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 January 28th.
NCAA Tourney Field:
1-seeds: Virginia, Villanova, Purdue, Xavier
2-seeds: Kansas, Auburn, Duke, Oklahoma
3-seeds: North Carolina, Clemson, Tennessee, Arizona
4-seeds: Texas Tech, West Virginia, Michigan State, Rhode Island
5-seeds: Kentucky, Seton Hall, Butler, Arkansas
6-seeds: Ohio State, Creighton, Florida, Arizona State
7-seeds: Michigan, Louisville, Miami-FL, TCU
8-seeds: Wichita State, Cincinnati, Florida State, Texas
9-seeds: Alabama, Nevada, Providence, Syracuse
10-seeds: St. Mary’s, Gonzaga, Washington, Texas A & M
11-seeds: Houston, Kansas State, Marquette, Missouri, SMU, Southern California
12-seeds: Middle Tennessee, New Mexico State, Buffalo, Loyola-IL
13-seeds: South Dakota State, Vermont, East Tennessee State, Wright State
14-seeds: UL-Lafayette, Belmont, Northeastern, UC Davis
15-seeds: Rider, Bucknell, Montana, Stephen F. Austin
16-seeds: Radford, Wagner, Penn, Florida Gulf Coast, North Carolina A & T, Arkansas-Pine Bluff
NIT Tourney Field:
1-seeds: South Carolina, St. Bonaventure, UCLA, Georgia
2-seeds: Utah, NC State, Maryland, Middle Tennessee
3-seeds: Western Kentucky, New Mexico State, Buffalo, Boise State
4-seeds: UCF, Temple, Nebraska, Notre Dame
5-seeds: Loyola-IL, Virginia Tech, Oregon, Boston College
6-seeds: Mississippi State, Colorado, Oklahoma State, South Dakota State
7-seeds: Vermont, East Tennessee State, Baylor, LSU
8-seeds: Ole Miss, Wright State, UL-Lafayette, Belmont
Ranking of Other Postseason Contenders: Northeastern, Minnesota, Penn State, UC Davis, Stanford, Northwestern, Wyoming, Brigham Young, UConn, Missouri State, Indiana
Ramblings of the Ultimate Sports Sentimentalist 
Now your UC ranking is just silly.
As Joe said prior – There is some sort of animosity towards UC.
They will throttle Houston by 20 on Wednesday (Q1 win, Kenpom top 40) and still somehow be an #8)
It’s really hard to take this remotely seriously when you’re projecting Wichita St to win the American because..you think they’re better?
Could I get some odds on this?
I’m sure you could get a great futures price on Wichita St winning the league, given kpom is projecting UC at 16-2 and Wichita St at 13-5.
4-2 in column 1
5-0 column 2
9 -2 = 8 seed
4-4 column 1
0-0 column 2
4-4 = 5 seed
1-3 column 1
3-0 column 2
4-3 = 4 seed
3-5 column 1
5-0 column 2
8-5 = 3 seed
6-4 column 1
3-1 column 2
9-5 = 2 seed
You sir, are genius.
Mskenyon – Damn, nice work. Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story. Just watch, the day before the brackets come out he will slide us up
Cincinnati with an 8 seed. Funny! Buffalo with a 12 seed and a 1 seed in the NIT. Even better. Don’t quit your day job!
As I’ve explained before on here, my NIT bracket always seeds the top 32 teams that aren’t in my NCAA at-large pool, regardless if they’re projected conference champs or not. Reason being, is that it shows how close each of those teams are to capturing an at-large bid should they need one to the Big Dance.
