Judging the NCAA Tournament Top-16 Bracket Reveal

The NCAA Tournament men’s basketball selection committee released the top-16 bracket yesterday. As I said on Friday, this is an effort to draw up conversation with a month to go to Selection Sunday and hopefully draw more interest to the casual fan. On top of that it provides some transparency to coaches across the country and gives a little bit of an idea on how the committee is judging teams and what they are looking at.

Here’s how the bracket looked:

East Region

1. Villanova (overall No. 1 seed)
2. Louisville (overall No. 7 seed)
3. Kentucky (overall No. 12 seed)
4. UCLA (overall No. 15 seed)

Midwest Region

1. Kansas (overall No. 2 seed)
2. Florida State (overall No. 6 seed)
3. Arizona (overall No. 9 seed)
4. Duke (overall No. 16 seed)

South Region

1. Baylor (overall No. 3 seed)
2. North Carolina (overall No. 5 seed)
3. Florida (overall No. 11 seed)
4. Butler (overall No. 13 seed)

West Region

1. Gonzaga (overall No. 4 seed)
2. Oregon (overall No. 8 seed)
3. Virginia (overall No. 10 seed
4. West Virginia (overall No. 14 seed)

Thoughts: 

Overall, I think they did a decent job with this. My biggest complaint was having Butler in, especially as a No. 13 seed while not having Wisconsin in. That tells me a couple things about the committee. First, they don’t view the B1G as a good conference. That’s not good for teams like Maryland, Michigan State, Northwestern and Indiana. If the team that is likely going to win the conference can’t crack the top-16 now, you’re all a couple seeds lower than you thought or out of the NCAA Tournament all together. Wisconsin should have been the No. 4 seed in the South.

Gonzaga as the last No. 4 seed is something else I have a problem with. This feels like they are using part past experience with this and disregarding what this Gonzaga team is. They have neutral court wins over Arizona, Iowa State and Florida. Oh, they also don’t have a loss. Move them up to the No. 2 overall seed.

Cincinnati fans will complain about being left out. I get it. They are 28-2 and again, leading a conference. Personally, I had them in as the last No. 4 seed when I put out my bracket on Friday. Problem is they don’t have great wins. They won at Iowa State and beat Xavier and SMU at home. But, they lost to URI and Butler. With just one game left against a quality opponent (today at SMU) there are limited chances for them to improve the resume. Ultimately, if they win out, I expect them to sneak into the top-16 here.

The committee is showing they are taking injuries into account here. Oregon as a No. 2 seed is a prime example of that as the Ducks struggled early in the season without Dillon Brooks. They played a pretty bad out of conference schedule and lost the only quality game they played at Baylor. I have no problem factoring in injuries when it comes to seeding.

That East region would be all sorts of fun as all four teams have been popular Final Four picks. But, that’s the thing when you look at the top-16 teams. You can make a case that each region is the ‘region of death.’ It happens every year as it looks like one side is loaded. But, when you look at the overall seeds it’s all pretty balanced.

Just remember none of these are set in stone. As we saw, Butler lost already that will drop them out of the top-16. It’s still hard to imagine a team that wins the ACC doesn’t sneak to the top line. All in all though, it was a success as we have an idea what the committee’s thinking. Now, let’s have a month of basketball.