It’s a volatile time of year, and a lot can change in the seed list very quickly.
Take, for example, TCU. Just four days ago, the Horned Frogs weren’t even in my projected tournament field, placed as the seventh team out. Now, you throw a win over 1-seed Houston on their team sheet, and suddenly they’re an 8-seed, looking a lot more like Iowa State’s résumé (granted, without the super high-end metrics or any notable non-conference wins).
Same story for Texas A&M, whose wild overtime victory over Kentucky also propelled them to an 8 from Last Four In, or James Madison, now out of the at-large picture completely following a home loss to Appalachian State.
That’s the beauty of January bracketology; we’re still so far from the tournament that singular results and consequential metric shifts can cause massive changes because of our limited data.
With that in mind, is it even worth projecting this far ahead? Probably not, but it’s too darn fun, so we do it anyway.
And by the way, I’m going to make a concerted effort to try to get out two projections a week at this point, if only for the sake of staying sharp and on top of my game; this projection took far less time to create than my first last week, when I was trying to shake off ten months’ worth of rust.
So, enjoy the Bauertology projection for Tuesday, Jan. 16! And (hopefully) look forward to the next sometime later this week. As always, feel free to leave your comments and concerns below.
THE BRACKET
THE TRUE SEED LIST, BUBBLE, AND BIDS BY CONFERENCE
