Final Bracketology Projection: Louisville, Arizona State, or St. Mary's?

Here’s the final projection. Just a few swaps as a result of today’s game. The biggest is that, with Davidson’s win, someone had to drop. I had St. Mary’s and Louisville in that final First Four game. After plenty of reflection, I dropped St. Mary’s, because of the only win against a tourney team being at Gonzaga, and the major conference losses to Washington State and Georgia being costly. St. Bonaventure slides into Dayton, while Davidson gets an auto bid and is also an 11 seed.

Louisville may not make it. Plenty will say — they didn’t win the big games, who did they beat? The RPI is in the Top 40 and they would be the best RPI to miss for a power conference. I’m taking a chance on history not being made.

When I run similar teams in my database (Louisville was 0-8 against Top 25, 3-11 against Quad 1, but no bad losses), I get 9 of 10 teams that got in as at-larges, often to the surprise of people on selection day because they didn’t get enough big wins. Those include Georgia in 2011, Texas and NC State in 2012, NC State in 2014, Texas and UCLA in 2015, and USC in 2016.

Here is my field: