2 days Ago By Kerry Miller
You might be thinking that two weeks into the regular season is way too early for an NCAA tournament bracket projection, and, well, you're probably right. Two weeks into last season, eventual No. 4 seed Kansas was ranked No.
1 in the nation, eventual sub-.500 team Miami was ranked No. 10 and eventual No.
2 seed Iowa State was still nearly two months away from cracking into the AP Top 25 for the first time. But this one goes out to the diehards who know it's never too early for bracketology. Besides, some of you probably already had Christmas decorations up before Gonzaga destroyed Baylor on opening night, so don't try to tell us when it's too early to start celebrating our favorite season.
Later on in the year, much of the projected bracket analysis will focus on things like NET, Wins Above Bubble, efficiency-based metrics like KenPom and BPI and results-based metrics like Strength of Record and KPI. But we won't even get the first batch of NET rankings for another couple of weeks—not sure the exact date, but it's usually around Dec. 5—and even those initial rankings will be a bit wonky, per usual.
For the time being, these projections are still largely based on preseason expectations and KenPom rankings, though there is plenty that has changed in these first two weeks of action. Similarly, the 31 projected auto bids will eventually be based entirely on conference record. There haven't been any conference games yet, though, so we're simply rolling with the highest-rated team on KenPom as each league's projected champ.
With that out of the way, let's start with the full bracket before some brief commentary on the current state of the bubble and the top seed line. Following that, we have a full conference-by-conference rundown, highlighting some of the biggest changes from our preseason projection . EAST REGION (Newark) Providence, RI 1.
Connecticut vs. 16. Norfolk State 8.
Mississippi State vs. 9. VCU Denver, CO 4.
Texas Tech vs. 13. Arkansas State 5.
Illinois vs. 12. Grand Canyon Cleveland, OH 3.
Kentucky vs. 14. Vermont 6.
Indiana vs. 11. Michigan/New Mexico Raleigh, NC 2.
Duke vs. 15. Furman 7.
Florida vs. 10. Rutgers MIDWEST REGION (Indianapolis) Wichita, KS 1.
Kansas vs. 16. South Dakota State 8.
UCLA vs. 9. Saint Mary's Providence, RI 4.
Marquette vs. 13. High Point 5.
Cincinnati vs. 12. Princeton Milwaukee, WI 3.
Purdue vs. 14. McNeese 6.
Texas vs. 11. Nevada Lexington, KY 2.
Tennessee vs. 15. Merrimack 7.
Pittsburgh vs. 10. Oregon SOUTH REGION (Atlanta) Lexington, KY 1.
Alabama vs. 16. Bucknell/SIU-Edwardsville 8.
Miami (FL) vs. 9. Xavier Seattle, WA 4.
Baylor vs. 13. Charleston 5.
St. John's vs. 12.
UC Irvine Raleigh, NC 3. North Carolina vs. 14.
Lipscomb 6. Texas A&M vs. 11.
Maryland Milwaukee, WI 2. Iowa State vs. 15.
Kent State 7. Michigan State vs. 10.
Arkansas WEST REGION (San Francisco) Seattle, WA 1. Gonzaga vs. 16.
Grambling/Central Connecticut 8. BYU vs. 9.
Memphis Denver, CO 4. Creighton vs. 13.
Bradley 5. Arizona vs. 12.
Louisiana Tech Cleveland, OH 3. Alabama vs. 14.
Purdue Fort Wayne 6. Ohio State vs. 11.
Dayton/Penn State Wichita, KS 2. Houston vs. 15.
Northern Colorado 7. Wisconsin vs. 10.
Clemson Disclaimer: Though I do make sure to construct a legal bracket as far as regional balance of the top four seed lines and potential same-conference matchups are concerned, I won't start worrying about avoiding non-conference rematches in the first round until the first projection of January. Please excuse any of those that you may find. 1.
Kansas Jayhawks 2. Connecticut Huskies 3. Auburn Tigers 4.
Gonzaga Bulldogs 5. Houston Cougars 6. Tennessee Volunteers No point in wasting too much breath on this section right now, as the upcoming Maui Invitational, Players Era Festival, Battle 4 Atlantis and other early-season tournaments is where we'll get our early baseline for who's the best of the best.
However, three of our four projected No. 1 seeds have already made some major positive impressions. With wins over both North Carolina and Michigan State en route to a 4-0 start, good luck trying to argue with Kansas in the top spot.
Those are almost certainly going to be Quad 1 wins once we have Quadrant data. Auburn's "neutral" win in Houston over preseason No. 1 overall seed Houston was maybe the most impressive Boolean result of the season to date, scoring 34 points in the final 10:30 against what is annually one of the best defenses in the nation.
