Bracketology: Surging Alabama Moves To Second In New NCAA Tournament Support Projection

New support is displayed and Alabama continues its rise in the chart. The Crimson Tide, who moved up to second in Friday’s fork projection, are undefeated in the SEC and have won 10 in a row overall. Those wins include games at Tennessee and LSU and they will travel to Oklahoma to face another hot team in the Sooners on Saturday in the SEC / Big 12 Challenge. OU has won four straight wins, the last two of which were against Kansas at home and Texas.

Here are a few other takeaways from this week’s installment:

The number of games played is not the same

One of the things that’s different this season when trying to make projected hooks is comparing teams that have played a very different number of games. Saint Louis just played their first game in about a month this week, and the Billikens showed a bit of rust in a 76-71 home loss to Dayton. It’s just the ninth game they’ve played and only their second loss. I try to compare them with teams like Louisville, which has played 14 games, or Colorado, which has 16 games to its name. Even Rutgers is in that part of the range and the Scarlet Knights have played as many Quad 1 games as Saint Louis has played in total.

We’re still just over six weeks away from the selection on Sunday, so while there are disparities in the number of games played then as well, we expect there will be enough to judge fairly. each team.

Teams showing rust after rest

Speaking of teams coming from long COVID breaks, we see the results to be mixed. Teams are expected to show a bit of rust after a long period of absence, and some certainly are, but not all.

Villanova, for example, came out of a hiatus of nearly a month with victories over Seton Hall and Providence. Georgia Tech came out of a break of more than two weeks with a resounding victory over Clemson. It was the Tigers’ second game after a relatively short break, but they were crushed in three straight games before rebounding with a win over Louisville on Wednesday.

Michigan State, which hasn’t been in my squad since preseason, lost by 30 to Rutgers on Thursday night in its first game in three weeks.

I imagine the selection committee can reflect on the results after a long break, but at the end of the day wins are wins and losses are losses.

Will teams opt out of conference tournaments?

Another thing the committee may have to grapple with that it has not had to deal with before is the possibility for teams that see themselves as lockouts to general offers to walk out of their conference tournament.

This could put the committee in an awkward position deciding whether to take the winner of a watered-down conference tournament as an automatic qualifier. The committee has always left the choice of the automatic qualifier to past conferences.

It is also said that some conferences can simply cancel their tournaments and declare the regular season champion as the winner. These decisions do not yet have to be made.

Bracketology Top seeds

Check out the latest Palm support, the field of 68, the last four entrants and the first four exits