The Big Lead

NCAA Tournament Bracket Breakdown, March 8: Plenty of #1 Seed Drama Heading to Conference Tourney Week

By Jason Lisk

None
facebooktwitter

The regular season is over, concluding with the Maryland-Nebraska game tonight. Plenty remains to be decided, and we already saw some major March Madness this weekend, with Belmont upsetting Murray State with a game-winning three pointer, Dartmouth shocking Yale late to force a Harvard-Yale playoff in the Ivy, and plenty of late bubble drama on Saturday (LSU getting a big late shot to beat Arkansas, for example).

The full bracket projections are below. A couple of notes on some of the issues heading into championship week.

  • Murray State-great run, but do not seem very likely to get an at-large bid after the upset by Belmont. If you are looking for a mid-major that could “steal” a bid from a bigger name, Old Dominion seems like the most likely candidate. ODU has wins over LSU, VCU, and Richmond non-conference (and the only loss was to Illinois State, who just upset Wichita State). The RPI is in the top 40. I’ve got ODU as an 11-seed with the auto bid projection, but if they lose a close one to Louisiana Tech, I think they get an at-large.
  • #1 seeds: Kentucky is a lock. Duke is in great shape because they have the best wins. I currently have Villanova and Virginia next, but there is little margin here. Wisconsin, Arizona, and Kansas, in that order, are lurking if they can win the conference tournament. (Gonzaga would need several upsets).
  • Tiers? The top two seed lines are pretty set. There is still plenty of potential for movement based on conference tourney results in seeds 3 to 6. The teams in the top 9 seeds are pretty safe, but the last eight or so are tight at this point.
  • My teams that just missed the cut, in order: UCLA, Illinois, Texas A&M, Tulsa, Miami, Pittsburgh, Stanford, Richmond, Kansas State. K-State has such a strange profile, because they have played with the best in the Big 12 when at full strength, but it would be unusual for a team right at .500 to make it. If they somehow get to the title game, they could test that.