Bauertology: 11/4/24 (Preseason)

Welcome back, college basketball. We missed you.

It’s been seven long months since UConn cut down the nets in Glendale, but the hot stove has left us plenty of reason for excitement for the next installment of college hoops in the meantime.

Generational recruit Cooper Flagg committing to Duke. Coach Cal leaving Lexington for the sunny shores of Arkansas. Conference realignment madness galore. (Well, that one might not be so good—jury’s still out.)

Regardless, the offseason is in the past, and the 2024-25 college basketball season is here. First tip officially starts on ESPN+ at 9 a.m. MT (or 11 a.m., if you’re an East Coaster like I was formerly) with NAIA school IU Columbus giving a visit to ranked-361st-out-of-364-teams-in-KenPom IU Indy, formerly known, of course, as IUPUI. (Divorce leads children to the worst places.) If you’ve been waiting impatiently for seven months, just to open with that, you’re a sicko. But you’re my kind of sicko.

And what better way to celebrate CBB’s grand return than with a little preseason Bauertology?

I typically avoid putting out bracket projections with limited data (and a bracket before the season has even begun is as limited as it gets), but I just couldn’t help myself from getting fully entrenched in the college hoops spirit the only way I know how.

So take my preseason bracket with a grain of salt, or maybe ten thousand grains of salt. This projection is based completely on a gut feeling for how the results of nearly 6,000 basketball games will shake out. Needless to say, not a lot of science here. So don’t be upset if I “slighted” your team, and don’t be too elated if I’m higher on your team than most. This projection is ultimately meaningless, and the real bracket revealed a little over four months from now will probably look nothing like it. It’s all just for fun!

This will probably be my only bracket until 2025, but there’ll still be plenty to explore on the Bauertology website in the meantime. Make sure to check out the new revamped Resources tab (formerly known as Tools—even Bauertology goes through offseason name changes), which aims to help fellow bracketologists with their own bracketology endeavors. Right now, it’s got the complete list of mileage distances from all the 2025 NCAA Tournament regional and subregional sites to all 355 tournament-eligible Division I schools (took me about 20 total hours to put that together, so go check out my hard work), as well as a helpful video I dug up that serves as a good reminder for all the bracketing principles to abide by.

I’ll also be updating a spreadsheet detailing both the conference and non-conference opponents that each team plays, in order to avoid tournament rematches, as the season goes along. And mark your calendars for Monday, Dec. 2, as I’ve got an extra special feature in store as soon as the first NET rankings of the season drop…

Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about college basketball being back, and I hope you are too. Enjoy the preseason Bauertology projection for Monday, Nov. 4, and enjoy the countless hours of hoops about to unfold.

It’s good to be back.