The Tigers also absolutely annihilated Vermont in their opener. Speaking of opening annihilations, Gonzaga's 101-63 rout of Baylor on the first day of the regular season was quite the incredible statement. But while Connecticut has yet to face anyone worth a darn, we'll continue to project the two-time reigning champions for a No.
1 seed until they give us a good reason not to. Despite the early loss to Auburn, Houston remains right on the doorstep of the No. 1 seed line, still rated No.
1 overall by BPI and Torvik and No. 2 by KenPom. The games against Alabama, Notre Dame and a TBD third opponent (possibly Creighton or Texas A&M) in next week's Players Era Festival loom large for the Cougars.
Fifth-to-Last In : Maryland Terrapins—Came up just short, but battled Marquette tooth and nail. Fourth-to-Last In : Michigan Wolverines—Loss to Wake Forest dropped Wolverines to play-in-game territory. Third-to-Last In : New Mexico Lobos—Pummeled by St.
John's, but scored nice win over UCLA. Second-to-Last In : Dayton Flyers—Might mess around and upset UNC in Maui Invitational opener. Last Team In : Penn State Nittany Lions—It's super early, but maybe best PSU team in decades? ****CUT LINE**** First Team Out : Northwestern Wildcats—I mean, we couldn't put thirteen Big Ten teams in.
Second Team Out : LSU Tigers—Early surprise with a statement road win at Kansas State. Third Team Out : Arizona State Sun Devils—Looking pretty good since that exhibition blowout loss to Duke. Fourth Team Out : San Francisco Dons—Nice win over Boise State; big game Thursday against Memphis.
Fifth Team Out : Utah State Aggies—Averaging 107 points per game at least deserves a shoutout. 5 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 7. Duke; 9.
North Carolina; 28. Pittsburgh; 32. Miami (FL); 40.
Clemson Also Considered: Wake Forest, NC State Biggest Change: Pitt catapults in; Wake nosedives out This is my 13th season doing bracketology for Bleacher Report, and I legitimately could not tell you the last time I had Pittsburgh projected for a No. 7 seed or better. It was probably somewhere in the February 2014 range, when the Panthers were crashing and burning their way from a 16-1 start to what was ultimately a No.
9 seed in the dance. What a prolific start they've gotten out to, though. Home wins over Murray State and West Virginia aren't exactly marquee.
Those will probably be borderline Q2/Q3 results once we start getting NET and Quadrant data. Still, they blew out two teams who currently reside somewhat comfortably in the KenPom top 100, scoring at least 83 points in each of their first four wins. Jaland Lowe has taken a massive step forward as a sophomore after spending last season in Bub Carrington's shadow.
On the flip side of that coin is Wake Forest, which got pummeled by Xavier on Saturday, just three days after the Demon Deacons narrowly survived against USC Upstate. (They also opened the season with merely a 15-point win over Coppin State, which KenPom rates as the second-worst team in the nation. If you're going to play those games, you simply have to win them in blowout fashion.
) Three-point shooting was a key strength for the Deacs last season, but they cannot buy a bucket in the early going—especially Parker Friedrichsen, who made 50 treys for them in 2023-24, but who has already lost his starting job after going 2-for-18 from distance through the team's first four games. 8 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 1. Kansas; 5.
Houston; 8. Iowa State; 13. Texas Tech; 15.
Baylor; 18. Arizona; 19. Cincinnati; 25.
BYU Also Considered: Arizona State, Kansas State, TCU, Utah, UCF Biggest Change: Arizona makes a rough first impression in the Big 12 Last November, Arizona went on the road less than one full week into the season and picked up an incredibly valuable win over Duke. Playing in the Pac-12 (and suffering six losses within that dead-and-dying conference) did their resume no favors whatsoever, but that early feather in the cap—combined with a few other quality nonconference wins—helped propel the Wildcats to a No. 2 seed.
This November, Arizona went on the road about a week and a half into the season...
and got smoked by Wisconsin. Yes, it was an ugly, ugly game with no rhythm whatsoever, which is the polar opposite of how Tommy Lloyd wants to play. By halftime, there had already been 31 fouls and 43 free throws.
And even without Arizona making any effort to extend the game with late fouls—there weren't any called in the final two minutes, actually—there were another 32 fouls and 44 free throws attempted after the intermission. Regardless of whether it was a glorified free-throw contest, a 15-point road loss to what was supposed to be the 12th-best team in the Big Ten isn't a great result. Arizona could turn around and win its home game against Duke on Friday and all would be reasonably well in Tucson.
