📄 2036 Dance Partners, Building a Better Bracket w/ EC Hood: Part 1 Feb 6th

Dance Partners, Building a Better Bracket. A bracketology presentation by EC Hood

The first Bubble Watch of the 2035-36 season is live, so what better time than the present to post the first bracketology predictions for the CBGM Big Dance?

UNLV, run by the AI, has raced out to a 22-1 record and a No. 1 seed and is the surprise story of the season so far. Not far behind is Stanford, run by the EC. The Cardinal sits at 21-2 and is coming off a stunning road win at fellow 2 seed Colorado.

Louisville has set the standard and is our No. 1 overall seed, placed in the South Region. Connecticut and Minnesota round out the top seeds, but there’s so much season left to play that much can change in a hurry.

The bubble area is crowded, as expected in early February. The West Coast Conference has received five bids here, which would be a very strong showing, as Portland and Santa Clara are making cases with their results. The Atlantic 10 also looks like a tough league with five bids of its own (VCU, Davidson, St. Bonaventure, Rhode Island and La Salle). Georgia Southern (9 seed, East) is the only mid-major program that has received an at-large bid. That’s to change once the conference tourneys start and the bid stealers emerge.

The Rules:

1. No two teams from the same conference will play each other before the Elite 8 unless impossible to avoid.
2. No at-large teams will be seeded below the 12 line unless impossible to avoid. The play-in at-large teams will always be the last four at-large teams that made it.
3. Note: Conference champion bid predictions are determined by the team with the best in-conference record, and higher NET ranking if tied, at the time of the update if the league title game hasn’t been played yet.
4. I will tend to give an edge to power conference teams in seeding. This is a personal preference that has more to do with thinking the NET rankings in the game overpower smaller schools and mid majors than anything else.
5. This is not a prediction of what the actual bracket will end up being in the game. It is a prediction of what the bracket would be if this season occurred in real life right now and was picked by the NCAA committee.
6. I’m not quite the NCAA committee – I’m not going to examine every injury to determine if a result was legit or not and I probably won’t have time to drill down into every team sheet. In the end, this is just for fun.

IN GAME DATE: Feb 6th