AFT Bracketology- 2/14

Now that football is over, it’s that time of the year again where America turns their attention to college basketball. As a reminder, your workplace in March will become consumed with brackets upon brackets filled out by people who haven’t watched a second of basketball in four years and someone who picked their bracket based on team colors. To prepare us for this, I’ve started up a bracketology series that will speed up in terms of posts as the season winds to a close. A quick guide to bracketology, from last week’s post:

• I did this on BracketMaker.com because it’s the best bracket template immediately available on the Internet, so that explains the “Game XX details” and such.
• Teams in ALL CAPS currently lead their conference and are projected to win their conference’s automatic bid. Those not in caps are at-large teams.
• The First Four matchups are thus, if you need a refresher from last year: two games featuring the four lowest-ranked conference champions and two games featuring the last four at-large teams to make the field.

A full explanation will come after the bracket. Enough words for now. Here’s this week’s bracket:

Last Four In: Texas, NC State, Iona, Xavier
First Four Out: Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado State, Cincinnati

Here’s some answers to potential questions and a few points I need to make:

• This will look nothing like the bracket you see on Selection Sunday. That’s because basketball, like most sports, is unpredictable and anything can (and will) happen. For example, Alabama is now down four starters to suspension and it’s anyone’s guess as to if they’ll hold on and make the field in a month. By the way, Selection Sunday is less than a month away. Isn’t it great?
• Yes, Iona is in as an at-large. It’s because the bubble really is that weak this year – perhaps not as bad as last year’s, but still pretty miserable. Iona is 19-6 and has two terrible losses to Siena and Hofstra, but who else do you put in there? Arizona, who plays in a pathetic excuse of a BCS league in the Pac-12 and has no OOC wins better than #78 New Mexico State? Cincinnati has three top 50 wins, but a home loss to Presbyterian and an RPI of 93 (!), which would be the highest to ever make the tournament as an at-large. Neither Wyoming nor Colorado State have resumes that I’d consider good enough to sneak in as an at-large, so this is where we’re at right now. It’s not pretty.
• Northwestern is in the field! That’s not a typo, either – Northwestern has quietly assembled a decent enough resume with the crown jewel being a home win over current 2 seed Michigan State. Winning at Illinois (who, stupidly enough, I forgot to put in the field. They’d be a 10 seed or so. I didn’t get much sleep this weekend, as you can tell.) last Sunday was huge, but the remaining schedule is rough: games against Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, and Ohio State remain, and they really need to win one of those or more (the bigger, the better) to stay on the right side of the bubble. Time will tell if this is the year Northwestern finally breaks the streak, though – the first step is finishing .500 or better in Big Ten play.
• This could be the year of the mid-major. You know, for the third straight year in a row. UNLV brings a lot to the table with Mike Moser and friends, showing that the win over North Carolina in November wasn’t a fluke. St. Mary’s is a blast to watch as always. Efficiency stats are in love with Wichita State – they don’t have any great wins, but they have beaten UNLV and Creighton by 19 and 21. Creighton, despite a recent slump, still has Doug McDermott, and that’s a great thing for us all. Murray State is still a threat and getting the first loss out of the way may prove to be a blessing in disguise. Harvard plays outstanding defense and could enter the tournament at 27-3. Also, let’s not forget the lower seeds like Long Beach State, Middle Tennessee, and Belmont – all three battle tested, all three very dangerous.

That’s it for this Tuesday. With any luck, I’ll have a new bracketology post up on Friday.