The almost-final projected bracket is now posted after some seeding re-evaluation on Sunday morning and adding the results from the Big West and WAC from late Saturday night.
There still could be a little shifting around as a result of games on Selection Sunday. In particular, there are two one-bid leagues (Ivy and Sun Belt) playing championship games and an upset winner in either will require changing a team in the bracket. I also will swap Cincinnati and SMU if the Mustangs win the American conference championship over the Bearcats today.
Also, if Rhode Island beats VCU for the Atlantic 10 title, it will no longer be among the last four in and adjustments will have to take place for the play-in games in Dayton.
Upset winners in the Big Ten and SEC could also cause some seed changes, but that is still to be determined.
The committee begins bracketing on Sunday morning and will have contingencies in place for any of those situations if they feel a result merits a change. You may recall that last year, Kentucky coach John Calipari was very upset after the Wildcats beat Texas A&M to win the SEC title and saw that his team was still seeded below the Aggies. He accused the committee of not taking that game into account, but in fact, the committee felt his team should be seeded behind Texas A&M even if the Wildcats won. Reasonable people can disagree with that decision, but it wasn’t made out of bracketing expediency. It would not have been difficult to have another bracket in place. It was based on how the committee felt about those teams.
I think the Pac-12 will be disappointed in the low number of its teams in the field and the seeding. While there are three very good teams at the top, the rest of the conference was not strong. It was the weakest of the major conferences, not because of the big three at the top, but because of the dropoff.
