Men’s Conference Tournament Recap & NCAA Tournament Info (Premium)

Tagged with: Conference Tournaments, NCAA Tournament Projections

The last of the conference tournaments finished up on Sunday so we now know the 31 automatic qualifiers. The only conference that didn’t have a conference tournament was the Ivy League. Columbia finished in a three-way tie with Cornell and Harvard but the Lions got the automatic bid due to having the highest ITA ranking in last week’s rankings. Down below I have a breakdown of the conference tournament winners by seed which show us that the top seed won in 19 of 30 (63%) tournaments – as a point of reference last year it was 18 of 30 (60%). There were 14 repeat champions and there was only one host, Florida Gulf Coast, that defended its turf. FGCU was also tied with San Diego as the highest seeds to win a conference tournament.  

Conference Tournament Champion Breakdown (by seed):

#1. 19 (Alabama State, Army, Bryant, Buffalo, Denver, Drake, East Tennessee State, Georgia State, Monmouth, Ohio State, Presybterian, Rice, South Florida, TCU, Tennessee Tech, UC Santa Barbara, UNC Wilmington, Utah State, Valpariaso)

#2. 6 (Florida A&M, Georgia, Idaho, Lamar, UMKC, Virginia)

#3. 3 (Butler, USC, VCU)

#4. 2 (Florida Gulf Coast, San Diego)

 

 

So we’ve seen the 31 automatic qualifers now let’s take a look at those 33 at-large bids that will be awarded tomorrow afternoon at 5:00 p.m. ET. 

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The at-large bids have always been awarded based off the final ITA rankings of the regular season which were completed last night but won’t be published until this Thursday. The NCAA committee also used the rankings for seeding as well with the only real deviation coming when two adjacent teams played during the season. In some instances a head-to-head win made a team jump the team it beat though in other instances it did not. If you haven’t already checked out my rankings projections for this week they are available on the rankings tab in the menu – I have both the first and second runs listed side-by-side so you can compare them. The second run of the rankings is down below with automatic qualifiers noted with an AQ and the cut-off line highlighted in yellow.

The final at-large selection would be No. 44, since we had 10 conference champions ranked inside the top 43 plus #31 Texas Tech is ineligible due to its sub .500 record of 13-15, however No. 44 Tennessee (13-14) is also ineligible due to a sub .500 record. So we work our way down the list and see that No. 45 Utah State is already in with an automatic bid, No. 46 Vanderbilt (12-15) is ineligible due to a sub .500 record, so the final at-large spot should go to No. 47 Portland. The only issue is the team directly behind Portland, No. 48 Washington, won the head-to-head meeting this year so from what I’m hearing Washington may be the one to get that final spot. It’s possible the committee will just make a hard cut at No. 47 and stick with Portland so I guess we won’t know for sure what they’ll do until tomorrow evening at 5.

The NCAA manual that explains the selection process is linked here and if you scroll down to page 19 you’ll see where it talks about selection. There are several other categories they use but H2H has taken precedence in the past. 

 

 

Grid Broken Down By Seeds (for mobile viewing turn sideways)

 

 

The only deviation from final ranking should come at No. 12 with Texas A&M owning the H2H win over Georgia.

It’s going to be really interesting to see where the committee sends all the 2, 3, and 4 seeds since there are 6 hosts in the Southwest (TCU/Baylor/Oklahoma State/Texas/Texas A&M/Oklahoma), 4 in California (USC/UCLA/California/Stanford), 3 in the Atlantic (Wake Forest/Virginia/North Carolina), 2 in the Deep South (Georgia/Florida), and 1 in the Midwest.  

The only other teams in the western part of the country that are expected to be in the field are Oregon, UCSB, Utah State, San Diego, Portland/Washington, Denver, and Idaho. Oregon is the only one of those that will be a No. 2 seed so three other No. 2s will have to travel a considerable distance. UCSB, Utah State, San Diego, and Portland/Washington will all be No. 3 seeds so I’d expected to see Portland/Washington go to either Cal or Stanford, San Diego and UCSB will go to USC or UCLA, and Utah State will likely end up at Cal or Stanford.  

I’ve tried projecting a bracket before and just when I think I’ve got it figured out I get them all wrong so I’ll save that for the experts. 

I’ll have my women’s projections and anticipated seeds a little later this evening. 

 

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