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Well it has been one heck of a regular season but we are now officially headed to the postseason. The final regular season rankings were run twice to account for all the weekend’s results and this set of rankings will be used to determine the NCAA Tournament field.

64 teams qualify for the NCAA Tournament with that number comprised of 31 automatic qualifiers and 33 at-large bids (the AQs are at the bottom of the link). The at-large cut-off for the men’s field ended up at 42 since there were 9 conference champions that were ranked in the top 42. 
There were a few spots where the difference between two teams was a matter of tenths of a point with the cut-off teams of Memphis and Alabama only separated by .28. Now I do have to say that these are just projections and there is some educated guesswork involved on the unranked wins so it is possible that Alabama could end up ahead of Memphis if one of my projections was off.
Here was the breakdown on the final two teams vying for that last at-large spot.
#41 Memphis (19.76)
9 Best Wins – at #27 Ole Miss, at #30 SMU, at #35 Vanderbilt, #51 Harvard, #47 Denver, at San Diego State, at Middle Tennessee State, VCU, Louisville

#43 Alabama (19.48)
9 Best Wins – at #27 Ole Miss, at #36 LSU, at #46 South Carolina, #53 Princeton, #62 Georgia State, #63 Auburn, at North Florida, Miami, UAB

Memphis had five top 75 wins while Alabama had six since North Florida will drop out this week. I had Memphis’s non-top 75 wins ranked as follows – San Diego State (76-85), Middle Tennessee State & VCU (86-95), and Louiville (106-115). I had Alabama’s non-top 75 wins ranked as follows – North Florida and Miami (76-85) and UAB (86-95)

I feel very confident about San Diego State, VCU, North Florida, and Miami but not as confident about Middle Tennessee State, Louisville, and UAB. Those last three have been in the same place for about the last three weeks and were ranked in those same spots when the last set of rankings was done on April 26. If MTSU were to drop down from 86-95 to 96-105 that four point drop would be enough to push Alabama ahead of Memphis by a hair. It is really too close to call so we won’t know for sure until selection time at 5:30 p.m. eastern on Tuesday.

The other set of teams that was as close as it gets is Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech at 32 and 33 with GT getting the 32 spot by .01. Now it really doesn’t matter that much if you are a 2 or 3 seed because you’re going to be playing the same caliber team in the first round.

Illinois and Baylor were the teams inside the top 45 that improved their stock the most in the final week of the season. Illinois passed South Florida due to its wins over Penn State and Northwestern while Baylor took itself off the bubble with a HUGE win at Oklahoma State.

The reason UNC Wilmington dropped so many spots despite not playing last week is because its loss to Charleston from two weekends ago wasn’t keyed in until this past week.

5/3 Oracle/ITA Men’s Ranking Projections

Rank School Points Previous
1 Virginia 78.43 1
2 UCLA – IN 71.51 2
3 North Carolina 70.63 3
4 TCU – IN 70.18 5
5 Ohio State – IN 69.72 4
6 Wake Forest – IN 65.14 6
7 Georgia 64.36 7
8 Texas Tech 59.94 8
9 Florida – IN 57.25 9
10 Oklahoma 55.88 10
11 USC 54.45 11
12 Texas A&M 49.99 14
13 California 49.79 12
14 Northwestern 48.93 13
15 Illinois 47.72 17
16 Oklahoma State 47.01 15
17 South Florida – IN 44.34 16
18 Texas 40.37 18
19 Arkansas 39.73 19
20 Kentucky 38.11 20
21 Florida State 34.74 21
22 Mississippi State 34.49 22
23 Tulsa 33.88 23
24 Michigan 32.44 24
25 Columbia – IN 32.11 25
26 Rice* – IN 31.16 26
27 Ole Miss* 28.83 29
28 San Diego – IN 28.27 30
29 Stanford* 27.87 27
30 SMU* 27.43 28
31 Tulane* 26.27 31
32 Georgia Tech 25.12 33
33 Virginia Tech* 25.11 32
34 Baylor* 24.61 42
35 Vanderbilt* 24.57 34
36 LSU* 23.29 36
37 Penn State 22.80 35
38 Oregon 22.65 38
39 Washington* 21.61 40
40 Notre Dame* 21.17 37
41 Dartmouth 20.96 39
42 Memphis* 19.76 41
43 Alabama* 19.48 43
44 NC State* 18.05 44
45 UC Santa Barbara* – IN 17.83 46
46 South Carolina (14-15) 17.79 45
47 Denver* – IN 16.73 48
48 Old Dominion* 15.01 47
49 Cornell* 14.26 50
50 Drake* 14.07 51
51 Harvard* 13.76 49
52 Purdue* 13.55 53
53 Princeton* 13.38 52
54 Pepperdine* 12.37 61
55 Lamar* – IN 12.08 55
56 East Tennessee St* – IN 11.66 54
57 Boise State* 11.13 59
58 Utah State* 10.99 56
59 Indiana* 10.95 58
60 Wisconsin* 10.83 57
61 BYU* 10.64 60
62 Georgia State* 9.97 62
63 Auburn* 9.86 63
64 Cal Poly* 9.71 68
65 St. John’s* – IN 8.79 66
66 Wichita State* – IN 8.78 NR
67 Iowa* 8.54 73
68 New Mexico* 8.52 64
69

