With Feast Week now in the books along with a month’s worth of games, it is time for our colleague John Stalica to come up with a weekly bracket. Like the Puppet before him, this is not a guess as to how the committee will ultimately act, but rather current merit. And without further ado:
There are a number of teams that helped themselves in the exempt tournaments, and then there’s Michigan. There were a lot of question marks for the Wolverines coming into this season, but they beat Iowa State, North Carolina AND Gonzaga down in Atlantis (and also had a nice home win against Creighton prior to this). Michigan went from unranked to #4 in the polls as a result, but I’d argue no one else has done more.
Louisville is the current #1 team in the polls, although I think their paper is just a bit behind Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. It was a close call between Maryland and Louisville, but I give the slightest of edges to the Terps for now.
Ohio State may be rated a little low, but they’ve played nothing but home games through November. Their first true road game comes at North Carolina this week, and then they get a pesky Penn State team at home for their conference opener. Playtime is over for the Buckeyes.
COMMENTS FROM DAVID. It’s back!! It’s December, which means we all take turns posting our own brackets each week based on what we THINK the field SHOULD look like. We’re not trying to actually guess the Committee. Jon Teitel does that, and he’s way better at it than any of us, so we just post what we think it should be.
And of course, some of what Stalica thinks is wrong!
-He’s got Kansas on his #2 line. He’s got Dayton, who’s only loss was in overtime to Kansas and who beat two pretty decent teams down in Maui prior to playing Kansas, on his #8 line. I don’t see how anyone who watched Dayton and Kansas play all three games down in Maui could think that six lines separate the two.
-I do agree that Louisville shouldn’t be on the #1 line. At least not yet. I’m not entirely sure I’d even have them on the #2 line. At least not yet. Their best win is on the road at Miami FL, who probably isn’t even an NIT team at the moment. If they get out there and beat Michigan and Kentucky and win some games of that caliber, then yeah, they’ll belong on the top two lines. But as of now they haven’t done any real heavy lifting yet, and even had to sweat out a home game against Akron last week.
-I strongly applaud the inclusion of DePaul on the #6 line. If anything a strong case could be made that they belong even higher than that.
-Michigan as the overall #1 also makes sense. Not only have they done more than anyone else, I don’t think anyone else has really come close. Two double digit wins against top ten teams on a neutral floor. There are teams who make runs to the Final Four and don’t manage two wins that are as good as that.