Tennessee is back in the top 5 seeds…can Duke catch Auburn?
Welcome back to yet another week of bracketology!
We’ll get right into the seeds as not much has changed across the top 16. Michigan State has moved into the 2-seed line while Purdue’s latest slump has dropped them down to the final team in the top-16:
Tennessee takes back over the 2-seed line following Florida’s road loss to Georgia, and this effectively takes them out of Auburn’s region as the Committee will not place the #5 overall seed in the same region as the #1 overall seed.
From there, however, much movement has commenced. Mississippi State at one point rose to the 16th seed overall, but they’ve now dropped consecutive games, most recently by 38 at Alabama, and they’ve stumbled all the way back down to the top 7-seed. On the flip side, Clemson and Saint Mary’s continue to be big risers. Clemson has used the win over Duke to spur momentum, winning four straight. Each of their last three wins (UNC, @FSU, @SMU) have come by double digits.
As for Saint Mary’s, they control the West Coast this season. The Gaels went to Spokane and knocked off Gonzaga for the second time this season, adding another Q1-A win, and not only have they clinched the WCC regular season title, they’re the first team not named Gonzaga to win consecutive outright WCC regular season titles since Pepperdine won three straight from 1990-1992. Many expected a down year after losing Aidan Mahaney to UConn, but they’ve not just proven that wrong, they’ve been better. The Randy Bennett train in Moraga never stops.
Flat out, this is the strongest top 36 seeds I’ve ever seen. There is extreme depth in this tournament, so much so that I believe three 1, 2, and 3-seeds don’t survive the Round of 32, and let me tell you why.
A combination of two things have created this: a historically weak bubble and teams that were expected to be top 12 seeds this season having lesser résumés than anticipated.
Firstly, the weak bubble is largely because the bubble teams just can’t beat the teams above them both in conference play and in non-conference games. North Carolina, SMU, and Georgia are a combined 4-26 in Quad-1 games this season. Georgia has three of those wins. The flip side of this is that overall strength of the overall non-bubble teams which brings us to our second reason as to why this is happening.
Back in 2013, Michigan State’s pre-tourney KenPom net rating sat at +23.24. They ranked 10th overall. As things stand today, that mark would rank 22nd. They were a 3-seed. This season, Baylor has been as high as 15th on KenPom since the start of the New Year, but they currently sit as our 36th overall seed and are firmly just outside the bubble due to losing six of their last nine games. Despite this, they still sit at 30th in KenPom with a +20.52 net rating. That metric would have ranked them 18th pre-tourney in 2013, 21st in 2014, 19th in 2015, and so on…very definitely not on the bubble in those seasons.
Then there’s Gonzaga, still a top-10 KenPom team, but they’ve also severely underwhelmed this season. The Zags have the talent to blow out teams on any given night. They’ve racked up 13 20+ point wins, but their issue has been the games against quality opponents. Every single Gonzaga loss in their 22-8 record have been decided by single digits. Couple that with those blowout wins, and it’s a recipe to be a predictive darling without having the résumé to match. Their roster is elite, and if they turn it on at the right time which they’ve shown some capability of doing so, they are potentially going to knock off a top seed.
Lastly, we’ll touch on UConn. The Huskies, coming off back-to-back titles, are having a down year. They sit at a 9-seed and our 35th overall seed. Their roster is extremely talented, but they, similar to Gonzaga, just can’t string wins together against top teams. They’ve been swept by St. John’s, lost at home to Creighton, and fell on the road to Xavier. They were run out of Maui without a single win.
The offense is still elite, but the defense has fallen off a cliff. From top ten in defensive efficiency each of the last two seasons to clinging onto a top 100 mark this season, it’s no wonder why they’ve dropped a handful more games. Even still, Hurley is an elite coach, and this roster is made up of guys like Liam McNeeley, Solo Ball, and Alex Karaban who can fill it up on any given night.
Between the three teams we just discussed, each of them were preseason top-15 KenPom teams. From there, you’ll get a team like Ole Miss that beat Alabama and Louisville on the road that don’t have a loss outside of Q1, Illinois who have a great roster when healthy that simply haven’t been at full strength in a while, and Memphis, another ultra-talented team that is suffering from the conference they play in. They still sit at 6-2 in Q1 games with wins over Missouri, Michigan State, Clemson, Ole Miss, and UConn. These are the teams likely to fall in your 7-9 seed range. It’s almost a guarantee that at least two top-12 seeds don’t make it past the first weekend.
BUBBLE UPDATE
BRACKET UPDATE
