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TONIGHT’S HIGHLIGHTED GAMES
-NOTRE DAME AT NORTH CAROLINA (ACC). Notre Dame has a bloated record and has looked pretty good, but this is by far their toughest test of the year up to this point. Both teams are in the rankings, and both appear to be tournament bound, so it’s a chance to add a quality conference win to the profile.
-WEST VIRGINIA AT TEXAS TECH (Big Twelve). WVA has been impressive this year. It’s never easy to win on the road, and although this won’t be either, it is still one of their more winnable conference road games.
-TEXAS STATE AT GEORGIA STATE (Sun Belt). If Georgia State wins out they may have a shot at landing inside the bubble, but anything short of that and they’re likely needing the automatic bid.
-INDIANA AT MICHIGAN STATE (Big Ten). Indiana has looked more impressive than expected so far, and Michigan State has been more disappointing than expected. It’s a big game for both teams.
-WRIGHT STATE AT GREEN BAY (Horizon League). Green Bay has a shot at an at-large if they win out, but anything short of that and they’ll really be cutting it close.
-OKLAHOMA AT TEXAS (Big Twelve). This is the first edition of the Red River Shootout. It’s a conference rivalry between two ranked teams, so it should be fun.
-NEBRASKA AT IOWA (Big Ten). Iowa is having a much better year than expected, and Nebraska is doing much worse. Nebraska has not looked like an NCAA Tournament team at any point this year, and they need a win like this to turn things around. Iowa, on the other hand, has looked very good.
-SELA AT SFA (Southland). Even winning out for SFA may not be enough, but they should at least get a look if they run the table in league play.
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.