Let me make sure everyone understands what they are looking at. The bracket below is MY personal selections and seedings based on what I THINK it should look like if the season were to end today. This is NOT an attempt to guess what the actual selection committee is going to do. I am not a bracketologist. I cannot guess what a group of ten strangers is going to do or what their reasons will be for doing it. If that’s what you’re interested in, then you should check out Jon Teitel’s latest bracket by CLICKING HERE. He is our Selection Committee Guessing Expert, and he’s better than just about anyone else on the planet at it.
There are comments below the bracket, and then even more comments from some of those on the staff. They will not agree with everything I do, which means that THEY ARE WRONG!!!
OTHERS CONSIDERED: Arizona State, Xavier, UNC Greensboro, Temple, NC State, Memphis, Murray State, Saint Mary’s, UMES (Centenary Award)
-People will want to say I’m a hypocrite. That may or may not be true, but I did select Indiana after beating them up for so long. The reason is that when I looked at their resume and saw all those losses (and there are A TON of them), they don’t have that many losses to teams that are outside the field, and they do have way more wins against the field than anyone else that I left out. It’s not even close. I know their record is bad, but their wins are good and their schedule was rough. Clemson, who I had right behind them, doesn’t have anywhere near the wins at the top of their resume that Indiana has. No one else does either.
-I’ve been beating up UCF a lot this year too. Funny what a road win against a protected seed that’s unbeaten at home can do for you! LSU did not win at Houston. UCF did. So, yeah, that one win of that caliber does make the difference between being out and being a single digit seed.
-I’ve been beating up Auburn all year too, and I actually expected to have them a little higher after they finally beat a solid tournament team this weekend, but when I look at them I just can’t get them any higher than that.
-Washington is in my field as the auto-bid winner, but they would have been in my First Four without the auto-bid. They have no good wins, and the one good thing you could say about them (no bad losses) went out the window when they lost to Cal.
-Every year there are a smattering of schizophrenic teams that are hard to place. This year, we seem to have more than a smattering. There’s Syracuse, Seton Hall, Indiana, Minnesota, Arizona State, Saint John’s, Texas, and to an extent Florida. All of them have very impressive wins (and in some cases even protected seed caliber wins), at the top of their profiles. But, all have multiple losses to mediocre, and even flat out bad, teams. I don’t know what the hell the real committee is going to do with those teams because I don’t even know what I think of those teams!
COMMENTS FROM THE STAFF
From John Stalica:
-Our resident Puppet has been hard on Kansas all year long, yet I’m starting to wonder what kind of historical territory Iowa State is approaching. They are only two games above .500, but appear to be given a protected seed on the basis of wins at Texas Tech, Kansas State and Ole Miss. On the other hand, they have also been swept by Baylor and TCU – that’s the only reason the Horned Frogs are getting a sniff into the field right now. I wonder where the Puppet would seed them if they lose at West Virginia and at home against Texas Tech and end up 9-9.
-The Buffalo v. Wofford debate could be a crucial one come seeding time. A #1 seed would not want anything to do with playing the Terriers in Columbia, South Carolina, but by the same token Buffalo has been red hot the past few weeks themselves after a couple of slip-ups in a league that isn’t nearly as top-heavy as the SoCon is.
-I think one of the reasons Auburn continues to get flagged by the Puppet is a preseason bias – the Tigers were expected to do much better than what they currently are. Auburn doesn’t have many heavyweight or signature wins, but they’ve been far more consistent in beating teams around the bubble than volatile teams like Ohio State, Minnesota, St. John’s and Seton Hall. To me, I’d rather have the Tigers around 8-9 territory.
-While I do laud the Puppet for trying to think outside the box and throw Indiana a bone, I need to see more consistency from them. Beating Michigan State twice will carry some weight, but losing to the likes of Ohio State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern and Rutgers isn’t good. They can’t lose any more regular season games – games at Illinois and at home against Rutgers aren’t gimmies anymore.
-I may vomit saying this, but I’d rather have a schizo Arizona State team in instead of the aforementioned Hoosiers. We knew wins against Kansas, Washington and Mississippi State would carry some weight, but now their win against Utah State is looking more significant as well. The Sun Devils did put together a decent noncon schedule – even more important because of how awful the Pac-12 is this year.