Today is the final day to make NCAA tourney predictions: Selection Sunday! HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel correctly picked 67 of the 68 teams that made the 2023 tourney with 65 of his 67 within 1 spot of their actual seed, including 53 right on the money. He will spend the upcoming hours predicting which 68 teams will hear their names called tonight. See below for his list of who should make the cut and if you agree or disagree then feel free to tweet us. To see how he stacks up with other websites (ranked 11th out of 174 entries over the past 5 years), check out: www.bracketmatrix.com
*FINAL VERSION WILL BE POSTED BETWEEN 5&6PM EDT
SEED: TEAM (CONFERENCE) 1: Connecticut (Big East): AUTO-BID 1: Purdue (Big 10) 1: Houston (Big 12) 1: North Carolina (ACC)
15: Western Kentucky (C-USA): AUTO-BID 15: South Dakota State (Summit): AUTO-BID 15: Long Beach State (Big West): AUTO-BID 15: Longwood (Big South): AUTO-BID
16: St. Peter’s (MAAC): AUTO-BID 16: Stetson (Atlantic Sun): AUTO-BID 16: Montana State (Big Sky): AUTO-BID 16: Howard (MEAC): AUTO-BID 16: Grambling (SWAC): AUTO-BID 16: Wagner (NEC): AUTO-BID
1ST 4 OUT Providence (Big East) Seton Hall (Big East) St. John’s (Big East) Virginia (ACC)
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We’ve seen a ton of carnage in the conference tournaments this week, and we saw some more huge surprises today as NC State knocked of North Carolina in the ACC Championship, Oregon won the Pac 12, and Florida Atlantic fell to Temple in the American. We go through all the conference championship games, and take a look ahead to the final day of Championship Week.
Note from Stalica: There will be a record 21 conference champions that were not the #1 seed in their respective conferences. None of the five conferences playing on Sunday will even feature a #1 seed in the championship games.
BIG TEN CHAMPIONSHIP:
SEC CHAMPIONSHIP:
ATLANTIC 10 CHAMPIONSHIP:
IVY LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP:
AMERICAN CHAMPIONSHIP:
And for all you radio lovers, below is an audio only version of the show…
NOTE: At the time this article was posted, the WAC Championship between Grand Canyon and Texas-Arlington was still in progress; hence both teams being placed on the master seed list. This list has since been updated to reflect Grand Canyon winning this game.
As for tonight, our first order of business was to finish adding teams to our at-large board. We had the Big 10 open up a spot by virtue of Illinois and Nebraska advancing to the title game; we also had the SEC open up thanks to Auburn and Florida advancing to their title game. At this point in time, we prepared to add two teams to the at-large column. Each committee member voted for their top six teams still Under Consideration (except carryover teams Texas A&M and Oklahoma). In this round of voting, Michigan State, Virginia, Colorado and Indiana State were added to the nomination board. These teams were ranked 1 through 6 by each committee member; the two teams added to the board were Michigan State and Texas A&M. Virginia, Colorado and Indiana State were carryovers; Oklahoma was booted back to the Under Consideration board after missing the cut on back-to-back ballots.
We repeated the same process for adding two more contingency teams; these spots would open up depending on how the ACC and Pac-12 conference tournaments played out. This time, Oklahoma, Providence and Grand Canyon (assuming they needed an at-large) were added to the nomination board with the three carryover teams. In the final round of voting, Colorado and Indiana State were named as the contingency teams.
At this point, we went back to the task of building the remaining master seed list. We had seeded up to 76 teams on our master seed list because we had potential bid thieves like VCU, Duquesne, UAB and Temple that needed to be placed on the seed list. Just as we were finishing the master seed list, there were two monster upsets that made the contingency picks of Colorado and Indiana State meaningless; NC State pulled off the amazing feat of winning 5 games in 5 days to win the ACC Championship and Oregon also stole the automatic bid in the last-ever Pac-12 Championship!
Our final task was to do an initial scrub of the master seed list; each committee member could make motions to move teams up and down the seed list as necessary. At the time this article was written, the list was reduced to 72 teams; this will go down to 71 after the WAC Championship goes final. Our last four teams in the at-large field ended up being St. John’s, Florida Atlantic, Texas A&M and Seton Hall. Our first four teams out were Colorado, Indiana State, Virginia and Oklahoma.
Tomorrow will be the final day of our Selection Committee meetings; we will do one final scrub of the master seed list and potentially entertain motions to move teams off of the at-large board and revote a team (or teams) into the field. There will likely be two brackets that will be made based on the championship game in the American – one bracket will feature UAB as the auto-bid winner and the other bracket will feature Temple as the auto-bid winner. Come back tomorrow afternoon and see what our final bracket (or brackets) will be at that time!
Conference tournaments are about basketball but also so much more: the fans, parents, bands, cheerleaders, etc. The ACC Tournament is taking place this week in Washington, DC, and we could not be more excited to be there in person! HoopsHD will be covering all the angles so you can look forward to an abundance of articles in the days ahead. Jon Teitel continues our coverage with a recap of tonight’s ACC title game.
