Narrowing the field, Part 2- Lesser conferences

In this post, we will look for at large candidates out of some of the bottom conferences. We will focus on the : A-East, Big Sky, Big South, Big West, Great West, Independents, MAAC, MEAC, Northeast, OVC, Patriot, Southern, Southland, and SWAC

Potential at large/ Bubble teams:
A-East: None
Big Sky: Weber St
Big South: None
Big West: Long Beach St
Great West: None
Independents: None
MAAC: Iona
MEAC: None
Northeast: None
OVC: Murray St*
Patriot: None
Southern: Davidson
Southland: None
SWAC: None

So to recap, we have Weber St, Long Beach St, Iona, Davidson, and Murray St, which has the best shot of all these schools. More to come soon.

Narrowing the field, part 1

At this point in the season, the picture finally starts to become clear for the tournament. Most teams have played around 22 games, And there is a little over a month until selection Sunday. This means that a team that fails to get an automatic bid has about 10 games left to play before the tournament. This means that we can start eliminating teams that have no realistic shot at an at-large bid. Keep in mind that any team can always pull a few upsets and get that auto bid, so we are not eliminating them from the bracket, just the at-large pool.

As of right now, there are 68 slots for the tournament. 31 of these slots are for automatic qualifiers. This means that we have 37 at-large spots up for grabs. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that all top 37 teams will get an at large bid, as some will probably win their conference tournaments.

1. Tournament locks
Teams with resumes good enough to warrant an entry, even if they lost their final 10 games.
Kentucky, Ohio State, Missouri, Duke, UNC, Baylor, Kansas

This leaves 37-7= 30 spots left.

Welcome

Last year as a senior project in high school, I decided to write about the tournament as a bracketologist. I found out that I actually enjoyed it (a first for high school) and decided to do it again. I will be blogging up until the tournament, and maybe during, if I feel like it. Hopefully, I can accurately predict the teams and seeds again this year.