It wasn’t a very good weekend for the top of the bracket. Well, it was fine for the top teams who won. It was then confused with the loss of 11 of the next 14 teams.
As I would say, when everyone loses, no one loses. If there is that big pile of loss, the seed movement is less dramatic. Only Michigan, one of the big winners, rose the second seed line. All other seed changes took about a row. Only half of the 14 teams have moved.
Top seed in parentheses
Find out the complete field of Palm’s Bracket and 68 on the Bracketology Hub.
Illinois ranked 23rd in the net this morning 17-11, making it look like a team that’s comfortable on the field. I have them as the 8th species. However, Illini has lost 43 points to Duke in the non-meeting game. It was their third straight loss, all top 10 teams in brackets, but their tournament resumes are beginning to show some tension. They are in the top three quadrants against 11-11, which is not an issue yet. The remaining schedule is home games vs Iowa and Purdue sandwiched between Michigan’s road games. Losing two of the three could mean that Illini will need one or two wins in the Big Ten tournament. I’m not worried about them yet and will have them on the bubble, but the loss to Iowa would put them there.
The new feature in brackets was in Indiana, with a second half surge to beat Arkansas, who had a big home victory in Missouri. The dropouts are Texas and Georgia. These three SEC teams continue to shuffle the inside and outside of the bracket between themselves.
Adjusting bracket rules
There are a few unusual brackets. Naturally, one of them has to do with the SEC. There are still three SEC teams on the top line of the bracket, but there are also two more seeds. That means there’s one area where two SEC teams can meet as early as Sweet 16. Ideally, you could leave it apart as far as Elite 8, but in this case it is not.
Also, in rare cases, committees change the seed of teams and follow bracket rules. It’s like the last resort. This bracket required me to switch between BYU and Gonzaga and move the Cougar to some of the brackets that I wouldn’t play on Sunday. The Cougars do not play on Sundays for religious reasons.
When you put the brackets together, there are always compromises. There are rules regarding maintaining teams in the same meeting as separate as possible. In tournaments, regular season rematches need to be avoided too early. Teams should be located as close to home as possible. It is the one that is most often placed aside.
And of course, they are trying to balance their strength among the top four seeds of each region. It is measured by adding the overall seed count of the top four seeds in each region, and the balance is when the highest total and lowest difference is less than five.
Wisconsin and Michigan both switched the Big Ten third seed as part of the creation of the balance. Badgers usually have a higher overall seed, which gives them a more geographical preference than Wolverine, but the brackets were too unbalanced.
