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This bracket was put together with our preseason JNG Rankings. CLICK HERE FOR THE ENTIRE LIST
Joby Fortson is who puts the rankings together, and he can explain what is going on here better than I can. I did want to emphasize that while we have a preseason ranking that you can see in rank order, for all practical (and even technical) purposes, all teams are starting off at zero. We discovered that for the sake of context, starting everyone out at zero and posting the rankings each week simply created results that were not practical. So, for the first few weeks, Joby draws from a combination of data projections and from the previous season for a better context, but that will quickly be phased out. Soon, all the data that goes into these rankings will be data from the 2021-2022 season.
COMMENT FROM DAVID: Joby made this very difficult for me to bracket!! For starters, he had Oklahoma State on the #7 line, and since they have since been disqualified, I had to move everyone up one spot. That bumped Oklahoma inside the First Four, and Oregon State into the field. This also created three Pac 12 teams in the First Four, which is why Colorado is playing Arizona. Lastly, BYU had to be moved. I don’t know if Joby did this on purpose or not just to make it hard on me, BUT I AM BLAMING HIM FOR IT!!!
COMMENTS FROM JOBY:
Gonzaga is still king in the early rankings as their projections and their performance from 2020-21 where they were in the finals propels them not just on the 1 line but easily the over-all #1 seed. Some teams (cough cough Baylor) are still getting a lot of benefit from a stellar 2020-21 season but in a few weeks that will be a distant memory as soon as all team schedules are “connected.” Nevertheless, I still feel it comes out as a strong preseason assessment that will (hopefully) lead to the JNG once again securing the top spot among formulas for projecting the field. This would make the JNG #1 for 6 of the last 7 seasons (not including 2020 of course) since its creation in 2015.