📄 2038 Dance Partners, Building a Better Bracket w/ EC Hood: Part 2 Mar 5th

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

The regular season has ended, and we have a clearer picture of the field that the “committee”, i.e. me, gets to judge. This is the last time the bracket will look “normal” as conference tournaments are starting and upsets brewing. Normal means simply that the first-place team in all one-bid conferences is assumed to be the league’s representative in the Big Dance. We all know how that turns out. Now we see just how much of a bloodbath it will be this week.

What we are keeping an eye on are leagues where favorites still have strong at-large resumes should they lose early in the conference tournament. There aren’t too many scary situations, but bubble teams are watching and praying that Charleston, Coppin State and Alabama A&M win out. All three have pretty strong claims to at-large bids, with Charleston perhaps closest to the bubble should it falter in the Colonial tourney.

The No. 1 seeds have changed since the last update as Old Dominion has lost twice to fall to a 2, and Texas, Maryland and North Carolina have pushed themselves into the 1-seed pole positions. Colorado is the one school that has stayed a 1 seed since the last bracket from early February.

Good luck to everyone this week in the conference tournaments!

The Rules:

1. 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. 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.
   5. 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: Mar 5th