Ramblings from the Ultimate Sports Sentimentalist

Now that the Super Bowl is over, it’s offically time to start dreaming about March.  That means it’s also time for me to publish my first edition of Brad-ketology for the 201e season (my personal NCAA/NIT bracket projections).  Brad-ketology is a little different than other NCAA tourney predictors in that it is much more expansive, as it also includes the NIT field and bubble.  It is also one of the columns used in the nationally-recognized bracket project  which seeds NCAA teams by taking an average of the most prominent bracket projections in the country.  My brackets over the past  three seasons rank as the 12th most accurate out of the 65 “bracket veterans” featured on the site.

The teams below are displayed below on an S-curve, so they are ranked from left to right within each seeding line.  The italicized teams are ones predicted to win their conference tourney and gain an automatic bid to the dance.  For the conferences who currently have NCAA tourney teams, it is assumed that one of those teams will win their conference tourney.  If not, then a stolen bid would result, and the number of at-large bids would drop.

Also, just to clarify, my bracket projection is intended to project the NCAA Tournament field if it was chosen today.  Unlike some bracketologists, I am not trying to predict how each team will finish the season and then seed the teams based on that.  There is one slight exception to this rule, however, and that is that I have always chosen to award the projected automatic bid for each conference to my projected best team in that conference, and not the team who is currently leading the conference standings.  For example, most bracket projections currently have Norfolk State or NC Central in the NCAA Tournament with an automatic bid for the MEAC because they are currently tied atop the conference standings.  However, Savannah State has the best tourney resume in the conference, so I am predicting them to win the league.  Given how unbalanced conference schedules are, it just seems like common sense to project that the best team in a conference will win the league championship, not the squad currently in first place.

Brad-ketology columns will be published at least twice a week (typically on Mondays and Fridays) and more often than that when it gets closer to tourney time.  Please feel free to comment or debate.

NCAA Tourney Field:

1-seeds: Duke, Florida, Kansas, Indiana

2-seeds: Michigan, Arizona, Miami-FL, Gonzaga

3-seeds: Syracuse, Louisville, Michigan State, Butler

4-seeds: Ohio State, Cincinnati, Oregon, New Mexico

5-seeds: Minnesota, Georgetown, Kansas State, UNLV

6-seeds: NC State, Marquette, Creighton, Wichita State

7-seeds: Pittsburgh, Missouri, Oklahoma State, San Diego State

8-seeds: UCLA, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Colorado State

9-seeds: Ole Miss, Oklahoma, Iowa State, VCU

10-seeds: Colorado, Baylor, North Carolina, Memphis

11-seeds: Kentucky, Belmont, Illinois, Middle Tennessee

12-seeds: Saint Louis, St. John’s, La Salle, Villanova, Arizona State, Charlotte

13-seeds: Bucknell, Akron, Louisiana Tech, South Dakota State

14-seeds: Stephen F. Austin, Detroit, Harvard, Florida Gulf Coast

15-seeds: Stony Brook, Davidson, Long Beach State, Montana

16-seeds: Niagara, Savannah State, Northeastern, Bryant, Southern, Charleston Southern

NIT Tourney Field:

1-seeds: Temple, Indiana State, Boise State, Alabama

2-seeds: Southern Miss, Saint Mary’s, Brigham Young, Maryland

3-seeds: Bucknell, Akron, Louisiana Tech, Stanford

4-seeds: Wyoming, UMass, Rutgers, Florida State

5-seeds: Xavier, Virginia, Air Force, Texas A & M

6-seeds: Ohio, Tennessee, St. Joe’s, Washington

7-seeds: Richmond, Northwestern, South Dakota State, Iowa

8-seeds: Stephen F. Austin, California, Detroit, Seton Hall

Ranking of Other Postseason Contenders: North Dakota State, Arkansas, New Mexico State, LSU, UTEP, Florida Gulf Coast, Harvard, Stony Brook, Lehigh