. I’ve had Maryland as my No. 16 overall seed and Minnesota at No. 17, but the committee put the Gophers ahead of the Terrapins. With this change, the two Big Ten teams just switched places in my projection, with Maryland going to West Virginia for the first weekend.
Saturday also saw eight conference championship games, and we had some drama. Two No. 6 seeds, Missouri State and UTSA, defeated No. 1 seeds in their respective conference tournaments. The Bears slot in as a No. 14 seed while the Roadrunners come in as a No. 15 seed. The other upset was No. 4 seed Southern winning the SWAC, and they come in as a No. 16 seed.
The biggest beneficiaries of Friday’s results were Missouri State, UTSA, and Richmond. The Bears and Roadrunners both pulled upsets over the heavily favored No. 1 seeds in their conference tournaments and punched their ticket to the big dance. Richmond watched Princeton win Ivy Madness, which kept the Ivy League from being a two-bid league and kept the Spiders in the projected field of 68.
Sunday’s Games with the greatest impact
- Holy Cross vs Lehigh, Patriot Championship
- Fairleigh Dickinson vs Long Island, NEC Championship
- Charleston vs Hofstra, CAA Championship
- Murray State vs Evansville, MVC Championship
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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.
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
