For Chad Sherwood’s UTR Game of the Day – CLICK HERE
-OLE MISS AT KENTUCKY (SEC). With most of the ranked teams out of the way, Kentucky begins the easier portion of their schedule in the SEC.
-ARKANSAS AT GEORGIA (SEC). Arkansas is in the rankings and is having a good year, but they traditionally have not played well on the road, and this Georgia team is unbeaten at home. If Georgia wins, it won’t be an upset.
-EAST CAROLINA AT CINCINNATI (American). Cincinnati does not have a large margin for error due to the lack of quality win opportunities in the AAC.
-WESTERN MICHIGAN AT AKRON (MAC). Both teams are probably outside the bubble, but both come in at 9-4 in what is shaping up to be a very competitive and exciting MAC this year.
-MARQUETTE AT GEORGETOWN (Big East). Both teams need this one, but Marquette needs it a whole lot more.
-MICHIGAN AT PENN STATE (Big Ten). Both teams need this one, but….well….both teams need this one.
-CONNECTICUT AT SOUTH FLORIDA (American). If UConn does not win this game they will need to improve just to get to the level of being in bad shape. In other words, they’ll be in worse than bad shape if they don’t win.
-SAINT LOUIS AT GEORGE WASHINGTON (Atlantic Ten). I really like this GW team. For the second year in a row they’re good, and for the second year in a row no one is really paying attention to them.
-VILLANOVA AT SAINT JOHN’S (Big East). The Johnnies are good, but they face the real possibility of starting off 0-3 in conference play despite being ranked. Nova is still looking to earn a #1 seed.
-OKLAHOMA STATE AT IOWA STATE (Big Twelve). Both teams have looked pretty good. Perhaps Oklahoma State has been a little underappreciated, but if they get a road win like this one that will change.
-OHIO STATE AT MINNESOTA (Big Ten). Both teams are good, but both need to improve their profiles, so there is a sense of urgency to this game despite it being early.
-PROVIDENCE AT BUTLER (Big East). If Providence wants to land safely inside the bubble then this is the kind of game that they’re going to have to win.
-TEXAS A&M AT ALABAMA (SEC). Neither team has done anything spectacular, but both have bloated records so it’s worth paying attention to.
-NEW MEXICO AT SAN DIEGO STATE (Mountain West). This is a down year for the Lobos, but they’re still a respectable 10-4 and San Diego State has shown they are beatable. Both teams need to improve their resumes, and to do that they need to win games like this.
-MORGAN STATE AT SAINT MARY’S. Buy game.
Bracket Projections: January 5th
Chad Sherwood built the following bracket….
For our latest Bracket Racket: CLICK HERE
BRACKET NOTES
– This is the bracket through games of Sunday, January 4, 2015. For the most part, this bracket is based on how teams have performed to date. No projections are made as to the outcomes of future games, other than the team that has the best resume to date in each conference is deemed to be the automatic bid winner (even if they do not currently have the best record in the conference). Honestly, I have ever been able to figure out why so-called “Bracketologists” that claim they know everything about college hoops simply choose the first place teams from each conference for the automatic bid winner — are they too lazy to take 2 minutes and figure out which team is in fact the best on the league, and thus the team most likely to receive its automatic bid? With so many conferences having unbalanced league schedules, conference record (especially this early in the season) is an almost a meaningless stat and should never be the criteria for projecting a field.
– The ACC ended up leading the way with 8 bids, followed by the Big 12 with 7 and the Big East with 6.
– Oregon is on the 12 seed line while the NC State/UNLV play-in game is on the 11 line. This was done because of bracketing problems resulting from BYU being in the First Four and the requirement that at least one of the two at-large vs at-large First Four games go to a Friday-Sunday site. Since that couldn’t be the BYU game, and I don’t believe the committee would send a First Four winner all the way out to Seattle, the only choice left was to move them up to the 11 line and drop Oregon down. In addition, NC State got UNLV instead of Xavier due to a shift among the First Four teams because the committee would not repeat the same matchup from last season’s First Four.
– The SEC getting four teams in, all above the First Four, kind of shocked me at first, but Arkansas has a good profile, LSU has a very good win at West Virginia and South Carolina now has a very good neutral court win over Iowa State. None of the these teams has any awful losses on their profiles, which made them better than the rest of the teams being evaluated at the bottom of the field.
– NC State, Xavier, BYU and UNLV were the last four teams in. None of them truly deserve a bid, but again they were better than anyone else for now. UNLV’s resume is particularly weak, but at this point in the season one big win can propel a team into a bracket projection, and they definitely have that with the win over Arizona.
– In no particular order, the next seven teams out were Cincinnati, Georgia Tech, TCU, Providence, Minnesota, UTEP and Georgia. In fact, Providence was the very last team left out, and it was a very close call between the Friars and UNLV.
– As always, I love to see some of the matchups created here purely by application of the bracketing rules. The 8/9 games between Temple-Syracuse and George Washington-Georgetown are particularly appealing. Also, Kentucky and Louisville being the top two seeds in the Midwest Region with a chance to meet again is interesting..though we know how painful those games can be to watch.