Every year around this time, I officially transition from college football fanaticism to college basketball fanaticism, and I begin working on my annual NCAA and NIT tournament bracket projections. This year is no different, as I have now completed my initial NCAA bracket projection for the 2024 tournament, and for the 14th consecutive season, this column will become the staple of my blog from now until Selection Sunday.   Brad-ketology is a little different than other NCAA bracket projections in that it is much more expansive, as it also includes the NIT/College Basketball Crown field.  Furthermore, it is 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.

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. You may also notice that some teams are listed in both the NCAA and NIT/CBC fields. These are teams predicted to be automatic qualifiers to the NCAA tournament that would also earn at-large bids to the NIT or CBS tournaments but not the NCAA tourney. There are a couple of reasons these teams are displayed like this. First and foremost, it shows how close those teams are to getting at-large bids in the NCAA tournament field. Secondly, it shows where those squads would be seeded if in fact they lost in their conference tournament and garnered a bit to the NIT or College Basketball Crown.

Moreover, 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 the 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.

There is one slight change to my 2025 Brad-ketology that is worth noting. It is that I am no longer seeding the teams in the NIT bracket. The reason for that is that FOX has created a tournament called the College Basketball Crown that is to serve as an alternative to the NIT and is expected to grab the top two teams from the Big East, Big Ten, and Big 12 as well as potentially other teams that would normally get bids to the National Invitational Tournament. As a result, it is impossible for me to predict which tourney each team will select to participate in, and as a result I am just ranking the top 48 teams outside of the Big Dance field that I am predicting will play in those two tourneys (NIT has 32 teams, College Basketball Crown will have 16 teams).

This bracket projection has been updated through all games played on Sunday January 26th. Brad-ketology columns will typically be published twice a week (typically on Mondays and Fridays) and likely more often than that when it gets closer to tourney time.  Please feel free to comment or debate.

NCAA Tourney Field:

1-seeds: Auburn, Iowa State, Alabama, Duke

2-seeds:  Marquette, Florida, Houston, Tennessee

3-seeds: Michigan State, Kansas, Oregon, Kentucky

4-seeds: Purdue, Texas A & M, Michigan, Mississippi State

5-seeds: Illinois, Ole Miss, Louisville, Wisconsin

6-seeds: Texas Tech, Missouri, Arizona, Memphis

7-seeds: Maryland, Clemson, UCLA, Gonzaga

8-seeds: UConn, Vanderbilt, Creighton, Baylor

9-seeds: West Virginia, St. John’s, Utah State, Georgia

10-seeds: Pittsburgh, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Texas

11-seeds: Saint Mary’s, UC Irvine, San Diego State, Xavier, North Carolina, New Mexico

12-seeds: VCU, Bradley, Arkansas State, Yale

13-seeds: McNeese State, Grand Canyon, Liberty, Lipscomb

14-seeds: Samford, High Point, Akron, North Dakota State

15-seeds: Northern Colorado, Norfolk State, Bryant, Cleveland State

16-seeds: William & Mary, Marist, Morehead State, Southern, American, Long Island

NIT/College Basketball Crown Teams (in order of proximity to NCAA tourney at-large field):

1	UCF (13-6)
2	BYU (13-6)
3	Arizona State (11-8)
4	Iowa (13-7)
5	Cincinnati (12-7)
6	Northwestern (12-8)
7	SMU (15-5)
8	Nebraska (12-8)
9	Wake Forest (15-5)
10	Indiana (14-7)
11	VCU (15-4)
12	Stanford (14-6)
13	Penn State (13-7)
14	Santa Clara (14-8)
15	Southern Cal (12-7)
16	Arkansas (12-8)
17	Villanova (12-9)
18	Dayton (13-6)
19	North Texas (13-4)
20	Boise State (12-7)
21	TCU (10-9)
22	Colorado State (13-7)
23	San Francisco (16-6)
24	LSU (12-7)
25	Utah (11-8)
26	George Mason (14-5)
27	Oregon State (15-6)
28	Georgetown (13-7)
29	Washington State (15-7)
30	Bradley (17-3)
31	Drake (16-2)
32	Florida State (13-7)
33	Rutgers (10-10)
34	Nevada (11-9)
35	Saint Joseph’s (12-8)
36	UC San Diego (15-4)
37	Arkansas State (16-5)
38	St. Bonaventure (14-6)
39	Minnesota (11-9)
40	Yale (10-6)
41	McNeese State (13-5)
42	Grand Canyon (14-5)
43	Liberty (13-4)
44	Lipscomb (12-7)
45	Middle Tennessee (12-6)
46	South Carolina (10-10)
47	Samford (15-4)
48	High Point (16-5)