Saturday’s top 16 reveal can’t come soon enough.
Before games start this weekend, the NCAA Tournament selection committee will preview its current top 16 seed teams, listed in order from 1 to 16, seeded from 1 to 4, and placed in regions as if the bracket were being built. They’ve done this every year for the past few years on the first Saturday after the Super Bowl, and bracketologists everywhere appreciate it.
The reason bracketologists look forward to this yearly preview so much is because it provides a sense of clarity in what the selection committee is looking for in tournament résumés this time around.
While the general criteria stays the same from season-to-season, it does seem like certain résumé factors are more stressed in specific seasons. For example, the reveal last year helped bracketologists infer that the selection committee really valued top-of-the-line wins (Duke being a 2 seed, Houston down at a 5 with top-5 metrics but no upper-tier wins, etc.), but also valued predictive metrics when it came to seeding for teams that did have the necessary quality wins (Gonzaga the #1 overall seed, Wisconsin down at a 4, etc.) We’d like to think those trends will stay the same this year—I’ve been building my bracket around that thought—but we’ll find out for certain on Saturday!
Not only will the top 16 preview provide a definitive blueprint for the top 4 seeds, but it should also help in sorting out the lower regions of the bracket.
This latest edition of Bauertology is just a big ol’ mess in the low 6 seeds to high 10 seeds—you could probably make a reasonable argument for any team in that range to slot anywhere. I’m not thrilled about Michigan State being a 6 seed literally 10 days after I criticized their résumé enough to put them at an 11 seed, or having a 2-seed-line difference between Arkansas and Oklahoma State. But that’s the way things worked out for me in my résumé analysis. There’s just so much hair-splitting going on with these tournament profiles right now, so any sense of clarity that we can glean on Saturday is going to be a huge relief.
Let’s just hope the committee doesn’t pull the rug out from under us and do something like make Missouri a 4 seed…
In the meantime, enjoy today’s Bauertology projection! Reach out if you catch any errors or have any questions!
THE BRACKET
THE TRUE SEED LIST, BUBBLE, AND BIDS BY CONFERENCE
BAUERTOLOGY 