21 Comments

  1. 181

    It's tough to tell because Alec Adamson & Santtu Leskinnen were close to dropping out of the top 125 and they have to be ranked inside the top 125 to get in as an AQ.

  2. 181

    I could be wrong but I don't think going to an IMG marketed school has any correlation in being able to train at the IMG academy.<br />

  3. 181

    So a kid who goes to an IMG school is not allowed to go work out in Florida during their time in school or prior to their time in school? Are college players who go to IMG schools more likely to get wild cards into ITFs? It would be very ineteresting if you went through a couple years to see which kids from which programs got the most wildcards. If a school is getting their players wildcards that might be a recruiting tool right?

  4. 181

    The more I look at it I think Virginia stays at #1 with UNC #2 and UCLA #3. <br /><br />Last season TCU was ranked #6 in the final regular season poll and it had H2H wins over #4 Illinois and #5 Texas A&M but it only jumped A&M and not Illinois. If that's the precedence then UNC shouldn't jump all the way from #3 to #1.

  5. 181

    If you really want to know who suffers from the Wake/State fiasco. Ask which top 3 team wants Wake in the quarter-finals…

  6. 181

    John Snow Lives~

  7. 181

    Women at 5pm Tuesday and men at 530p

  8. 181

    In 2013-14 Texas A&M jumped up 2 spots even though they hadn't beaten one of the teams it passed. That same year Georgia and Kentucky both dropped 2 spots due to losing to both teams behind them. <br /><br />Texas A&M was a little bit of an oddity because in the final rankings Georgia was 8, Texas 9, and Texas A&M 10 so you would have thought Texas would have been 8 and A&M 9 but for some reason A&M got the nod.

  9. 181

    when is the selection show?

  10. 181

    IMG in addition to having a sports academy in Florida is also a huge collegiate sports marketing company – if you've ever listened to a college football or basketball game on the radio more than likely they've been presented by IMG.<br /><br />Many of the larger schools are on the IMG platform so it just means the schools have someone helping them get more exposure – don't real see an angle where that would help recruiting unless the school says IMG will help get your name out there but schools that don't have IMG have someone else that probably does the same thing.

  11. 181

    Bobby, I was looking at the OSU website to see their summary of the Big Ten tourney and I noticed at the bottom of their page a Logo that proclaims them an IMG school. Can you explain what that means and what advantages an IMG school could offer a potential recruit? THANKS

  12. 181

    They should let YOU make the draw!

  13. 181

    Bobby, great writing as always. Has there been precedence where a team jumps two spots (or more) based on H2H results?

  14. 181

    Do you foresee any changes in the singles rankings this week that would cause anyone to drop out?

  15. 181

    Does the NCAA seeding committee take into consideration matches like WFU-NCSU. According to your records that one match is the difference in Wake being #4 vs. #6 and the NCAA knows that Wake's top 2 players were out of the country playing Davis Cup. Then if UNC just edges us out, and we beat UNC, maybe Wake should be the 3 seed.

  16. 181

    I had those bonus points added in

  17. 181

    North Carolina would have edged them for #3 – WF would have been #4

  18. 181

    If it was based off last week's rankings it would have been 57

  19. 181

    Thanks for all the work on this – it's much appreciated. If Wake had beaten NC State, would the Deacs have moved up to #3?

  20. 181

    The Alabama wins over Ole Miss, LSU, South Carolina, and UNF were all away. Does that have any affect on your calculations?

  21. 181

    Hey Bobby would you have any idea on what the final cut for the singles tournament will look like?