2015 Bracketology Thread

[PoconoPony]

I kinda think Gonzaga is better than Kentucky. UK is huge up front, but so are the Zags. They are also alot tougher/meaner up front, less finesse

.
Zags really impressed me with their win against us plus other league games I have seen on TV. They have the back court players and I was really impressed with their big guy one of whom was a pure new frosh and ate us up. I think the Zags could beat KY as they match up very well.

[indianmustang]

syracuse.com bracket
1st round against wofford
http://www.syracuse.com/patrick-stevens ... up_to.html

[indianmustang]

syracuse

1st round against harvard
and second rd with maryland
http://www.syracuse.com/patrick-stevens ... enter.html

[Harry0569]

WE ARE NOW A LOCK ON ESPN

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bubblewatch

Last season, SMU became the first lock of our Bubble Watch tenure not to make the NCAA tournament. Today, we confront that trauma head-on: We're locking SMU again. The Mustangs got their third top-50 win of the season Thursday night in an impressive home victory over a Temple team that had won seven straight coming in, and was playing great basketball with its preferred starting rotation all healthy and on the floor. Weirdly, that fact -- that Thursday night was just SMU's third top-50 win -- also highlights the only thing depressing the Mustangs' possible seed. It just doesn't have many elite wins. Fortunately, SMU has a top-25 RPI and a top-15 nonconference schedule, a vast improvement over the putrid noncon slate that cost them their bid last season. (Phew. This was cathartic.)

Temple [19-8 (10-4), RPI: 30, SOS: 51] Don't mind Thursday night's loss at SMU. The Mustangs are playing really good basketball these days, and beating them in their own building is a brutal ask -- even for a team that had won seven straight coming in. That stretch, plus that massive nonconference rout of Kansas, may well have secured the Owls' spot in many committee members' minds. Relative to most bubble teams (see: Tulsa), theirs is an easy argument to make.

Tulsa [18-7 (11-2), RPI: 49, SOS: 134] Despite rebounding from two straight losses with a get-right home win over East Carolina, the Golden Hurricane fell out of Thursday's edition of Bracketology. It's hard to disagree. As we've written already, Frank Haith's team started 10-0 in league play but managed to pick up just three top-100 wins in the process, and it has no real nonconference results (or schedule numbers) to support that tally. Right now, it's a toss-up. Changing that before the regular season is over could be difficult, but with Temple, Cincinnati and SMU still to play, at least Tulsa has chances.

Cincinnati [17-9 (8-5), RPI: 55, SOS: 48] The Bearcats aren't nearly as safe. Wednesday night's 59-57 Crosstown Shootout loss to Xavier wouldn't matter much in isolation, but it came after consecutive losses at Temple (fine) and versus Tulane (not fine). What once looked like a pretty secure No. 8 seed now looks much shakier, with three straight potential bad-loss risks (at Houston, UCF, at Tulane) before closing the regular season at Tulsa and versus Memphis. This is going to be a fascinating couple of weeks.

[Harry0569]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2366 ... -68/page/5

6 seed vs. NCST then OU in L'ville

[stangsup4]

We got to be pretty close to the 5 line. Pretty incredible if we could snag a 5.

[gostangs]

it would be pretty fun to get NC State in the first round. That's who that old fart Wake AD stuck in instead of us last year. How great would that be??

By the way - there should be someone on our staff whose job it is every morning to look at all relevant basketball sites and BEG them to use SMU instead of Southern Methodist. SMU sounds ready to go to next level. Southern Methodist sounds ready to drop off the table.

We have to cement our brand.

[Pony_Law]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2366656-2015-ncaa-tournament-bracket-latest-projection-of-the-field-of-68/page/5

6 seed vs. NCST then OU in L'ville

I would love that match up in both rounds.

[Harry0569]

http://thepowerrank.com/visual/NCAA_Tou ... redictions

Check out the interactive visual for tourney

This interactive visual shows the probability for each team to advance to each round. Hover over a team to view its chance to advance, or hover over a circle to see the odds that each team wins that game.

Kentucky has a 34.1% chance to win the tourney. And this estimate is probably low, as this bracket puts a strong Wisconsin team as the two seed in Kentucky's region. If a Villanova or Kansas were that two seed, Kentucky's win probability would be even higher.

