Let me explain what it is you’re looking at. This is a CHECKPOINT on CURRENT MERIT. It is not a prediction of where I think the teams will be in March, nor is it necessarily a ranking of how good I think the teams currently are. I’m basically just asking the question how hard would it be for an average team to win the games that these teams have played, and then ranking them based on how they’ve done. This is also what I think the bracket SHOULD look like, not what I think it WILL look like, so if you want a forecast of March, then this is not for you.
OTHERS CONSIDERED: Colorado, Georgetown, Butler, Murray State, Toledo, Iowa State, Maryland, UCLA, Davidson, Creighton, Wofford, Washington, Alabama, North Texas, San Francisco, UCF, Vanderbilt, Kent State, Fresno State, Ole Miss, San Diego, Liberty, Texas State
NOTES ON THE BRACKET
-We are still splitting hairs. The more the season plays out, the more defined things will become, but for now there are teams that are in the top half of the bracket that could arguably be left out altogether, and vice versa.
-I still have Gonzaga on the #1 line despite two straight losses. The reasons are this: They lost to Tennessee on a neutral floor, who is on the #1 line, and to North Carolina in a true road game, who is on the #2 line and who is unbeaten at home. Those are not damaging losses. Duke has not won any games that are as difficult as those two are to win. Not to mention, Gonzaga beat Duke on a neutral floor. I know that the human polls will rank Duke higher because the biggest thing they look at is how recently a team lost. That isn’t how the committee looks at it, though.
-Buffalo is not a protected seed. The reason for that is because their big win at West Virginia suddenly isn’t looking as big as it did at the time. They’re a good team. They also have wins at Southern Illinois and on a neutral floor against San Francisco. Those aren’t protected seed caliber wins, though, and those wins aren’t as good as the ones that the teams who we do have as protected seeds have.
-I love what Belmont has done this year, and they are now the only team with a win at UCLA. They are also the only team that has won at Lipscomb. I don’t think they’ll end up anywhere close to the #5 line because they don’t have the opportunities at the kinds of wins that they’ll need to stay there, but for now I think that’s where they belong in terms of the merit of their resume.
-As bad as the Atlantic Ten has been, VCU and Saint Louis seem to have enough on their resumes to land them inside the bubble at the moment.