When was the last time that the projected bracket was so darn top-heavy?
It’s been observed a number of times on social media that the teams ranked inside the AP Top 25 polls this season just aren’t losing. The current top-10 teams have a collective 14 losses at the regular season’s two-thirds point; that’s 10 fewer than the 24 accrued by top-10 teams at this same time last year.
And they aren’t falling for the same unranked traps on the road that others have stumbled on in the past. See the tweet below:
Not exactly a whole lot of “madness” going on in America’s maddest sport. Where’s the madness? I signed up for madness, dang it!
The upside of all this? Bracketology becomes a whole lot easier! (Yippee?)
But seriously—having some sort of stability at the top of the bracket helps with reassuring that you’re analyzing the résumés of these upper-echelon teams correctly, as well as getting familiar with which locations that they’re most likely to be sent to when building the bracket.
It was exactly two years ago that I wrote about how the present 1 seeds, more than a month out from Selection Sunday, seemed to already be certain. Sure enough, those four—UConn, Houston, Purdue, and North Carolina—would go on to be the real 1 seeds on reveal day.
I’m getting a similar sense of confidence this year, at least with three of my 1 seeds: Arizona, Duke, and Michigan each rank in the top-5 of every single official team-sheet metric, and their perch on the 1 line looks to be nearly unshakable, if this year’s top-of-the-bracket dominance is any indication. The only question mark there is UConn, given that their predictive metric average of 11.0 would set a new low for a 1 seed, surpassing that same 2024 UNC team that I just mentioned. But with all three résumé numbers inside the top-4, alongside four Quad 1A wins and the sole loss coming by four points to Arizona, the #1 overall seed, the Huskies’ still stand firm on the top line. (Just win some of these conference games by a couple more points than you guys have been doing lately, please and thank you.)
And although I feel like the 1 seeds are set in stone for the time being, the next collection of teams making up the 2 and 3 lines are nearly as a rock-solid. As such, I feel simply awful about giving 19-2 Michigan State and 21-1 Gonzaga 3 seeds, like I need to take three showers to even start feeling slightly better about that decision. But where else can they go? I need to split hairs when it comes to putting these teams in some sort of order, and each has a distinct weakness: Michigan State remains 0-2 in Quad 1A opportunities, while Gonzaga is 1-1 in the same category alongside two résumé metrics (KPI and WAB) ranked 13th or worse.
So while I do feel like the overall bracketology process has become a bit easier to handle amid this top-team dominance, you still feel a little gross, like you’re short-changing a couple sensational groups, when there’s nothing else you can really do. (And that hunger for blood remains unquenched, of course… Somebody just lose already!)
Anyway, on to the rest of the bracket! Lots of fun quirks to be aware of today, including the entire 5 line being swallowed up by the SEC. (Insert Spiderman pointing meme.)
We also run into the fun issue of there being two Big Ten teams on the 2 line, alongside three more on the 10 line, meaning two B1G teams need to be bracketed together. We can thankfully avoid most of the damage by having Wisconsin and UCLA in separate pods than Nebraska and Illinois, but then we’re left over with USC, who pairs up with the Fighting Illini out of necessity. Thankfully, USC and Illinois do only play once this season prior to the tournament, so it’s a legal move. If this were a scenario like the Big East, where every team plays every other team twice, then we would be forced to move a 10 seed down to the 11 line to not break any principles.
And that’s about it! As always, my automatic bids are based on which team in each conference ranks highest in my résumé metric BRCT at the time that I start building the seed list, i.e., yesterday. Quite a few beneficiaries of that fact, as each of Lipscomb (Austin Peay), Portland State (Montana), East Tennessee State (Mercer), and St. Thomas (North Dakota State) have abdicated their BRCT thrones to the team in parentheses as a result of taking losses yesterday night. Consider them leftovers likely to have their auto-bids revoked come Monday morning’s update!
Enjoy the Bauertology seed list and bracket for the final time in January; we’ll be in February the next time we meet again!
I’m not sure why you would feel “dirty” about designating a couple of excellent teams on the 3-line instead of the 2-line. If they “hold serve” and make it to the sweet sixteen, they’d be playing each other anyway, right?
That may be true, though 2 seeds still a get lot more protection than 3 seeds just based on fitting into the regional locations, first/second-round location preference, and opponent difficulty. Hopefully it’ll all work out in the end!