📄 2039 Dance Partners, Building a Better Bracket w/ EC Hood: Part 3 Feb 20th

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

We are heading into the stretch run of the regular season and what could possibly be the most interesting league tourney/bubble watch week we have seen in some time in CBGM. Numerous teams from one-bid leagues are making strong at-large cases for inclusion in the Big Dance. The following programs are on track to make the tournament even if they lose in their conference tournaments: Murray State, Troy, Alabama A&M, Kent State, Incarnate Word, Georgia Southern, Grand Canyon and Seattle. Middle Tennessee is my first team out. Princeton is right there, as well as Coppin State. It’s the year of the mid major.

Should upsets happen in these leagues, the bracket is going to be stressed and some deserving teams are going to be sitting home. For now, we have placed the play-in games on the 13 line because of how good so many of the mid-majors are.

Unfortunately this could create an issue in the game, as DDSCB doesn’t seed play-in games on the 13 line, to my knowledge. This means some teams with better resumes than the play-in last four will be seeded lower, 13 or possibly even 14. The game’s AI does tend to like mid major programs. I seed a little tougher, but even that is difficult to do with the strength of some of these programs.

Elsewhere, Minnesota has snagged a No. 1 seed, replacing Butler from the last update. The Gophers have won 10 in a row and 15 of 16 to improve to 23-2 overall.

The ACC is pacing the field with eight bids, but the power conferences are looking weaker. The Big East has six teams, the SEC five; but the Big 12 only three and the Big 10 and Pac-12 only four each.

Bring on the madness!

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: Feb 20th