Bracket Projection: 1/16

What I missed. Due to the adult-like nature of my schedule these days, I've gotten into the habit of preparing all the data to make a bracket on Monday and then actually making it on Tuesday. So I think these posts are basically all going to have to include a list of notable events that happened between the data and the bracket. First the bracket, then the games I missed:

	ATLANTA	LOS ANGELES	BOSTON	OMAHA
1	Duke	Virginia	Villanova	Purdue
2	West Virginia	Kansas	North Carolina	Oklahoma
3	Xavier	Michigan St.	Texas Tech	Wichita St.
4	Kentucky	Seton Hall	Auburn	Clemson
5	Arizona	Tennessee	Arizona St.	Cincinnati
6	Arkansas	TCU	Creighton	Miami FL
7	Nevada	Ohio St.	Texas A&M	Gonzaga
8	Florida	Michigan	Florida St.	Butler
9	Rhode Island	Missouri	Texas	Notre Dame
10	UCLA	Marquette	Saint Mary's	Louisville
11	Boise St.	Syracuse	Maryland	Georgia
11			Houston	Baylor
12	Missouri St.	New Mexico St.	Buffalo	Western Kentucky
13	South Dakota St.	Vermont	East Tennessee St.	Towson
14	Stephen F. Austin	Murray St.	UC Davis	Louisiana Lafayette
15	Northern Kentucky	Iona	Bucknell	Florida Gulf Coast
16	Radford	Montana	Princeton	Texas Southern
16	Hampton		Robert Morris

Yesterday Kansas beat West Virginia, Florida State lost to Boston College, and of course Michigan beat Maryland. But if you're Michigan, you wouldn't be too upset with the draw shown here. Missouri is weak and Virginia, while always formidable, has a recent history of struggling in the tournament, and could be a team Michigan exploits. I'd certainly take this draw, but they're probably more like a 7 now after the week they just had.

It's probably time to talk about Purdue. Yeah, would you look at that: Purdue suddenly accomplishes what Michigan State couldn't the last few weeks and climbs to the 1 line. In reality, the top three overall seeds are rock solid right now and Purdue, Oklahoma, and North Carolina are all extremely close, but my choice went to the Boilermakers after looking at their impressive resume. They currently have wins over Louisville, Arizona, Michigan, Butler, Marquette, Maryland and Minnesota, and their only 2 losses are both to tournament teams. With a corps of seniors, a consistent style of play, and a very winnable conference, the Boilermakers could hang on to their current position. I'll be at Mackey for their rematch with Michigan next week, so I'll be hoping Michigan makes their path to a 1 a bit more difficult.

Speaking of Michigan. Yeah, what a week. Since we spoke last, Michigan took the aforementioned Boilermakers to the brink, ran Sparty off their home floor, and won a wacky first half slog turned second half barnburner against Maryland. Apparently that's only enough to raise them one seed, but they're moving up right now and I expect that to continue with an easier slate this week against Nebraska and Rutgers. I tweeted the win probability graph yesterday but I'll throw it in here again since it looks so nice:

The Wolverines have won 9 of their last 10. Let's keep the wins coming.