The Month of Madness has finally arrived!

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, and the bolded teams are squads who have already clinched automatic bids to either the NCAA or NIT.  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.   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).  This bracket projection has been updated through all games played on Sunday February 26th.

NCAA Tourney Field:

1-seeds: Kansas, Villanova,  Oregon, North Carolina

2-seeds: Baylor, Butler, Gonzaga, Louisville

3-seeds: Arizona, UCLA, Kentucky, Duke

4-seeds: Florida State, Florida, West Virginia, Virginia

5-seeds: Notre Dame, SMU, Minnesota, Purdue

6-seeds: Cincinnati, St. Mary’s, Creighton, Maryland

7-seeds: Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Dayton, Virginia Tech

8-seeds: Wisconsin, Miami-FL, South Carolina, VCU

9-seeds: Arkansas, Xavier, Southern California, Michigan State

10-seeds: Northwestern, Michigan, Seton Hall, Middle Tennessee

11-seeds: Providence, Illinois, Vanderbilt, Marquette, Wake Forest, Rhode Island

12-seeds: Illinois State, UT-Arlington, Nevada, UNC Wilmington

13-seeds: Monmouth, Vermont, Princeton, Belmont

14-seeds: Akron, Bucknell, Winthrop, Cal State Bakersfield

15-seeds: Florida Gulf Coast, Oakland, UNC Greensboro, South Dakota

16-seeds: Texas Southern,  UC Irvine, North Dakota, Mount St. Mary’s, New Orleans, , North Carolina Central

NIT Tourney Field:

1-seeds:  Kansas State, Illinois State, Wichita State, Syracuse

2-seeds: California, TCU, Clemson, Pittsburgh

3-seeds: Ohio State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, UT-Arlington,

4-seeds: Nevada, UNC Wilmington, Houston, Monmouth

5-seeds: Vermont, Charleston, Ole Miss, Brigham Young

6-seeds: Boise State, Alabama, Utah, Indiana

7-seeds: Iowa, Tennessee, Texas A & M, UCF

8-seeds: Princeton, Richmond, Belmont, Auburn

Ranking of Other Postseason Contenders: Colorado State, Texas Tech, New Mexico, St. Bonaventure