How Will Bracketologists Fare?

There are countless “bracketologists” who do little more than predict which teams which teams should get into the NCAA Tournament. Today will determine how good, or bad, these people are at what they do.

If the bracketologists are correct, Villanova, Kansas, North Carolina and Gonzaga will be the No. 1 seeds, with Kentucky, Arizona, Oregon and Duke the No. 2 seeds.

While picking the top seeds is somewhat easy, it gets tricky when trying to choose the lower seeds. Looking at the Bracket Project, the first four teams left out of the tournament are going to be Syracuse, Illinois State, Illinois and Georgia. Other teams being penciled in by a few and being relegated to one of the minor tournaments are Houston, California, Clemson, TCU and Iowa.

That has Vanderbilt, Providence, Wake Forest, Kansas State, Rhode Island and USC as making the cut.

Trying to guess in advance what the selection committee will do is never easy. Nor is it easy to figure what goes through the minds of those trying to guess the brackets. Of the 126 bracket predictions, there was one person who left off each of the projected No. 10 seeds: Seton Hall, Marquette, Xavier and Michigan State.

All of the No. 13 to No. 16 seeds are teams that earned automatic berths by winning their conference tournaments. The projected No. 16 seeds are North Carolina Central, New Orleans, Mount St. Mary’s and Cal-Davis. Barely above them are Kent State, Texas Southern, North Dakota and Jacksonville State at No. 15.

Cal-Davis is the lowest-rated team in the field, as 123 of 126 brackets had Irvine advancing before Saturday’s upset.

The sportsbooks don’t waste much time posting lines on the tournament games. Within several hours you should be able to find odds on all the NCAA Tournament games. The minor tournaments will come out soon after, as the CBI will begin play Tuesday and Wednesday, while the CIT will have games Monday.