Bracketology: Arizona moves to No. 2 overall seed, jumping over Auburn after its loss to Florida

One of the things about the top 16 seeds that the NCAA gives us in its annual early bracket reveal is that within a couple of hours after the top 16 seeds are unveiled, they have already changed.

Florida wasted no time sticking a fork in it by beating No. 1 seed Auburn in one of the early games on Saturday. The Gators were in desperate need of a high quality win to start to make up for the failings on their tournament resume. As of now, Florida is in the bracket in the First Four, while Auburn dropped past Arizona to the No. 3 overall seed on the top line.

Tennessee and Texas were the other teams in the NCAA’s top 16 to lose on Saturday, although the Longhorns lost to the NCAA’s No. 11 overall Texas Tech. The Volunteers fell at Arkansas, which is a No. 6 seed in the updated bracket.

Bracketology top seeds

Check out Palm’s latest bracket, full field of 68 and all the teams on the bubble on the Bracketology hub.

Big games in Big Ten impact bracket

Sunday was action-packed as well. Rutgers‘ four-game winning streak came to an end at Purdue in an 84-72 loss. The Scarlet Knights dropped to 16-10 overall and woke up this morning with a NET ranking of 80. When you look past the six Quad 1 wins, all of which came against likely tournament teams, you can see where that ranking comes from. Seven of their ten losses are to teams that have no shot at the tournament, including two Quad 3s and a Quad 4 loss to No. 313 Lafayette. Three of those seven losses came in the four games immediately preceding the recent four-game winning streak. The Scarlet Knights’ are also just 3-8 away from home. Their margin for error is razor thin and in Monday’s updated bracket, they are the first team out. Fortunately, more opportunities for top-level wins await.

The Big Ten heavy bubble saw one of its teams pick up a big win. Iowa won at Ohio State on Saturday for its biggest win of the season by far. The Hawkeyes’ best win before that came at home against Indiana. Iowa is more comfortably in the bracket today than before, but their work is far from over.

Michigan made plenty of news Sunday after its game at Wisconsin, but that is someone else’s problem to address. Here, we care about the loss in that game, which dropped the Wolverines to 14-11 overall and bounced them back out of the bracket for now. Historically speaking, three games above .500 is not a good enough record to make the NCAA Tournament. That is not a specific committee standard, nor should it be, but when only one team in the prior 26 pre-pandemic tournaments that was below that mark finds its way into the field, you tend to rely on that trend.

Wake Forest picks up a quality win

Wake Forest picked up its first win of the season over a likely bracket team over the weekend with a win over Notre Dame. The Demon Deacons have a significant strength of schedule problem due in no small part to a terrible non-conference schedule, but at the moment, their tournament resume is the least offensive of those vying for the final spot in the bracket, so that is where we find them as the last team in the field of 68.

That may not sound too kind, but I do not really mean it that way. It’s relative. All of the teams fighting to get in the bracket are good teams, but they have flawed tournament profiles. Often, it comes down to which flaws are more palatable to the committee than others. Each committee member may have different ideas about that too. 

Also, a few committee members turn over every year and the new members bring in their own perspectives. Sometimes, the qualities that stand out can depend on which teams are being compared to each other at any given moment. This is still a subjective process, although guided by objective data.