I finished on a high note with the food: street tacos/street corn…both delicious. Let’s tip it off:
NC STATE-NORTH CAROLINA The crowd is mostly blue but there are plenty of patches of red and are all hyped for tonight’s title game:
North Carolina is the heavy favorite, as NC State is the 10 seed and has not won this tourney since 1987 (when they had a 68-67 win over UNC at the Capital Centre in Landover, MD). After some inconsistent performances earlier this week it was exciting to see all the stars show up big in the 1st half. For the Wolfpack it was their 180-pound DJ (Horne) who made a ton of jump shots and a 3 from the top of the key and their 275-pound DJ (Burns), who not only dominated in the lane but also knocked down the 1st 3-PT shot of his career (he had been 0-9!). The Tar Heels turned to their own dynamic SR duo with RJ Davis making a trio of trifectas (including 1 of the step-back variety followed by a stare-down of the NC State bench) and Armando Bacot scoring plenty of points in the paint. It looked like they would come up just short in the 1st stanza but thanks to a Cormac Ryan corner 3 at the buzzer they held a 40-39 lead at halftime.
Different half, same star-power in the 2nd stanza. Bacot made layups/dunks (finishing with a double-double), Davis made everything else (finishing with a team-high 30 PTS), but it was simply not enough. Horne eventually fouled out but not before converting an old-fashioned and new-fashioned 3-PT play en route to a team-high 29 PTS, while Burns kept backing down Bacot in the post before sinking shots around the hoop (and earning tourney MVP honors). When the confetti settled NC State somehow had won 5 games in 5 days including the final 1 by the score of 84-76 to win its 1st ACC tourney title in 37 years and secure a spot in the field on Selection Sunday. No postgame press conference but check back tomorrow for my best photos from the postgame celebration…but see below for a sneak preview:
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We are only 1 day away from Selection Sunday as we continue to make our NCAA tourney predictions. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel correctly picked 67 of the 68 teams that made the 2023 tourney with 65 of his 67 within 1 spot of their actual seed, including 53 right on the money. He will spend the upcoming days predicting which 68 teams will hear their names called on March 17th. See below for his list of who would make the cut if they picked the field today and if you agree or disagree then feel free to tweet us. To see how he stacks up with other websites (ranked 11th out of 174 entries over the past 5 years), check out: www.bracketmatrix.com
SEED: TEAM (CONFERENCE) 1: Purdue (Big 10) 1: Connecticut (Big East) 1: Houston (Big 12) 1: North Carolina (ACC)
The Hoops HD Selection Committee – Saturday, March 16th
NOTE: At the time this article was posted, the WAC Championship between Grand Canyon and Texas-Arlington was still in progress; hence both teams being placed on the master seed list. This list has since been updated to reflect Grand Canyon winning this game.
As for tonight, our first order of business was to finish adding teams to our at-large board. We had the Big 10 open up a spot by virtue of Illinois and Nebraska advancing to the title game; we also had the SEC open up thanks to Auburn and Florida advancing to their title game. At this point in time, we prepared to add two teams to the at-large column. Each committee member voted for their top six teams still Under Consideration (except carryover teams Texas A&M and Oklahoma). In this round of voting, Michigan State, Virginia, Colorado and Indiana State were added to the nomination board. These teams were ranked 1 through 6 by each committee member; the two teams added to the board were Michigan State and Texas A&M. Virginia, Colorado and Indiana State were carryovers; Oklahoma was booted back to the Under Consideration board after missing the cut on back-to-back ballots.
We repeated the same process for adding two more contingency teams; these spots would open up depending on how the ACC and Pac-12 conference tournaments played out. This time, Oklahoma, Providence and Grand Canyon (assuming they needed an at-large) were added to the nomination board with the three carryover teams. In the final round of voting, Colorado and Indiana State were named as the contingency teams.
At this point, we went back to the task of building the remaining master seed list. We had seeded up to 76 teams on our master seed list because we had potential bid thieves like VCU, Duquesne, UAB and Temple that needed to be placed on the seed list. Just as we were finishing the master seed list, there were two monster upsets that made the contingency picks of Colorado and Indiana State meaningless; NC State pulled off the amazing feat of winning 5 games in 5 days to win the ACC Championship and Oregon also stole the automatic bid in the last-ever Pac-12 Championship!
Our final task was to do an initial scrub of the master seed list; each committee member could make motions to move teams up and down the seed list as necessary. At the time this article was written, the list was reduced to 72 teams; this will go down to 71 after the WAC Championship goes final. Our last four teams in the at-large field ended up being St. John’s, Florida Atlantic, Texas A&M and Seton Hall. Our first four teams out were Colorado, Indiana State, Virginia and Oklahoma.
Tomorrow will be the final day of our Selection Committee meetings; we will do one final scrub of the master seed list and potentially entertain motions to move teams off of the at-large board and revote a team (or teams) into the field. There will likely be two brackets that will be made based on the championship game in the American – one bracket will feature UAB as the auto-bid winner and the other bracket will feature Temple as the auto-bid winner. Come back tomorrow afternoon and see what our final bracket (or brackets) will be at that time!