One final plea from a bracketologist to you—take it easy on us. This bracket is not going to be 100% correct. It never is—none ever are, every single year—because we can’t read the selection committee’s mind. But it’s especially true this year. In all my years of bracketology, this is the wildest Selection Sunday I can ever remember. In addition to the bubble being just about strong as it’s ever been in recent memory, we’ve had four bid thieves, essentially pushing the typical Last Four In teams into First Four Out. That’s never happened. We are going to breaking all sort of historical precede ..read more

Where’d all the time go? It was just a month ago that the Bauer’s Bubble Watch column reopened for business in 2024. Now, with less than week to go until Selection Sunday, the final full edition of BBW is upon us. The days just move too quickly! In five short days, the NCAA Tournament bracket will be revealed, thus commencing the greatest spectacle of our time, March Madness. These days will fly by, too, but not without being jam-packed full of some of the best college basketball action we’ll see all season. Major conference tournament play is underway as of today, and bubble teams are now pre ..read more

The madness is already here. We’re a now a week deep into conference tournament play and four official NCAA Tournament bids have already been clinched (hearty congrats are in order for Morehead State, Longwood, Drake, and especially Stetson, who will be going dancing for the first time ever), with two more (Sun Belt, SoCon) to be decided today. Though sweeping changes are no longer to be made this late into the season, we do see a couple new faces enter the field: Montana (projected automatic bid after Big Sky #1 and #2 seeds Eastern Washington and Northern Colorado went down last night, yowza ..read more

The first mid-conference-tournament-play Bauertology is here! Selection Sunday is just nine days away, and postseason tournaments for a number of smaller conferences are now in full swing. In fact, Big South tournament action between projected automatic bid High Point and Radford is going on as I write this. (Please win so today’s bracket doesn’t look dumb immediately, Panthers!) As such, we’ve already seen our first conference tournament 1 seed and projected auto-bid go down with Eastern Kentucky getting upset in the ASUN quarterfinals. Now, as the highest remaining seed alive, Stetson takes ..read more

Let the madness begin! The first Bauer’s Bubble Watch of March 2024 is here, and so is the college basketball postseason, as the ASUN tournament began its march to the madness on Monday night. Though I don’t track eliminations here on BBW, we can firmly cross two teams off the tournament-hopeful list with both Kennesaw State and Florida Gulf Coast falling in the ASUN’s opening round. Better luck next year! There’s a ton more mid-major tournament play to enjoy this week with the Horizon, Sun Belt, and Patriot League all starting up on Tuesday night, though for Bauer’s Bubble Watch purposes, the ..read more

Creating the bracket can be a real pain in the rear sometimes. I touched on some of the bracketing principles that the committee must follow when building the bracket in my last Bauertology update, and since I’ve got nothing better to talk about this time around, let’s continue! We start with the greatest headache of them all: BYU. Because the Cougars refuse to play games on Sundays due to religious reasons, the selection committee accommodates for this by placing them only into regional sites and subregional pods in which they could never hypothetically play a game on Sunday. This year, those ..read more

Well, hello, March. Funny seeing you here. The calendar has now crossed over to the single greatest month of the year, where the unordinary becomes ordinary, drama and excitement are abound, and the anticipation for every waking moment is so thick that you can cut it with a knife. It’s finally the most thrilling time of year. So let’s celebrate at Bauertology by looking at selection and bracketing principles! (Woohoo! How fun!) …Wait, don’t close the webpage. Please! OK, so maybe selection and bracketing principles aren’t the most enticing thing in the whole world, but I think they’re worth go ..read more

Do you feel that? That’s the anticipation beginning to settle in. That calendar might make your eyes do a double-take, and not just because it’s Leap Year. (Don’t forget about that on Thursday, by the way). No, it’s because conference tournament play is now officially less than a week away. Crazy, right? But it’s true—the ASUN kicks off this year’s postseason (as it does every year) in six days with their conference tourney picking up on Monday, March 4. Less than a week! Postseason basketball! Goshdarnit I just can’t contain all this excitement!! It’s also bittersweet, knowing that the end of ..read more

I usually write a whole bunch of stuff up in this section as a sort of preview to the new bracket and seed list below, but today’s write-up is surprisingly brief. Why? Because there isn’t that much changing anymore. Yep, we’ve finally hit that time in the season where sweeping changes are few and far between. Data is getting to a point where enough games have been played that numbers are really starting to solidify. The tournament picture is coming into focus. Even with an always-wild Saturday slate trying its best to shake things up, it all remains pretty sturdy. Only a handful of noticeable ..read more

Today’s Bauertology post perhaps goes beyond the realm of typical analysis and goes a bit more into public service announcement territory, since I think it’s worth addressing some of the recent developments in bracketology circles over the past week. There’s been some pretty nasty discourse lately between bracketologists and fans of teams not happy with where their team is being projected. And I’m here to tell it to you straight: It does not matter that much. It is absolutely not worth the name-calling, flaming, and baiting I’ve seen over the last couple days. For one thing, I will never under ..read more