A Look Ahead At This Year’s Bracketology
It’s still early, but ESPN sees Duke with a #1 seed and a decent draw.
Bracketology and mock drafts are really kind of the same thing and equally pointless - but absolutely fun.
This article from Sportskeeda projects their eight top teams for March’s tournament. They are:
- Kentucky
- Iowa State
- Alabama
- Auburn
- Tennessee
- Kansas
- Duke
- UConn
That's a pretty limited field so let’s look at what ESPN has.
The top four seeds are:
- Auburn (South)
- Duke (West)
- Tennessee (Midwest)
- East (Iowa State)
By ESPN’s reckoning, the ACC gets five bids. However, UNC is in the First Four and sliding fast and Louisville is on the bubble.
Pitt is #6 in the South, Clemson is #7 in the Midwest and SMU is 11th. UNC is an 11 in the East.
All of this stuff is meaningless in January, but if it were today, Duke would be in a regional with Central Connecticut (which would be the first meeting ever between the two Blue Devil teams), Ole Miss, St. John’s, Baylor, Arkansas State, Gonzaga, Oklahoma, San Francisco, UCLA, Western Kentucky, Wisconsin, San Diego State, Florida and UMass Lowell.
The first thing that we always consider is coaching and in this hypothetical regional we’d see Chris Beard (Ole Miss), Rick Pitino (St. John’s), Scott Drew (Baylor), Mark Few (Gonzaga), Porter Moser (Oklahoma), Mick Cronin (UCLA), Wisconsin (Greg Gard), San Diego State (Brian Dutcher) and Florida (Todd Golden).
It’d be a pretty good group and a lot of competition for Jon Scheyer.
Then again, it’s all hypothetical, so just like the mock drafts, it’s all fun and games until we know what’s what.