Bracket Projection: 2/28

Good news for Michigan fans! Rhode Island's insane 30 point home loss to #122 Saint Joseph's causes them to fall two whole seed lines, which makes room for Michigan on the 5 line. Obviously beware the infamous 5-12 matchups, but I think most fans would rather play Loyola Chicago than Kansas State. Anyways, here's the rest of the bracket:

	ATLANTA	BOSTON	OMAHA	LOS ANGELES
1	Virginia	Villanova	Xavier	Kansas
2	Michigan State	Purdue	North Carolina	Duke
3	Auburn	Cincinnati	Texas Tech	Tennessee
4	West Virginia	Clemson	Arizona	Wichita St.
5	Kentucky	Ohio St.	Gonzaga	Michigan
6	Houston	Arkansas	Nevada	TCU
7	Seton Hall	Rhode Island	Texas A&M	Creighton
8	Florida	Oklahoma	Miami FL	Butler
9	Saint Mary's	Virginia Tech	Arizona St.	Florida St.
10	North Carolina St.	Missouri	USC	Alabama
11	St. Bonaventure	Providence	Middle Tennessee	Louisville
11	Texas	Kansas St.
12	New Mexico St.	Baylor	Louisiana Lafayette	Loyola Chicago
13	Buffalo	Vermont	Murray St.	South Dakota
14	Montana	Bucknell	College of Charleston	UNC Greensboro
15	Northern Kentucky	UC Santa Barbara	Canisius	Penn
16	UNC Asheville	Wagner	Florida Gulf Coast	Nicholls St.
16	Hampton			Grambling St.

Bracket Projection: 2/27

We're getting down to it! We've entered conference tournament season, where I chain myself to my spreadsheets and furiously create new brackets as different teams punch their tickets and seeding makes its final few shuffles. Here's the bracket as it currently stands:

	ATLANTA	BOSTON	OMAHA	LOS ANGELES
1	Virginia	Villanova	Xavier	Kansas
2	Michigan State	Purdue	North Carolina	Duke
3	Auburn	Cincinnati	Tennessee	Wichita St.
4	Arizona	Clemson	Texas Tech	Ohio St.
5	West Virginia	Rhode Island	Kentucky	Gonzaga
6	Houston	Michigan	Nevada	TCU
7	Seton Hall	Texas A&M	Creighton	Arkansas
8	Florida	Florida St.	Oklahoma	Butler
9	Arizona St.	Saint Mary's	Miami FL	USC
10	Missouri	Virginia Tech	Alabama	Louisville
11	North Carolina St.	Kansas St.	Texas	Middle Tennessee
11			Providence	St. Bonaventure
12	Buffalo	Baylor	Louisiana Lafayette	Loyola Chicago
13	New Mexico St.	Vermont	Murray St.	South Dakota
14	Bucknell	Montana	UNC Greensboro	Northeastern
15	Canisius	Northern Kentucky	UC Santa Barbara	Wagner
16	UNC Asheville	Penn	Florida Gulf Coast	Nicholls St.
16	Hampton			Grambling St.

Kansas has been lurking on the 2 line just about all season, but finally claims their place with the top seeds as they appear to be closing out the regular season in strong fashion. What's interesting this year is that it looks like each of the top 8 has a decent shot at landing a 1 seed. The only one that looks set in stone is Virginia. The Big East powerhouses are on a collision course, as are the two Big Ten teams just behind them. And the ACC Tournament will be ripe with opportunities for teams to rack up resume-boosting wins, something Duke is actually lacking right now despite their shiny advanced stats. 

As for games I missed yesterday that aren't affecting this bracket: Virginia Tech beat Duke (speaking of lacking big wins) and that's about it. This year I'm trying to front load some of the work it takes to have the bracket up to date throughout the coming chaos so that I don't end up missing the final deadline for Bracket Matrix scoring like I did last year. So get ready for these posts to become a bit more frequent, and get ready for the Madness!

Bracket Projection: 2/21

I'm going to crank this one out so that it gets posted before the Michigan-Penn State game starting soon. If you haven't noticed, I've been slacking a bit on this site. I haven't even published my Northwestern post from two weeks ago, which is almost done. I also went to Wisconsin, but I don't think a post will be coming on that one because I already wrote about Madison back in the fall. The short version: The Kohl Center is exactly like Crisler but bigger, much like Madison is exactly like Ann Arbor but bigger. It was great and Michigan won and I finally got my road win. The end. Here is a bracket:

