Louisville's upset over Marquette shook things up for sure, but not enough to forgive Seton Hall for losing to them. Photo courtesy Richard Perry/New York Times
Before we get into the latest projection, here’s a fun fact: Did you know yesterday and today are the only two days between March 2nd and Selection Sunday that there ISN’T a conference championship? So don’t look for any clinched berths on here today or tomorrow; but come the weekend, there’ll be plenty.
Okay, first off, after watching Northwestern, Oregon, Washington, and Mississippi State end their conference tournament runs on disappointing notes, I am not only drinking the Mid-Major Kool Aid, I am double-fisting it. In the wake of those losses, Drexel falls ass-backwards into the field and I am even further convinced UCF will make it in. No one else is buying this, but, then again, no one believed VCU was going to make it in last year. Also, Oregon and Washington losing only further convinces me that only one school will be coming out of the PAC-12 this year.
Replacing Mississippi State, on the other hand, is not a mid-major school. It’s SEC and cross-state rival Ole Miss. How did I arrive at this conclusion? It was simple math really: their tournament resumes are pretty similar and Ole Miss won and Mississippi State didn’t. The Rebels are in at the moment.
Cincinnati continues to take away reasons for me to dislike them, and I have all but taken them off the bubble now with their win over Georgetown. However, I still believe only nine teams will make it in from the Big East and, for that reason, Seton Hall is still out.
Louisville’s upset of Marquette ironically did help Seton Hall’s cause a little bit, but it’s not enough to put them over the hump in my opinion. The Marquette loss, however, does force them to fall to a 3-seed and for Louisville to climb to a 4-seed for now.
While there weren’t any conference championships yesterday, there was a development in the projected winners. In one of the “Who Really Cares” conferences, the Southland Conference, UT-Arlington lost to McNeese State by 20 points. As a result McNeese State is my new projected winner. Over in the SWAC, I’ll still stick with Mississippi Valley State as my projected winner, but Alcorn State absolutely clobbered Prairie View and I kind of want to see them pull out a WKU-esque berth.
LEGEND:
*=Projected Conference Champion/Automatic Berth
•=First Round Entrant
U=Clinched Berth
Midwest
| 1. Kentucky* | 2. Michigan State* | 3. Georgetown | 4. Murray State |
East
| 1. Syracuse* | 2. Duke | 3. Ohio State | 4. Temple* |
West
| 1. Kansas* | 2. Baylor | 3. Marquette | 4. Wisconsin |
South
| 1. North Carolina* |2. Missouri | 3. Michigan | 4. Louisville |
And the rest of the field….
(Keep in mind there is now an 8-team opening round, so listed here are a total of six #12 seeds and six #16 seeds)
5 Seeds: UNLV*, Florida, Indiana, Creighton
6 Seeds: New Mexico, Florida State, Notre Dame, Wichita State
7 Seeds: Virginia, San Diego State, St. Mary’s, Purdue
8 Seeds: Vanderbilt, Gonzaga, Memphis, Kansas State
9 Seeds: Harvard, Alabama, Iowa State, Colorado State
10 Seeds: St. Louis, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Southern Miss.
11 Seeds: BYU, VCU, West Virginia, Xavier
12 Seeds: •Drexel, California*, •South Florida, Texas, •Mississippi, •Miami
13 Seeds: UCF, Belmont, Long Beach*, Davidson
14 Seeds:, Nevada*, Ohio*, Vermont*, Long Island
15 Seeds: Detroit, South Dakota St., Lehigh, Loyola (Md.)
16 Seeds: Montana, UNC-Asheville, •Norfolk State*, •Western Kentucky, •Miss. Val. St.*, •McNeese St.*
Bryan’s Last Four In: South Florida, Mississippi, UCF, Drexel
Bryan’s First Four Out: N.C. State, Seton Hall, Mississippi State, Tennessee
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NOTE: This article was originally published on SportsHead. To read this story and others click here.
When Bryan isn’t studying bracketology, he is on twitter! Follow him @bclienesch!
