Life in the Blue

On the weekends I moonlight as a college basketball analyst. Every year I take part in the great tradition of breaking down the bubble all over this great bracket land. I enjoy filling out my bracket on ESPN and entering a huge bracket contest with my friends on Yahoo Sports. But before the bracket breakdown begins, I like to predict all 65 teams in the tournament, along with their predicted seeds.

For those of you too involved to Google ‘bracket breakdown,’ let me give you the short of it. There are 65 teams invited to the NCAA tournament There are 31 automatic bids for teams from winning their conference tournaments. This leaves 34 teams to be invited who have had good seasons, measured by a variety of factors. This year, 26 teams are safe bets to be in, leaving 8 spots to fill.

For those 8 spots, I think two additional from the Colonial are good to go. I know the first thing people will argue with is my decision to include Drexel. There is no reason for anyone to choose any of the other bubble teams over Drexel. Among their 13 road wins, are wins at Syracuse, Villanova and Creighton. Add to this an RPI which is better than most other bubble teams at 39, they cannot be left out. To that end, Old Dominion swept Drexel, has a better RPI and won at Georgetown. Including thier conference champion, three bids for the Colonial from me, end of discussion.

Any of the following reaming ‘bubble teams’ have blemishes on their resumes worse than a plummeting click thru rate. Terrible finishes to the season from Clemson and Oklahoma St. .500 or worse in the SEC eliminate Arkansas, Mississippi and Mississippi State. Air Force, Missouri State and UMass lack a big win in several opportunities. Utah State, Vermont, Bucknell, and Santa Clara are good teams, but just not enough grit to their profile.

The two best teams who won’t be included are Akron and Appalachian State. Both won more than 25 games, but low strengths of schedule and no real big wins will leave them on the outside looking in at the big boys.

The last six teams (in no particular order) in would look something like West Virginia, Syracuse, Michigan State, Kansas State and Stanford. The last three out would probably be Purdue, Texas Tech and Georgia Tech. For me, Georgia Tech’s loss to Wake Forest to end the season was just too much to overlook. However, if you wanted to argue for either Purdue or Texas Tech to take the place of any of those last five teams, I couldn’t argue and could live with it, with one excpetion. Texas Tech cannot be included and Kansas State left out, due to thumping the Wildcats gave them in the Big 12 Tournament.

Now that we have the 65 teams, I try to seed them. If you want to argue with the seeds, leave a comment making your case. Seeding is tougher because so many teams are equal. In any year, there are about 12 teams that clearly fill out the top 1 thru 3 seeds and 12 teams that won their conference tourneys, but just don’t compare to the rest of the field and fill out the bottom spots. But seeding the teams between 4 and 13 is like deciding which episode of “The Office” is the 6th best of all time. They are all good. They aren’t all timers, like the one where Jim hid Andy’s cell phone in the ceiling. The teams seeded 4th thru 13th are like the episode where they played basketball or the one where Michael and Dwight went to the president of Dunder Mifflin to try to stop the closing of their branch. They are all very equal, and a case can be made to move them up or down.

That said, here is my bracket

NCAA Tournament Seedings

• 1 Ohio State, North Carolina, Kansas, Florida
• 2 Wisconsin, Georgetown, UCLA, Texas A&M
• 3 Pittsburgh, Memphis, Oregon, Southern Illinois
• 4 Washington State, Nevada, UNLV, Texas
• 5 Maryland, Louisville, Arizona, Tennessee
• 6 Creighton, Notre Dame, BYU, Virginia Tech
• 7 Virginia, Marquette, Boston College, Vanderbilt
• 8 Butler, Duke, USC, Villanova
• 9 Indiana, Xavier, Kansas State, Kentucky
• 10 Winthrop, Virginia Commonwealth, Syracuse, Gonzaga
• 11 Michigan State, Stanford, New Mexico State, Old Dominion
• 12 West Virginia, Davidson, George Washington, Drexel
• 13 Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wright State, Holy Cross
• 14 Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Oral Roberts, Long Beach State, Albany
• 15 Belmont, Eastern Kentucky, North Texas, Miami (OH)
• 16 Niagara, Central Connecticut State, Webber State
• 17 Florida A&M, Jackson St

So leave a comment if you have a beef, or to woof after they announce the bracket on Sunday evening and I am proven wrong. Either way, Let the Madness Begin!

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