Boy, an NCAA Tournament region with all of Duke, Illinois, Kansas, and Florida in it sure would sound like an absolute madhouse, wouldn’t it?
Huh. Well, would you look at that.
Today’s formation of the proverbial “Region of Death” allows me to touch on yet another important bracketing principle: regional balance!
When it comes to putting teams in their proper places in the bracket, the top-16 overall seeds that make up the top-4 seed lines get the most TLC. It only makes sense; these are the 16 teams that are most likely to advance to the Sweet Sixteen, a.k.a. when the regional games are actually played, so getting them all prim and proper before filling out the rest of the bracket is crucial.
I’ve touched once before on one of the guidelines that the selection committee adheres to with these 16 teams, that being the following:
“Each of the first four teams selected from a conference shall be placed in different regions if they are seeded on the first four lines, unless five or more teams from a conference are on the four first lines. In this scenario, this principle may be relaxed.”
The second half of that paragraph is new; previously, the top four teams from a conference, if all 4-seeds or better, absolutely positively had to be in separate regions. Now, we get a little wiggle room if there are five or more from said same conference making up the protected seeds, as is very likely to happen this year with the Big Ten and Big 12. That said, I still think the committee is going to strive to put the top four teams from a conference in separate regions when possible. That’s why I’ve still got Big Ten team #2 Illinois going to the East in Washington, even though the Midwest Region (Chicago) is closer to Champaign, due to the presence of Big Ten team #1 Michigan in the Midwest already. The new language of the rule feels to me like an out that the committee can make use of, assuming they’ve exhausted other reasonable options.
But that’s just the beginning! Once the committee has properly placed the top-4 seed lines, going in 1-to-16 order, they need to make sure that the regions are balanced. See below:
“After the top four seed lines have been assigned, the committee will review the relative strengths of the regions by adding the “true seed” numbers in each region to determine if any severe numerical imbalance exists. Preferably, no more than six points should separate the lowest and highest total.”
A quick breakdown on what exactly that means: After the top four teams in each region are set, the committee sums up the true seed total of the four teams that make up each region. For example, my West region today features 1-seed Arizona (1), 2-seed Nebraska (8), 3-seed Michigan State (12), and 4-seed Gonzaga (14), with the true seed being represented by the number in parentheses. Tally those four numbers up, and you’ve got a sum of 35. As mentioned in the paragraph prior, the general rule is that the difference between the sum of the biggest region and the smallest region should be no more than six. (This is another change from years past, as the limit was previously five. Small things to help make bracketology that much easier—much appreciated!)
This regional balance is why you will sometimes see an East Coast team sent all the way out West, even when there wasn’t a higher-ranked conference opponent blocking that East Coast team from a region closer to home. Typically, the committee will try its absolute hardest to not fiddle with moving the 1 or 2 seeds around at all. If regional balance needs to be achieved, it’s the 4 seeds, then the 3 seeds, that will be relocated.
But we luck out today, as I don’t need to do any shuffling to achieve regional balance! My biggest region is the South, featuring UConn (4), Houston (7), Purdue (9), and Texas Tech (16) for a grand total of 36, while my smallest region is the East, which has Duke (2), Illinois (5), Kansas (10), and Florida (13) for a sum of 30. Lo and behold, that’s a separation of six, the maximum we’re allowed, and regional balance is achieved.
And that’s how you end up with the “Region of Death” sometimes. Once regional balance is satisfied, the committee won’t tinker with things further, just because one region looks a bit trickier on paper than the others. After all, their top priority is to keep these top-16 teams as close to home as possible, only moving them out of their region of natural interest when the principles demand it (regional balance, conference rules, etc.).
So, congratulations to Duke, Florida, Kansas, and Illinois for creating potentially the most insane fictional NCAA Tournament region of all time. We can only hope to get so lucky when the real thing comes out a month, a week, and a couple days from now.
That’s another Bauertology bracketing lesson in the books! On to the rest of today’s bracket, where we’re down to just SIX conferences with multiple representation. (This is very healthy for the sport, nod nod wink wink.)
As is always the case, the pick for automatic bid from each conference is determined by who ranks highest in my résumé metric BRCT as of the time I start building my seed list, i.e., yesterday afternoon (that’s how Mercer and North Dakota State end up with the SoCon and Summit bids over ETSU and St. Thomas, respectively; those would be flipped if I started building my seed list today), EXCEPT in one notable example: Due to some unfortunate circumstances between Utah Valley and WAC leadership, the Wolverines are barred from the conference tournament, meaning they are incapable of earning the WAC’s auto-bid. Thus, it is awarded here to BRCT’s #2 WAC team, California Baptist. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Utah Valley is barred from the NCAA Tournament, as they could still be selected as an at-large… though the chances of that happening are about as good as me being selected as the next Naismith Player of the Year.
The countdown is on, folks. Conference tournaments are officially under a month out, with the Horizon League’s opening round tipping off on March 2. The best time of year is nearly here!