But if the Wildcats also lose that one, they would head into the Battle 4 Atlantis at 2-2 with two home wins over teams that don't rank top 300 on KenPom. At that point, if they don't draw and defeat either Gonzaga or Indiana in the championship game of that tournament, they're going to end up with a rather pathetic nonconference resume. 5 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 2.
Connecticut; 14. Creighton; 16. Marquette; 20.
St. John's; 36. Xavier Also Considered: Providence Biggest Change: Villanova drop-kicked into oblivion There were six Big East teams in our preseason projection, five of whom have moved three or fewer spots on the overall seed list after two weeks of action.
And then there's Villanova. The forecasting models desperately wanted to believe the third year was the charm for Kyle Neptune and the Wildcats. KenPom had them at No.
20 in the preseason rankings. Haslametrics slotted them at No. 22.
Those two data points were enough to get Villanova a No. 8 seed in our aggregation approach to that initial projection. That sure was short-lived, eh? Villanova jumped out to early leads in each of its games against Columbia, Saint Joseph's and Virginia.
But eventually, and repeatedly, the wheels came off. In the loss to Columbia, the Lions kept turning steals into buckets, tripling Villanova 27-9 in fast-break points. In the other two losses, Villanova was out-assisted by a margin of 34-17—a product of both not running anything coherent on offense and not rotating well along the perimeter on defense, particularly against Virginia, which had little difficulty creating wide-open three-point looks on a regular basis.
Already, Villanova has plummeted more than 50 spots on KenPom, and that doesn't feel like nearly enough. On the plus side, there's still time to turn things around. Just last season, Saint Mary's started out 2-3 with an embarrassing home loss to Weber State and a pair of blowout losses on neutral courts.
The Gaels even lost two of their next three to fall to 3-5 overall. But they went 23-2 the rest of the way and ended up with a No. 5 seed in the NCAA tournament.
Good luck finding anyone who thinks Villanova is fixing to do that, though. At this point, it's more a question of whether Neptune makes it to the finish line before getting the ol' pink slip. 12 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 10.
Purdue; 17. Illinois; 22. Ohio State; 24.
Indiana; 27. Wisconsin; 29. Michigan State; 31.
UCLA; 37. Rutgers; 38. Oregon; 41.
Maryland; 42. Michigan; 46. Penn State Also Considered: Iowa, Northwestern, Nebraska Biggest Change: Bid list balloons to a dozen Between the 12 teams in the field and the three also considered, yes, that's 15 out of the 18 teams in the Big Ten who are at least on the radar.
Only USC, Minnesota and Washington didn't get mentioned, and even they were each top 80 on KenPom as of Saturday. Twelve bids feels like an awful lot, especially from a conference with no teams in the KenPom top 10 and only one in the top 20. But welcome to the era of the super conferences.
Getting 12 out of 18 (66.7 percent) teams in isn't all that different from getting nine out of 14 (64.3 percent), which the Big Ten did in both 2021 and 2022.
And had there been a tournament in 2020, it sure was looking like a 10-bid league (71.4 percent). Heck, from 2013-23, the then-10 team Big 12 sent 70 percent of its teams to the dance more often (six times) than not (four times).
So, sure, let's make room for Wisconsin and Penn State without sacrificing anyone from this league that was in the initial projection. We already talked about the Badgers' big, foul-filled win over Arizona in the Big 12 section, but shoutout to the Nittany Lions for winning their first four games by an average margin of 35.8 points.
The first three opponents (Binghamton, UMBC and Saint Francis) were whatever, but shellacking Virginia Tech by 22 on a neutral court was something. Of particular note is the copious amount of steals. In the previous 14 seasons combined, Penn State had tallied 16 or more steals in a game on just two occasions: Nov.
12, 2017 vs. Fairleigh Dickinson and Nov. 28, 2020 vs.
VMI. But they've already hit that mark in three of their first four games. Looks like the former VCU coach (Mike Rhoades) has gotten those HAVOC roots to take hold.
9 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 3. Auburn; 6. Tennessee; 11.
Alabama; 12. Kentucky; 21. Texas A 23.
Texas; 26. Florida; 30. Mississippi State; 39.
Arkansas Also Considered: Ole Miss, LSU, Georgia, Oklahoma Biggest Change: Alabama and Auburn swap spots; Kentucky makes a considerable leap Heading into the season, the Mark Sears-led Crimson Tide looked like the relatively clear cream of the crop in the SEC, ranked No. 2 in the AP poll and projected for a No. 1 seed.
Thus far, however, they haven't been nearly as impressive as anticipated, beating both Arkansas State and McNeese by single digits before taking an L at Purdue. To be sure, expectations are still high. They're still projected for a No.
