Bracketology – Never Too Early Edition
Posted by zhayes9 on December 22nd, 2008Zach Hayes is RTC’s resident bracketologist. He’ll be regularly out-scooping, out-thinking and out-shining Lunardi over the next three months.
Happy Holidays, everyone. My name is Zach Hayes and you might know me as a college hoops writer for the blog Northwestern Wins. Due to the unfortunate folding of that site, the head honchos here at Rush the Court graciously invited me on board as their Senior Bracketologist from now until Selection Sunday. Just think of me as Joe Lunardi but seven inches taller and without a hairpiece. Every Monday morning for the next six weeks or so a new bracket will be revealed until February heats up and multiple brackets per week will be released. I hope you guys enjoy this new RTC feature. For me, it’s just a ton of fun.
Quick disclaimers: The obvious one- it’s probably too early for bracketology (blasphemy! It’s never too early for this, how dare you! You know what I mean). RPI is still rounding into form at this point, and many key numbers I use from ESPN (Wins vs. Top 50, etc.) have yet to be released. I didn’t use much for this first bracket: record, conference strength, SOS, perused the individual schedules for quality wins/bad losses, and took RPI with a grain of salt. On the bracket you’ll notice I also made predictions for the entire tournament based on my matchups. Syracuse as the monumental upset should surprise no one that follows college basketball.
These seedings are based purely on performance thus far. If I was projecting future performance, I’d probably have Louisville in the tournament because they have to improve, right? Other than some of the mid-major/small conference auto-bids (i.e., I’m predicting Creighton takes the Missouri Valley even though you’d go with Illinois State by default), these are all based on the small amount of games played thus far. As you know, this entire operation will improve once teams complete more of their resumes.
RTC Bracket 12.22.08
Some explanations about the first edition (click brackets or right-click/view image to see a larger version):
- The 1 seeds were pretty clear to me even before I began gathering info: North Carolina, Connecticut, Oklahoma and Pittsburgh. In fact, Pittsburgh and Oklahoma are 1-2 in RPI, respectively. Butler is #4 and Northwestern is #9, so take it for what it’s worth.
- #2 seed Tennessee and #3 seed Michigan State are probably over-seeded for their performance this season. But I had to take into account that I have both teams pegged to win their conference tournaments, meaning three extra wins before Selection Sunday that will certainly boost their seed.
- My bracket came down to 12 teams for 8 positions: California, Maryland, Florida State, Stanford, Miami, Boston College, Louisville, Kentucky, Dayton, Cincinnati, Illinois State and Arizona. As much as I wanted to deny Illinois State and Stanford because of their lack of any semblance of a quality win, they’re undefeated and I had to slip them in the field. Maryland has the wins over Michigan and Michigan State and Arizona has the win over Gonzaga, with two of their three losses by the narrowest of margins. Dayton is 10-1 and has the Marquette win, with their only loss at Creighton. Florida State has nice computer numbers and beat California, Cincinnati and Florida, meaning if they’re in, Cal has to be. Painfully, the final seed came down to Louisville (only average win: depleted Mississippi) and Boston College (only average wins: UAB, Providence, @Massachusetts). I went with BC.
Conference Winners: Vermont, Xavier, North Carolina, Stetson, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Portland State, VMI, Michigan State, Cal State Fullerton, VCU, Memphis, Butler, Cornell, Siena, Miami (OH), Hampton, Creighton, BYU, Quinnipiac, Murray State, UCLA, Navy, Tennessee, Davidson, Lamar, Alabama State, North Dakota State, Western Kentucky, Gonzaga, Utah State
Multiple bids per conference: Big East (8), ACC (7), Big 10 (7), Big 12 (6), Pac 10 (5), SEC (3), MVC (2), WCC (2), Atlantic 10 (2), MWC (2).
Last Four In: Boston College, Stanford, Florida State, California
Last Four Out: Louisville, Cincinnati, Miami (FL), Kentucky
Any questions please leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to respond.
You really don’t expect Carolina to get past Creighton in the 2nd Round do you? Jays have Booker Woodfox & Stinnett – way too much firepower for the North Clickians!
That is the East bracket isn’t it? Games played at UD Arena…Creighton wins.
I like your bracket a lot more than Lunardi’s today. I can’t figure him out. Half of his teams look like he’s seeding them if the season ended today and half look like he’s projecting where they’ll finish.
go [redacted] yourself
haha sorry cusey. if you want some solace, check out lunardi’s bracket. he has syracuse as a 2 seed (!).
Maybe I’m crazy, but as a long time follower of CAA Basketball, I’m going to have to steer away from the general belief that says VCU will capture the automatic bid. As of right now, George Mason is playing the best basketball of any team in the conference With an 8-2 record (1-0) CAA. VCU has come on strong recently but struggled in the beggining of the season and now sit in the middle of the conference at 7-4. Don’t get me wrong, I like VCU, but I think they will steer away from their top 2 positioning in the conference this year and miss the tournament completely. I believe the conference will be won by GMU or Hofstra and both will recieve tournament bids, one being at large and the other automatic. However, I will hold off judgement on how good Mason is until Tuesdays game at Dayton (11-1, 1-0 A-10). However, I also believe that George Mason’s ability to play well at home will also boast their record substanstially. In the past year and a half, GMU has lost just 1 game at home to the hands of UNCW.