Bracket - February 15
It wasn't a good week to be a bubble team as most teams in that category fell flat on their faces. Just take a look at Syracuse, which lost to former cellar-dweller South Florida. Or how about Dayton, which lost to Duquesne and former cellar-dweller George Washington in its last two games. Massachusetts lost in a nationally televised game at home to Fordham. Florida lost at home to last-place LSU, still recovering from the departure of its head coach. With all these losses, Creighton stood an excellent shot at getting into the bracket, but it lost to last-place Evansville.
All of these teams are not in this bracket except for Florida, which is the last team in. The new teams in the bracket are Arizona State and Houston. (These two teams needed to switch spots in the bracket to conform to the bracket principles.) The Sun Devils followed up a road win at Arizona with a home win against Stanford, and Houston. Even though they lost to Memphis, the Cougars lack something the teams in the first paragraph have: a bad loss. However, since Houston doesn't have a marquee game remaining unless it meets Memphis for a third time in the conference tourney, they are susceptible to a bubble team rising above them.
Also, BYU switched with Rhode Island so that BYU could avoid a possible game on Sunday.
http://bracketproject.atspace.com/021508.pdf
Multi-bid conferences:
Big East - 7, Pac-10 - 7, Big 12 - 6, SEC - 6, Big 10 - 5, ACC - 4, Atlantic 10 - 3, CUSA - 2, Mountain West - 2, West Coast - 2
New teams in the bracket:
Arizona State, Cal State Northridge, Houston, Robert Morris, Western Kentucky
Teams out of the bracket:
Dayton, Pacific, Sacred Heart, South Alabama, Syracuse
Last 4 teams in:
St. Joseph's, Maryland, Houston, Florida
Last 4 teams out:
Miami (FL), Dayton, New Mexico, Illinois State
Friday, February 15, 2008
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2 comments:
Texas as a 2 playing in the South, which ends up in Houston? Wouldn't the committee avoid doing that to Memphis for the 3rd year in a row (UCLA in Oakland, Texas A&M in San Antonio)?
The committee tries to avoid moving teams out of their natural regions in consecutive years as well as creating geographic disadvantages in the first and second rounds. However, from what I've read, the committee isn't in the business of predicting what geographic disadvantages may be produced in the regional stage of the tournament, creating situations where Texas may end up in Houston or Michigan State in Detroit. As a result, it's unfortunate that Memphis' closest regional site is Houston.
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