Creating the bracket can be a real pain in the rear sometimes.
I touched on some of the bracketing principles that the committee must follow when building the bracket in my last Bauertology update, and since I’ve got nothing better to talk about this time around, let’s continue!
We start with the greatest headache of them all: BYU. Because the Cougars refuse to play games on Sundays due to religious reasons, the selection committee accommodates for this by placing them only into regional sites and subregional pods in which they could never hypothetically play a game on Sunday. This year, those regional sites are Los Angeles (West) and Boston (East), and those subregional pods are Charlotte, Omaha, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake City. (The acronym “WE COPS” is really helpful for remembering this.)
The trouble starts when we get to BYU at #17 overall on the true seed list. At this point, they would not be able to fit anywhere, since the two regions where they could slot in on the 5 line (West and East) would have a Friday/Sunday Spokane pod. To get around this, we instead have to switch Kentucky (#14 overall on the seed list) to a Spokane pod, and put San Diego State (#15 overall on the seed list) in Salt Lake City, just so we have a Thursday/Saturday site available for BYU to go to. (Would the committee make this change? Or would they move BYU down from their actual 5 seed to a 6? Will be fascinating to see what happens with them.)
This already establishes a messy bracket, as BYU and San Diego State being in the same pod would create a potential second-round rematch (and one in Salt Lake City—Aztecs fans wouldn’t be too thrilled considering they already played BYU in Provo this year), but it’s that bracketing principle we would be allowed to break in order to get everything that must fit, to fit.
This has a ripple effect throughout the bracket, which includes putting SEC counterparts South Carolina and Alabama in the same pod. As I touched on in Friday’s update, the committee will always try to avoid putting two teams from the same conference in the same subregional… unless it’s unavoidable. And it is in this scenario; because there are four SEC teams in the 4/5 range, and BYU must be paired up with San Diego State in order to fit into the bracket, that means two SEC teams will have to be paired together as well. South Carolina and Alabama makes the most sense, as the two have only played once this season, and they haven’t played each other since Jan. 9.
Thankfully, it gets pretty clean from there… until we get down to the bubble and the last four teams in. In a perfect world, both of our First Four matches (Villanova vs. Virginia, and New Mexico vs. Drake), would stay on their true 11 seed line. But we run into an issue: all four 3/6/11/14 pods are Thursday/Saturday pods. This would make it impossible to have both play-in matches on the 11 line, since only a maximum of one play-in match can go to a Thursday/Saturday pod. What’s the reason for this? The First Four games are played on Tuesday and Wednesday, and they’ll always be scheduled to have one game between two of the final four at-large selections on Tuesday, and the other game between two of the final four at-large selections on Wednesday. And all First Four teams are required to have at least one days’ rest before playing their Round of 64 game. That means we can’t possibly have both play-in matches in Thursday/Saturday pods, or someone would have to play a game two days in a row.
The only easy fix at this point is to move the lower First Four game, New Mexico vs. Drake, down to a 12 seed where it can fit into a Friday/Sunday pod, bringing natural 12 seed Richmond up to the 11 line in their place. Confusing stuff—these are all things that the committee has to work out from time to time!
So, yeah, this is a messier-looking Bauertology than usual, but that’s just how it shakes out sometimes. We can only hope that the final bracket on Selection Sunday is much easier to build.
But enough of that nagging—postseason basketball begins today! The ASUN tournament is hours away from kicking off, meaning we’ve officially reached the best time of year. Enjoy the madness, and check out the Bauertology bracket and seed list for Monday, March 4 below.
BAUERTOLOGY 