	ATLANTA	BOSTON	LOS ANGELES	OMAHA
1	Virginia	Villanova	Duke	Xavier
2	Purdue	Cincinnati	Kansas	North Carolina
3	Auburn	Clemson	Michigan St.	Texas Tech
4	Arizona	Ohio St.	Tennessee	Wichita St.
5	Nevada	Rhode Island	West Virginia	Kentucky
6	Oklahoma	Michigan	Gonzaga	Texas A&M
7	Houston	TCU	Creighton	Arizona St.
8	Seton Hall	Alabama	Missouri	Arkansas
9	Saint Mary's	Florida St.	Butler	Miami FL
10	Florida	Providence	Virginia Tech	Baylor
11	Middle Tennessee	Syracuse	Texas	St. Bonaventure
11		Kansas St.	UCLA
12	New Mexico St.	North Carolina St.	Louisiana Lafayette	Loyola Chicago
13	Buffalo	Vermont	East Tennessee St.	South Dakota St.
14	Bucknell	College of Charleston	Rider	Murray St.
15	Montana	UC Santa Barbara	Northern Kentucky	Wagner
16	Florida Gulf Coast	Penn	Nicholls St.	Winthrop
16	Savannah St.		Grambling St.

By now, you're probably well familiar with the new "quadrant" style used in the selection process, which I'm probably going to dive into explaining how they affect my picks in a post sometime soon. Long story short, I haven't been using it as much as some other bracketologists, except in the case of eyeballing resumes for teams in the 5-9 seed range. Outside of that, the formula I started using last year seems to be working fine.

Big Ten check-in. The Big Ten seed lines are starting to solidify, but there's still a lot of room for movement. Purdue looks like a very solid 2, and Michigan State has a 2/3 type of resume who will hope to move up one by winning a few conference tournament games. Ohio State is up to a 4 and should stay that way unless they start to collapse.

Michigan has probably the most room to move of any Big Ten team, with two coin-flip games left on the schedule and a likely third one in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament. If they lose the next two, win their first tournament game, and then lose to Nebraska, they're probably back down to the 8/9 range. On the other hand, if they go on a 2017-esque miracle run and win out, they could potentially move all the way up to a 3 seed. 6 is a nice middle ground there, which is the outcome if they split their next two games, win two Big Ten Tournament games, and then lose to Michigan State, which looks to be the most likely scenario at this point.

Bracket Projection: 2/5

As promised, this week I'm just going to throw a bracket at you without any explanation. Another post of some sort will be coming at you later this week.

	ATLANTA	BOSTON	LOS ANGELES	OMAHA
1	Virginia	Villanova	Purdue	Xavier
2	Kansas	Clemson	Auburn	Duke
3	Cincinnati	Tennessee	North Carolina	Michigan St.
4	Kentucky	Arizona	Oklahoma	Texas Tech
5	Rhode Island	West Virginia	Ohio St.	Seton Hall
6	Creighton	Miami FL	Saint Mary's	Nevada
7	Butler	Wichita St.	TCU	Gonzaga
8	Florida	Michigan	Texas A&M	Louisville
9	Texas	Florida St.	Arizona St.	Alabama
10	Washington	Arkansas	Providence	Missouri
11	Virginia Tech	Middle Tennessee	Houston	North Carolina St.
11	Boise St.			USC
12	Kansas St.	Vermont	Buffalo	New Mexico St.
13	Louisiana Lafayette	Loyola Chicago	East Tennessee St.	South Dakota St.
14	College of Charleston	Rider	Montana	Belmont
15	Bucknell	UC Santa Barbara	Northern Kentucky	Wagner
16	UNC Asheville	Penn	Stephen F. Austin	Florida Gulf Coast
16	Arkansas Pine Bluff	North Carolina A&T

Spidey's Blog: Are You Purdue Pete?

I'm a firm believer that a college basketball arena's only real defining feature should be the people in it. Well, that's not exactly true; let me elaborate. I do love when an arena has a weird quirk--like the raised floor at Minnesota, for example--so having other defining features is definitely a good thing. But a lot of college arenas give me the impression of being a sterile, bland, state-of-the-art, almost NBA arena, and no matter how good the team playing there is, it feels hard to really get the energy going (looking at you, Ohio State).

By that standard, Mackey Arena should be considered one of the best in the country. From the outside you'd look at it and say, "this is definitely a basketball arena." The concourses will neither wow you nor gross you out. The interior is perfectly round, steeply sloped, and way too dark. The ceiling consists of a gigantic steel spiderweb-looking thing (which appeals quite a bit to someone like me) that someone probably put up decades ago, thinking, "well, at least it will keep the roof in place."