3 seed, and freshman point guard Labaron Philon has been all sorts of good out of the gate. But that loss to Purdue was merely the beginning of a month-long gauntlet in which Alabama still needs to run consecutively through Illinois, Houston, Rutgers, a TBD final opponent in the Players Era Festival, North Carolina and Creighton. They easily could have four or five losses by the end of that, or maybe they'll go 5-1 and reassert their claim to a No.
1 seed. In Alabama's stead, Auburn looks like a wrecking ball, blowing out both Vermont and Kent State around a win over Houston in Houston, with Johni Broome making quite the early case for NPOY. Likewise, though, the Tigers are about to be seriously tested.
They potentially could go through Iowa State, North Carolina and Connecticut in the Maui Invitational, with a game at Duke as their first game back in the continental US. That would be four consecutive games away from home against teams currently projected for a top-nine overall seed. Lastly, how about Kentucky's start? There undoubtedly will be commenters losing their mind over our happy accident of Duke as a No.
2 seed and Kentucky as a No. 3 seed in the East Region, considering the Wildcats defeated the Blue Devils on a neutral court. But let's not forget that Kentucky was 43rd on KenPom in the preseason.
Out-shooting Duke in Atlanta drastically narrowed the gap between those blue bloods, but it's too early to completely throw out preseason suppositions just because the Blue Devils blew an eight-point lead in the final 10 minutes. 8 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 4. Gonzaga; 33.
Saint Mary's; 34. Memphis; 35. VCU; 43.
Nevada; 44. New Mexico; 45. Dayton; 51.
Bradley Also Considered: San Francisco, Boise State, San Diego State, Utah State Biggest Change: VCU might be back Over the past decade, VCU has had more instances of head coaches leaving for high-major gigs (three) than it does seasons that resulted in a single-digit seed in the NCAA tournament (two) or NCAA tournament victories (one). The Rams have been constantly at least kind of good, finishing 17 of the past 18 seasons ranked in the top 75 on KenPom. But they haven't been a serious multiple-weekend threat since their final few years under Shaka Smart's leadership.
That might be changing this year, as VCU has won each of its first four games by at least a 19-point margin. Was it great competition? Well, no. The Rams were supposed to win the home games against Bellarmine, Merrimack and Loyola MD, as well as the neutral-site game against Boston College.
They were still impressive in those blowouts, though, holding those opponents to 54.8 points per game, while having Joe Bamisile score at least 18 in each game thus far. The upcoming Charleston Classic (Nov.
21-24) will be a solid test of VCU's staying power. They'll open with a game against Seton Hall—who is averaging 53.8 points per game and might struggle to break 40 against the Rams—before potentially running through Nevada and Miami.
No world-beaters in that field, but beating a Big East foe and a pair of projected tournament teams would be huge. The Rams were the preseason projected champs of the A-10 but were slotted as the No. 46 overall seed in our bracket projection.
Now, they're at least in at-large territory and could be more comfortably a single-digit seed by next week if they win that MTE. 21 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 47. UC Irvine; 48.
Grand Canyon; 49. Louisiana Tech; 50. Princeton; 52.
High Point; 53. Arkansas State; 54. Charleston; 55.
McNeese; 56. Purdue Fort Wayne; 57. Lipscomb; 58.
Vermont; 59. Kent State; 60. Furman; 61.
Northern Colorado; 62. Merrimack; 63. South Dakota State; 64.
Norfolk State; 65. Central Connecticut; 66. Grambling; 67.
Bucknell; 68. SIU-Edwardsville Also Considered: N/A Biggest Change: Vermont Takes a Tumble Vermont doesn't always win the America East tournament, but the Catamounts consistently have been the best team in that league over the past eight years. Sometimes, there's at least decent competition for the throne.
In five of those eight years, though, you could have doubled Vermont's year-end ranking on KenPom and it still would've been the league's highest-rated team. The Catamounts have taken it on the chin so far this season, though. They did open the year with an impressive five-point win at UAB, but proceeded to lose by 51 to Auburn, by 14 to Merrimack and by three to Iona.
Losing to the Tigers wasn't a surprise, but KenPom had that as a projected 15-point margin, not 51. And Vermont was supposed to narrowly win both of the games against Merrimack and Iona. Granted, we are talking about a team that started out 2-7 two years ago, only to enter the NCAA tournament on a 15-game winning streak.
However, they can pretty well already kiss their preseason spot as a projected No. 12/13 seed goodbye. And they do have some competition atop the AE from both UMass Lowell and Bryant.
Might not be long before we're penciling in a non-Vermont team as this league's auto bid during the regular season for the first time in a long time..
