Basketball
It was not a very good weekend for the top of the bracket. Well, it was fine for the very top where the top six teams won. After that, it was a mess with 11 of the next 14 teams lost.
As I like to say, when everyone loses, nobody loses. When there is that big of a pileup of losses, the seed movements are not very dramatic. Only Michigan State, one of the big winners, moved up two-seed lines. All of the other seed changes were just one line up or down. Only half of the 14 teams moved at all.
Basketball Bracketology top seeds
Check out Palm’s bracket and full field of 68 at the Bracketology hub.
Basketball Illinois cooling off
Illinois is 23rd in the NET this morning at 17-11 and looks like a team that is comfortably in the field. I have them as a No. 8 seed. However, the Illini are coming off a 43-point loss to Duke in a nonconference game. That is their third straight loss, all to top 10 teams in the bracket, but their tournament résumé is starting to show some strain. They are down to 11-11 vs the top three quadrants, which is not a problem yet. Their remaining schedule is home games vs. Iowa and Purdue sandwiched around a road game at Michigan. Losing two of three could mean the Illini need a win or two in the Big Ten Tournament. I am not worried for them yet or I would have them on the bubble, but a loss to Iowa would put them there.
Basketball Indiana, Arkansas back in bracket
New to the bracket are Indiana, coming off a second-half surge to beat Purdue, and Arkansas, which picked up a big win at home over Missouri. Dropping out are Texas and Georgia. Those three SEC teams keep shuffling in and out of the bracket among themselves.
Basketball Adjustments for bracket rules
There are a few unusual things in this bracket. Not surprisingly, one of those involves the SEC. There are still three SEC teams on the top line of the bracket, but also two more as No. 4 seeds. That means there is one region where two SEC teams could meet as early as the Sweet 16. Ideally, we could keep them separated until the Elite Eight, but not in this instance.
Also, on rare occasions, the committee will change a team’s seed to follow a bracketing rule. It’s a last resort kind of thing. In this bracket, I had to switch BYU and Gonzaga to get the Cougars to a part of the bracket where they would not play on Sunday. The Cougars do not play on Sunday for religious reasons.
There are always compromises when putting a bracket together. There are rules about keeping teams from the same conference separated wherever possible. Regular-season rematches are to be avoided too early in the tournament. Teams should be placed as close to home as possible. That is the one that is most often set aside.
And of course, they try to have a balance of power among the top four seeds in each region. That one is measured by adding the overall seed number of the top four seeds in each region and balance is when the difference between the highest total and lowest is no more than five.
Wisconsin and Michigan, both No. 3 seeds from the Big Ten were switched as a part of creating balance. The Badgers are the higher overall seed and would normally get geographic preference over the Wolverines, but the bracket was too unbalanced that way.
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