Purdue celebrated being named the overall No. 1 seed by the NCAA Tournament selection committee on Saturday by losing 73-69 at Ohio State on Sunday. As usual for the Boilermakers, when they lose, the problem is turnovers. Purdue has an average turnover margin of -9 in its three losses this season.
UConn is the new overall No. 1 seed, replacing Purdue after pounding Marquette 81-53 on Saturday.
The Huskies and Purdue maintain their tournament site projections despite the swap on the No. 1 line. UConn is still in the East and the Boilermakers are in the Midwest. The nice thing about the current top four seeds is that there is no competition for a preferred site. The teams could be in any order on the top line and still get their geographic favorite locations.
Bracketology top seeds
Check out Palm’s latest bracket, Bubble Watch and full field of 68 at the Bracketology hub.
How committee evaluates injuries
The No. 4-6 seeds from Saturday’s bracket took a beating, so there has been some shuffling there.
It appeared at first that Auburn may have lost more than a game to Kentucky on Saturday. Jaylin Williams had to be helped off the court with a knee injury. However, reports indicate that Williams will miss some time, but is expected to return at some point this season. Auburn slipped from its No. 4 seed by the committee to a No. 5 seed in Monday’s bracket.
A reminder that the way the selection committee deals with roster issues like injuries, suspensions, etc. is that they put a little more weight on how the team played with the roster it is taking to the tournament compared to otherwise. The operative word there is little. All of the results still count.
Building the bracket
One quirk in this bracket is that BYU is in the same pod as Kansas, even though both are from the Big 12. That is less than ideal, but it is allowed within the bracketing rules because as of now, they will only play each other once in the regular season. BYU is always a difficult team to place because the Cougars cannot be scheduled to play on Sunday. Sometimes, their seed needs to be switched to accommodate that requirement, but that was not the case in Monday’s bracket. Seed switches are a last resort because they impact a minimum of four teams, those being switched and their first round opponents.
There are no new teams in or out of the bracket this time, which has not happened much lately.
With four weeks to go, we have hit the home stretch of the season and this is the first of what will be daily bracket updates through Selection Sunday.