Home of Purdue Blog

But despite it's uninspiring appearance, Mackey was rocking last Thursday. I'm grading on a curve because any arena featuring a top 5 team playing arguably their biggest home game of the season is going to be insane, but it did not disappoint. We were so high up, our view was nearly blocked by some Big Ten championship banners, but we were still shoulder to shoulder on the hard metal benches. The student section fills both areas behind the basket all the way to the spiderweb ceiling, and they are loud, energetic, and quite organized. Overall, it's pretty much exactly what you're looking for in a college basketball experience, although nothing jumped out to me as quirky or unexplainable like the list of things I experienced at Camp Randall.

Except one.

As you may know, Purdue's sidelines are patrolled by the notorious hell-demon known as Purdue Pete. If you don't remember him, allow me to jog your memory:

Getty Images

He swings a hammer, dances around, and stares you down with the cold, unblinking gaze of a serial killer. But at Thursday's game, I had another thought about this monster that I now can't get out of my head. It started with a simple question: "doesn't he usually wear a black helmet?" (he was wearing gold at this game). The Purdue grad I came with wasn't sure, so I started doing some Google image searches (a horrible idea, but I had to find out). He does switch helmet colors, and he even switches uniforms depending on what sport he's at and what color the team is wearing. For this game, he was sporting a gray Purdue basketball uniform to go with his shiny gold helmet.

So it turns out Purdue Pete has multiple outfits; so what? My next discovery was even more concerning:

Boilermaker Traditions

These are definitely not the same being. Clearly different creatures have been designated as Pete over the years, and we are only experiencing the most recent incarnation. But then it gets worse:

Purdue University

THERE ARE CLONES?? Identical triplets? Some sort of ancient pattern of regeneration? Who are you, Purdue Pete? You're defined not by any physical or outfit characteristics. The only commonality is that you wear a hard hat and Purdue gear. But I sat one section over from the Paint Crew, and I saw a lot of people that fit that description! Are they all Purdue Pete? What if he only wears Purdue gear to Purdue games (like many do), and he's just a guy with a hammer? Are you, dear reader, a guy who owns a hammer? For all we know, you could be Purdue Pete. There's clearly opportunities for a seemingly infinite number of Petes. Am I Purdue Pete? I certainly don't think so, but at this point I think it's fair to say we can't be 100% certain. We don't even know for sure what he does for a day job. Does he make trains? Work on a railroad? Operate a train? The world may never know.

Now I'm wondering if he exists outside the world of Purdue athletics. If that's the case, we'd be living in constant fear of a Pete attack, not knowing where he truly dwells. What if he isn't strictly a Purdue fan? Lots of people have multiple allegiances, and he could be no different. Maybe he went to undergrad at Purdue and then got some sort of advanced degree somewhere else, like say, Nebraska?

Nebraska University

Oh no.

Bracket Projection: 1/30

Blog notes: My wi-fi was out four days, so I haven't gotten around to writing about Purdue yet. That'll come later this week. Also I'll be going to Allstate Arena next Tuesday for the Northwestern game, so expect a bracket post on Monday with no analysis, followed by some sort of follow up post Wednesday or Thursday. For now, back to your regularly scheduled bracket post:

	ATLANTA	BOSTON	LOS ANGELES	OMAHA
1	Virginia	Villanova	Duke	Purdue
2	Auburn	Clemson	Kansas	Xavier
3	Oklahoma	Michigan St.	Arizona	North Carolina
4	Cincinnati	Texas Tech	Kentucky	Tennessee
5	Rhode Island	Wichita St.	Seton Hall	West Virginia
6	Florida	Creighton	TCU	Ohio St.
7	Nevada	Arizona St.	Miami FL	Gonzaga
8	Michigan	Florida St.	Saint Mary's	Louisville
9	Arkansas	Alabama	Butler	Texas
10	USC	Providence	Texas A&M	Syracuse
11	Marquette	Boise St.	SMU	Houston
11			North Carolina St.	Kansas St.
12	Loyola Chicago	New Mexico St.	Buffalo	Middle Tennessee
13	Louisiana Lafayette	Vermont	East Tennessee St.	South Dakota St.
14	Murray St.	Bucknell	UC Santa Barbara	Northeastern
15	Montana	Iona	Northern Kentucky	Wagner
16	Florida Gulf Coast	Princeton	Stephen F. Austin	North Carolina A&T
16	Winthrop			Texas Southern

This would be a hilarious bracket in terms of preseason expectations, considering Duke, Kansas, Arizona, and Kentucky are all in the same region. That probably wouldn't happen because I do think ticket sales and ratings play a bigger role than the committee likes to admit, but that is where the teams fall at this moment. 