Haha- have I been blasted on the Cincinnati message boards or something? Bearcats fans are coming out of the woodwork to criticize my ultra accurate bracket projection. Where do you all have Nevada? Matrix has them as an 8 seed. Compare their resumes to Cincy’s (see link below) and explain how it is four lines better? Is it even better at all? Beating Buffalo isn’t exactly something to hang your hat on with the committee and that’s Cincy’s highest RPI win. Their an 8 seed right now at best guys, face it.
https://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/bracketology/team-comparison/NEVADA/CINCY
Nope, haven’t been blasted anywhere. If you go to bracket matrix.com and you look at Cincy’s seed you will see 2,2,4,3,2,3,2,4,3……8…….2,3,2,4,3,4,2,3. So naturally UC fans or not, are going to click on the bracket to find out why a 13-year old in his moms basement is able to put a bracket on there and the poster earlier, mskenyon, cannot. He knows his stuff and is exactly right on the quadrants. THAT is what the committee looks for.
The comparison you’re using is exactly why you are on an island with your UC seed. That link is grouping teams the old way via top 50, 100 etc regardless of location.
The team sheets don’t look like that anymore. And you should know this. If you want to see what the new team sheets look like, and the new quadrants that everyone is referencing, below is what each committee member will be handed. No one is going to know anyone’s record vs the top 25, 50, 100 or whatever rpi teams without manually counting it themselves. The entire point of this is it’s harder to win a road game at #55 than a home game vs #45. The four quadrants are supposed to fix this.
http://warrennolan.com/basketball/2018/team-sheet?team=Cincinnati
But keep referencing a ranking/comparison/grouping of teams that is not going to be used by the committee and that is why you have produced such an outlier to every single other person on bracketmatrix.
Now if you wanted to nitpick their resume and put them as a 5 or 6 because they have 8 wins vs group 4, which is basically half the schedule…then ok. But 4-2 vs quadrant 1 with a total of 9-2 vs quadrant 1 and 2 matters. And you don’t seem to be using that whatsoever.
I understand the tier system. My point is that that 4-2 T-1 record is a joke when you consider who they beat: Buffalo, Temple, UCF, and UCLA. Maybe if this was football those would be quality wins. Compare that to Alabama who’s 4-2 T-1 record includes wins over Auburn, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Texas A & M. I still have Bama behind Cincy on my bracket but you have to look beyond the numbers and thats what the committee will do. It’s the same thing that happened in the old system when teams would put a gaudy 5-2 record against top 50 rpi and have all of their wins be against mid-majors with RPIs in the 40’s. You got to look at the qualitative data and it is just not there with Cincy.
Again, you’re missing the entire point of the tiered system is to make LOCATION of the games matter and be an actual representative of the game. Each of Cincy’s 4 T-1 wins is where? 3 road, 1 neutral.
Where were Bama’s played? Auburn, Oklahoma, TxA&M, and RI? Every single game was home. This is the entire point of the tiered system. 30 at home is basically equivalent to 75 on the road. But you’re not accounting for that by just discounting it and saying those “teams” that are 75 aren’t as good. No duh, of course they aren’t as good. But AT HOME, those teams are as good as #30 is when you get them at home.
Additionally, you conveniently left out the comparison of those two teams tier 2 records….where Alabama has 4 losess, and Cincy has 0.
If you had them as a 6 no one would even care or so say a word, but you’re literally 4.5 seed lines off from the matrix average on this team.
Lunardi…
Tonight’s headlines: Even with a loss, neither Virginia nor Purdue falls off the top line. A Michigan State loss could lead to Cincinnati moving up to No. 2. Finally, Syracuse likely falls out of the Thursday update with a loss at Georgia Tech.
Beats a good Houston team tonight; Q1 win. Will still be an #8 next release…..
Q2 I should say
You also are ignoring the other component they’re going to put on the team sheets: the computer ranking composite. Cincinnati is #7. (It uses KenPom, RPI, Massey, etc.) Nevada is 26.
I have been waiting for the next release just to see if we made some sense with him, but I am afraid we have scared this kid from releasing another bracket.
Just released for you Joe…by the way I’m a 32 year old prosecutor that’s been in jury trial all week. That’s why you haven’t gotten your update kid.