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The seedlist was built entirely from our own JNG Rankings, which you can look at and read about by CLICKING HERE. Joby Fortson will now be updating these daily, so be sure and continue to check it out throughout the season.
-If you see a number in parenthesis, it indicates that a team’s seed needed to be moved up or down due to bracketing rules.
NOTES AND COMMENTS FROM JOBY FORTSON:
As mentioned this is the JNG bracket as it stands right now. The key is that it is solely based on what teams have done THIS YEAR. That means we have an unusual number of under the radar and non-P5 teams scattering the bracket because of what they actually have accomplished compared to some of their P5 counterparts. Let’s focus on some of these teams as well as the top of the bracket.
If you had said a bracket preseason would have 1 seeds of Purdue, Arizona UConn and Marquette that would not sound unreasonable. Especially when you consider Marquette is there because they beat preseason #1 and present 2 seed Kansas and Purdue beat Marquette. Meanwhile, Arizona walked into Cameron and gave the Blue Devils, who are still a protected seed, their first loss at home to a non conference foe in several years. Oh and the defending national champs still have not lost and beaten tournament level teams Texas and Indiana away from home.
Some notable protected seed teams include James Madison as a 3 after beating Sparty in East Lansing, undefeated Colorado State as a 3 (yes the formula does not discriminate against Mountain West teams) for its win agains Creighton on a neutral court, and Bradley as a 3 for its undefeated 6-0 record all against the top 200 and 4 top 100 wins half of which were away from home. Finally, it is time to tweak Teitel for Princeton’s great representation of the Ivy as their 6-0 record is comprised of FIVE games away from home including top 100 Rutgers.
Eight Big XII teams make the field. It is not quite as impressive in years past where that would be 80% of the league but even so it is over half and Houston, BYU, and Cincinnati are proving good early additions helping that number. Three Big XII teams sit in the top 2 seed lines with Baylor joining the aforementioned Houston and Kansas squads. The SEC comes next with 7 teams followed by the ACC and Big Ten with 6 apiece. Despite Arizona doing the job it is notable the Pac-12 has been poor in the non conference and only provides 2 teams with Colorado as a 10 joining the #2 overall Wildcats.
Chattanooga is your last team in as an at large giving the SoCon two teams with Western Carolina. Chattanooga’s win over Louisville thus is not an indictment on the Cardinals our reigning Stallings Award winner. Likewise undefeated Western Carolina also got a nice win over the ACC basement by taking out Notre Dame.