What's up with the SEC? The conference known for football is vastly improved this year, currently holding onto 7 tournament spots where they usually only send 3-5. There are as many as 9 or 10 SEC teams battling for tournament position right now, but the most surprising one to me by far is Auburn. They're 19-2 on the year, have risen from the 50s to the top 10 on Kenpom, and look like the runaway favorite to win the SEC, which would make them the first non-Kentucky/Florida team to do so since LSU nine years ago. Will the Tigers hold on to their lofty position as a 2 seed? They get Kentucky at home and travel to Florida down the stretch, but other than that they have very few tricky games and could finish with an impressive resume.

Michigan holds steady on the 8 line. For the fifth straight week, Michigan finds themselves in a winnable 8-9 matchup with the winner facing a tough 1 seed. This is starting to feel a lot like 2011, where Michigan annihilated Tennessee in the first round before losing a nail-biter to an absolutely loaded Duke team. Let's check in with the graphs after the Purdue loss and the Northwestern win:

I'm not sure why Kenpom still predicts Michigan at 11-7 when his own probabilities show 12-6 much more likely. Michigan is now at an 89% chance of finishing 11-7 or better. However, five of the seven remaining games are between 44 and 61%, so there's still quite a bit of swing to the schedule. Saturday's game against Minnesota is one of the ones not in that range, so that's kind of a must-win as far as holding position goes. There's also Big Ten tournament seeding on the line from here on out, as Michigan looks to be in a battle with Nebraska for the last double bye. They need to finish in sole possession of fourth to get that, since Nebraska owns the tiebreaker there. It's something to keep an eye on as the calendar turns to February.

Bracket Projection: 1/23

Rivalry week, apparently. Check out those 8-9 matchups this week. Texas A&M-Texas and Florida-Florida State first round matchups would certainly be fun. Other than that, I don't think you'll be too surprised by anything. Let's take a look and then I'll cover the updates from yesterday:

	BOSTON	LOS ANGELES	ATLANTA	OMAHA
1	Villanova	Duke	Virginia	Purdue
2	Clemson	Xavier	Kansas	North Carolina
3	Auburn	Oklahoma	Arizona	West Virginia
4	Texas Tech	Michigan St.	Cincinnati	Tennessee
5	Ohio St.	Kentucky	Seton Hall	Wichita St.
6	TCU	Arizona St.	Rhode Island	Nevada
7	Creighton	Louisville	Miami FL	Gonzaga
8	Michigan	Saint Mary's	Texas A&M	Florida
9	Arkansas	Butler	Texas	Florida St.
10	Syracuse	Missouri	Marquette	Alabama
11	USC	Boise St.	SMU	Notre Dame
11			Providence	UCLA
12	Louisiana Lafayette	Western Kentucky	New Mexico St.	Buffalo
13	South Dakota St.	East Tennessee St.	Vermont	Loyola Chicago
14	Stephen F. Austin	Murray St.	Northeastern	Northern Kentucky
15	UC Santa Barbara	Montana	Bucknell	Canisius
16	Princeton	Texas Southern	Winthrop	Florida Gulf Coast
16	Wagner		North Carolina A&T

Virginia Tech beating North Carolina was about the only notable thing that happened yesterday, and even that you can pretty much ignore because UNC was borderline 1 seed going into the week, so the loss reaffirms them as a 2 right now. 

No more Maryland. Yeah, and that was before they lost to Indiana last night. The Big Ten is down to four teams as predicted earlier this year. However, Ohio State continues to rise like crazy, and that could continue as they legitimately compete to win the Big Ten. It's a crazy year.

Clemson continues to rise. Here's another weird one you may have noticed. The Clemson Tigers have been steadily climbing all year long and are all the way up to a 2 seed with a whopping 10 wins over the RPI top 100. Personally, I would be surprised if the ACC ends up with four of the top 8 teams on the S-curve, but crazier things have happened. They have a huge matchup with Virginia tonight, so by the time you actually are reading this, things could have changed.

Michigan had an eventful week. Since we last met, Michigan won a crazy one against Maryland, got run off the court in Lincoln, and did the normal thing you do when you play Rutgers. That combination of events makes the graph look like this:

We've shifted back to 11-7 but with a favorable skew: still a 70.5% chance of finishing 11-7 or better. Obviously a win Thursday against Purdue would work wonders toward the season outlook. I'll be making the trek down to Mackey to watch the game, so hopefully I'm treated to an exciting game. I'll be writing a post on my trip as I did when I went to Madison, so keep an eye out for that sometime at the end of the week. 

Now I've got an Oklahoma-Kansas game going on in the background that I'd like to pay more attention to so I'm going to close my computer and watch that. You should too.