What’s this? Mid-week Bauertology? The biblical end of times must be upon us! (That, or, y’know, the final couple weeks before Selection Sunday. One or the other.)
The countdown to judgment day rages on, now down to just as 11, as mid-major conference tournaments continue to gain steam. The ASUN kicked us off on Sunday, the Sun Belt, Horizon, and Patriot League joined in the fun on Tuesday, and the Summit, NEC, Big South, and Ohio Valley are now mere hours away from getting started as well. By the time Sunday morning arrives, we’ll have already crowned our first official automatic bid. It’s gettin’ real, folks.
And with the college basketball action ramping up, the posting here at Bauertology accelerates too! If you missed it from last Friday morning’s bracket, here’s the schedule we’re looking at up through Selection Sunday:
- Saturday, March 8: Bauertology
- Monday, March 10: Bauer’s Bubble Watch
- Wednesday, March 12: Bauertology
- Thursday, March 13: Final Bauer’s Bubble Watch(?) – TBD, if I have time
- Friday, March 14: Bauertology Live – Join me on Twitter as I live sort through the seed list, giving my detailed explanations for each choice)
- Saturday, March 15: Bauertology, based on Bauertology Live from the day prior
- Sunday, March 16: Final Bauertology
We’re now just one week away from Bauertology in your face every day. Lord help me.
It’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s also going to be a lot of fun! Note that posts are going to get a little bit shorter than usual from here on out, just to spare myself a little bit of free time away from the computer screen (and time to do my real-world job, of course), but I will continue to try to make time to address questions and concerns, in order to help us all better understand the bracketology process, as the most important day of the year draws near.
Now into the bracket! As always, my automatic bids are chosen by which team in each conference ranks highest in my résumé metric BRCT, though as top teams inevitably fall in their league tournaments, the auto-bid choices will adjust alongside, until only one team remains.
Also worth reminding y’all of one of the big bracketing principles, since it appears in today’s projection: BYU is a natural 7 seed for me today off the heels of Tuesday night’s thrilling 2OT win at Hilton Coliseum, but as all available pods for the 7 seeds are Friday/Sunday sites, the Cougars need to slide down to the closest available Thursday/Saturday pod and region, which would be as an 8 seed in Alabama’s Lexington/West Region group. As we saw last year when BYU was a natural 5 seed and #17 overall, but was moved down to a 6 seed due to this same issue, the committee will always move BYU down instead of up; the reason is that once a prior seed line is set, the committee will not interfere with it any further. Think of this as them being reactive to problems instead of proactive.
Anyway, here’s the new bracket and seed list for Wednesday, March 5! Enjoy this next week-and-a-half of bracketology mania, folks. It’ll be gone before you know it.
