5 BOROUGH SPORTS

Today I present the first Bracketology on 5 Borough Sports.

Weekly from now until the NCAA Tournament I will give you an overview of where the teams are stacking up for bids heading into the Big Dance.

The formula I use for deciding who fits where is a combination of how the teams have fared to date and how I think they will fare the rest of the way.

So far this season the college basketball world can be defined as unpredictable. Besides Duke and the other undefeated teams, there are not many teams that have jumped out an impressed anyone. One night a team looks like world beaters, the next they are getting beating by a team much worse than the one they just beat.

Big conference schools have faltered horribly across the board, with multiple teams from each of the major conferences claiming very ugly out of conference records. Additionally even the teams that have some big wins, seem to waste them away by adding bad losses, a poor recipe for creating a viable NCAA Tournament resume.

I’ll be the first to admit it, but I couldn’t be more unsure of where this season is headed for so many teams. I can’t remember a year with this much parity in college hoops. It seems like the trend towards more and more mid majors being successful is gaining momentum, and it might not be long before we go from just a handful of mid major at-large bids, to more like 10 or 15.

This years tournament features a slight change in format, adding three more teams and thus creating three more play-in games. The the bottom four teams in the tournament will battle, along with the final four at-large teams for the right to play in the round of 64. It was long thought during the offseason that the tournament would expand to 96 teams, but a late fight by those opposed to it helped seal the fate of the tournament at 68.

Personally I think there is no reason to expand beyond this. When I look at the resumes of the bubble teams right now, and even those in the 8-11 seed range, I see a bunch of teams who some past years wouldn’t have made it. More and more these days the little guys are upsetting big conference teams in early season matchups, and as a result are creating these very mediocre resumes come March.

The good news is a bad loss (or two or three) won’t necessarily ruin your teams hopes of making the big dance, but you better make some good wins to go along with them. On the other side, the bad news is we have a bunch of big conference teams who are making it harder to validate them getting a tournament bid over a small conference school at-large.

So in coming weeks I’ll discuss certain teams that are battling for seeding and also talk about news from across college basketball. Please feel free to give your opinions on this version of bracketology and future ones as well.

1 seeds-

Duke,  Ohio State, Syracuse, Kansas

2 seeds-

Pittsburgh, Purdue, UConn, Kentucky

3 seeds-

San Diego State, Notre Dame, BYU, Missouri

4 seeds-

Villanova, Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin

5 seeds-

Texas A&M, Temple, Louisville, Minnesota

6 seeds-

Kansas State, Michigan St, West Virginia, Washington

7 seeds-

Georgetown, Florida, Tennessee, UNC

8 seeds-

St. Mary’s, Arizona, Washington St, UNLV

9 seeds-

UCF, Cincinnati, Old Dominion, Boston College

10 seeds-

Gonzaga, Baylor, St. John’s, Utah State

11 seeds-

Marquette, OK State, Florida State, Virginia Tech

12 seeds-

Maryland, Butler, Georgia, Memphis, Richmond, Vanderbilt

13 seeds-

Oakland, Belmont, Wichita State, Harvard

14 seeds-

Charleston, Quinnipiac, Ball State, Austin Peay

15 seeds-

Long Beach St, Coastal Carolina, Fairfield, Bucknell

16 seeds-

Hartford, Florida Atlantic, Jackson St, Hampton, Northern Colorado, Nicholls St

Last Four In-

Richmond, Memphis, Georgia, Maryland

Last Four Out-

Miami FL, Northwestern, New Mexico, Xavier

Next Four Out-

UCLA, Clemson, Nebraska, USC

Bids By Conference-

ACC- 6

BIG 10- 6

BIG 12- 7

BIG EAST- 10

SEC- 5

PAC TEN- 3

MWC- 4

A10- 2

WAC- 2

CUSA-2

This entry was posted on January 11, 2011 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Bracketology, College Basketball, St. John's. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.