It’s almost time to discover the brackets. The committee has been busy at work for most of the past few days. They are probably dreaming in S-curves and brackets when they sleep by now. I certainly am.
This afternoon was more like a nightmare for the fans of NC State, Drexel, Dayton, Tennessee and several mid-major dominators that slipped up in their conference tournaments. St. Bonaventure finished off a great run through the Atlantic 10 in Atlantic City by beating Xavier to claim the conference’s automatic bid. Xavier almost certainly is in the field, meaning that some bubble team that had been in the field yesterday is now out. In my opinion, that team is Tennessee.
With the bubble shrinking by one, that also means that a different team will be playing in the First Four next week. And that’s Southern Miss in my bracket, which will slip down to face Drexel in a matchup of 13 seeds.
With Florida State’s victory against North Carolina, I move the Seminoles up to a No. 3 seed and the Tar Heels down to a No. 2 seed. Kansas is a No. 1 seed and so will be the winner of the Michigan State vs. Ohio State game going on as I write this. It wouldn’t shock me to see North Carolina remain a No. 1 seed because they advanced further in conference tournament action than Kansas did. However, that’s a pretty dumb argument for giving a team a No. 1 seed.
North Carolina has seven wins against likely NCAA Tournament teams compared to Kansas’ 11. The Jayhawks have five wins against teams I project to be No. 4 seeds or better; the Tar Heels have only three wins against those teams. Yes, Kansas has a more questionable bad loss at home against Davidson, but the good wins more than make up for that in my opinion. And how bad of a loss is Davidson anyways? The Wildcats are in the tournament, maybe as No. 13 or 14 seed. Both teams should get some extra credit for capturing a regular-season title, but Kansas gets more credit because the Big 12 is a substantially better conference than the ACC this season. The ACC’s top three could go toe to toe with the Big 12’s, but I’ll take Kansas State, Iowa State and Texas over Virginia, NC State and Miami any day of the week.
At the other end, I’ve still got Drexel in the field as the last team to make it. I just don’t see how NC State, Dayton, Tennessee, Northwestern, Arizona or Washington deserves to be in ahead of the Dragons. The CAA isn’t as strong as it has been, but Drexel’s domination has been impressive nonetheless. NC State, Northwestern and the Pac-12 teams lack quality wins. Dayton and Tennessee have too many bad losses. It’s splitting hairs at this point, but that’s what happens with expansion. We have more arguments about the worthiness of mid-major powerhouses that have schedules devoid of quality opponents against power conference middleweights that have schedules devoid of great wins, save maybe one or two good wins. What if Drexel played the same schedule as NC State? What if the Wolfpack played in the CAA?
Speculation doesn’t matter, though. It’s all about what the teams actually did. Give me Drexel and the Dragons’ 27 wins over teams with at least five fewer victories.
Here are the final brackets. Check out how well I did vs. my bracketologist peers when the Bracket Project releases its grades for us later this evening!