Since the 2002, only North Carolina in 2007 had a higher win probability before the tourney. This team, which featured Ty Lawson and Tyler Hansborough, had a 37.8% to win the tourney but lost in the Elite 8 to Georgetown. Florida won that tourney for their second straight title.

The visual also shows Kentucky has a 61.4% chance to make the Final Four.

[Pony_Law]

http://thepowerrank.com/visual/NCAA_Tournament_Predictions

Check out the interactive visual for tourney

This interactive visual shows the probability for each team to advance to each round. Hover over a team to view its chance to advance, or hover over a circle to see the odds that each team wins that game.

Kentucky has a 34.1% chance to win the tourney. And this estimate is probably low, as this bracket puts a strong Wisconsin team as the two seed in Kentucky's region. If a Villanova or Kansas were that two seed, Kentucky's win probability would be even higher.

Since the 2002, only North Carolina in 2007 had a higher win probability before the tourney. This team, which featured Ty Lawson and Tyler Hansborough, had a 37.8% to win the tourney but lost in the Elite 8 to Georgetown. Florida won that tourney for their second straight title.

The visual also shows Kentucky has a 61.4% chance to make the Final Four.

Kentucky is good but I don't think they will win the whole thing. They are not good enough offensively, that if a team with a good inside out game ha a good night shooting they will lose. I think Gonzaga, Wisconsin and UVA could all give them trouble. Additionally, a team like ISU or OU that got hot would be trouble for them.

[Harry0569]

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/bracketology

6 seed in Columbus playing Purdue. Then ND

[Harry0569]

http://bracketmatrix.com/

a solid 6

[Harry0569]

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bracketology

nothing has changed for us

[Harry0569]

Is the American a one-bid league? Well, no, probably not. At the least, SMU would have to win the conference tournament in Hartford, during a weekend that will double as UConn's last chance of getting back to the NCAA tournament. Still, with Cincinnati and Temple sliding ever so slightly in the wrong direction and Tulsa likely outside the field right now, that previously unthinkable question has become suddenly viable.

Temple [19-9 (10-5), RPI: 32, SOS: 48] The "eye test" is almost always a mess of subjectivity. Almost. Every now and then, a performance is so bad it creates an objective critical consensus. Temple offered exactly that kind of performance in Sunday's 55-39 loss at Tulsa. The Owls, who had played so well during a seven-game winning streak preceding losses to SMU and Tulsa, somehow held their opponents to 55 points in 65 possessions on the road ... and lost by 16. Hopefully, the committee wasn't paying attention, because while the loss wasn't particularly bad on paper (Tulsa is a good defensive team fighting for a bubble spot of its own) it looked far worse in person. Temple's S-Curve status is hardly secure enough for it to squander the impressive showings of the past month in the final two weeks of the regular season.

Tulsa [19-7 (12-2), RPI: 42, SOS: 121] Temple's .60 points-per-possession performance may have been ugly for the Owls, but it was exactly what Tulsa needed. After a 10-0 start to league play, the Golden Hurricane looked more like a tropical sto-- actually, no. We were going to make a weather joke there, but no. The point is, Tulsa was on the wrong side of the bubble before Sunday's win, and that's probably still the case -- the 55-39 final surely hurt Temple more than it helped Frank Haith's team. But it gave Tulsa a win in the first of what may end up being a decisive three-game stretch against tourney-worthy teams in the American. The last two, against Cincy and SMU, come next week. In the meantime, Tulsa gets Tulane (at home) and Memphis (on the road).

Cincinnati [18-9 (9-5), RPI: 50, SOS: 53] Say what you want about the imprecision of the RPI, but it seems to have pegged Houston just fine. Visiting the sub-250 RPI Cougars has always been a no-win proposition for the bubble teams of the 2014-15 American, an RPI drag even in a victory. The only upside is that Houston is actually as terrible as the RPI says, even on its own floor, which it demonstrated in the Bearcats' 10-point win on Saturday. The win broke a three-game losing streak for Cincinnati. It also took its toll on what was once an RPI figure in the 30s. A sweep of SMU, a Dec. 17 home win over San Diego State, and a top-25 noncon schedule are the primary factors keeping Cincy maybe a half-step ahead of the rest of the bubble. But if the next two games -- UCF, at Tulane -- don't end with wins, the Bearcats could be in trouble.

[Harry0569]

http://espn.go.com/ncb/bracketology

6 seed in L'ville that would play the winner of UCLA/Purude. Next up OU.