📄 2039 Dance Partners, Building a Better Bracket w/ EC Hood: Part 2 Jan 22nd

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

A bracketology presentation by EC Hood

A Christmas Eve bracketology is here, but don’t worry I won’t be writing it up in the form of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. After all, we are deep into January in the CBGM league and conference play is kicking into high gear.

The top four seeds haven’t changed, but we’ve seen plenty of movement elsewhere. We are also starting to get a sense of which conferences are the strongest and which ones will cause the most headaches for bubble teams down the road.

The best league is the ACC, with seven representatives in the dance and two more just outside looking in. Also two No. 1 seeds in North Carolina and Notre Dame. The SEC is right there with seven bids of its own. The Big 12 is sending six to the dance in this bracket. The Big Ten looks like its in a down year, with only four tourney teams and zero even on the bubble. The Mountain West has also seen better years, as only one bubble team (UNLV) is barely in after “champion” San Diego State.

The Atlantic-10 is in some danger of being just a one-bid league at the moment, though it’s possible as many as five teams could sneak in as well.

Looking out west at the Pac-12, it’s very top-heavy with Colorado and Stanford, then a bunch of teams that are veering a little too close to on the outside looking in. Right now, UCLA and Oregon State are IN, with Oregon and USC close. Results will be key down the stretch for all of these schools jockeying for a spot. We’re also looking at a surprise down year for both Arizona and Arizona State.

Speaking of Colorado – what a season so far. We’re not sure how they are only 3 in the NET rankings, but the Buffaloes have been bludgeoning teams with a scoring differential of +27.1 and the No. 1 offensive AND defensive ratings in the entire association.

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. 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: Jan 22nd