It’s The Most Wonderful Time, Of the Year!
With the kids basket-balling
And everyone calling you to “Stand Up And Cheer!”
It’s the most wonderful time of the year
It’s the best sporting post-season of aaaaaalllll …
With apologies to Andy Williams and all Christians around the world, today, Selection Sunday for the “NCAA® Division I Men’s Basketball Championship” is Christmas for College Basketball fanatics, myself included. You’ve heard of the “12 Days of Christmas?” Welcome to the “12 Days of March Madness”. Well, 12 days of college basketball, interspersed with 11 off days of recuperation and reflection, and for fans of 67 teams, sadness. Kind of cruel when you think about it actually.
All of which makes this March Madness Eve, a mere 5 minutes before NCAA’s Santa Claus (the Tournament Selection Committee) reaches into their bag and gives 1 gift to 68 schools. Here’s what we know, what I know, what I think I know, and my educated guesses at who will have NCAA presents under their tree, and who gets stuck with the NIT.
First, we know that all 31 automatic bids have been decided, as determined by conference tournaments (except for the Ivy League); 11 of which repeated from last season and a 12th (Belmont) switching conferences and earning the auto-bid for the second season in a row. Drumroll please:
ACC – Miami (Fla.)
America East – Albany
Atlantic-10 – Saint Louis
Atlantic Sun – Florida Gulf Coast
Big 12 – Kansas
Big East – Louisville
Big Sky – Montana
Big South – Liberty
Big Ten – Ohio State
Big West – Pacific
Colonial – James Madison
Conference USA – Memphis
Horizon – Valparaiso
Ivy – Harvard
Metro Atlantic – Iona
Mid-American – Akron
Mid-Eastern – North Carolina A&T
Missouri Valley – Creighton
Mountain West – New Mexico
Northeast – LIU Brooklyn
Ohio Valley – Belmont
Pac-12 – Oregon
Patriot – Bucknell
SEC – Ole Miss
Southern – Davidson
Southland – Northwestern St
Summit League – South Dakota State
Sun Belt – Western Kentucky
Southwestern Athletic – Southern
WAC – New Mexico State
West Coast – Gonzaga
Second, that leaves 37 at-large bids. Looking at all the metrics I could, the various RPI lists out there, Ken Pomeroy’s data, the Sagarin rankings, and a couple of the more prominent bracketology sites, here are the teams that I know are locks, listed by conference (number of teams in parentheses):
ACC (3) – North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina St
Atlantic-10 (3) – Butler, Virginia Commonwealth, Temple
Big 12 (4) – Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Iowa State
Big East (5) – Georgetown, Marquette, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame
Big Ten (6) – Indiana, Michigan State, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois
Missouri Valley (1) – Wichita State
Mountain West (3) – San Diego State, Nevada Las Vegas, Colorado State
Pac-12 (2) – Arizona, UCLA
SEC (2) – Florida, Missouri
Sun Belt (1) – Middle Tennessee
West Coast (1) – St. Mary’s
That’s a total of 31 teams that should be safe, which would leave six (6) at-large spots. Here’s what I think are the teams competing for these spots, again listed by conference:
ACC (2) – Virginia, Maryland
Atlantic-10 (2) – La Salle, Massachusetts
Big Ten (1) – Iowa
Big 12 (1) – Baylor
Big East (2) – Cincinnati, Villanova
Conference USA (1) – Southern Mississippi
Mountain West (1) – Boise State
Pac-12 (3) – Colorado, California, Stanford
SEC (3) – Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama
Southland (1) – Stephen F. Austin
WAC (2) – Louisiana Tech, Denver
West Coast (1) – Brigham Young
That’s 20 teams competing for the last six spots. Sparing all the hand-wringing and nit-picking, here’s my best guess as to those six (6) teams whose bubbles won’t burst today, in order from safest to least safe:
Colorado
Southern Mississippi
Boise State
California
Cincinnati
Villanova
Tennessee, La Salle, Kentucky, Massachusetts and Louisiana Tech would top my list of the last teams not selected. Hard for me to see the Defending Champion Kentucky being left out, but we’ll know starting in about 2 minutes.
Happy March Madness Eve, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!
EDIT: Had originally counted 28 locks and 9 bids up for grabs, but I actually had 31 “locks” listed above, which would only have left 6 bids to be determined. So I took the last 3 teams I had originally listed “in” – Tennessee, La Salle and Kentucky – and put them “out”.
Bobby True 
After editing the originally published version – in my rush to post it, my simple arithmetic for the at-large bids available failed me – I got 67 of the 68 teams in the field correct. All 31 of my “locks” made it, and 5 of my 6 bubble teams made it, with only Southern Mississippi losing out to La Salle (who I had “in” when I had counted wrong that there was 9 spots left in my opinion, instead of the 6 after my locks). Appears that Southern Miss, Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisiana Tech were the First Four out.