NCAA Bracket 2024: Latest Expert Bracketology and Predictions for Men’s Tourney 0 of 3
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Championship Week has arrived in men’s college basketball, so teams are in the process of punching their tickets to the upcoming NCAA Tournament.
Four teams have officially secured spots already, as Morehead State, Longwood, Drake and Stetson all won their respective conference tournaments and the automatic bids attached to them. But that still leaves 64 openings in the Big Dance and a number of difficult decisions to come for the selection committee.
Experts have a hunch how those decisions will play out, though, so we’ll examine how three of them—ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm and The Athletic’s Brian Bennett—view the field.
The No. 1 Seeds 1 of 3
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While Palm focused only on the bubble and not the overall bracket, both Lunardi and Bennett had full projections for the 68-team field. And the two were in lockstep agreement about the four schools slotted in as the No. 1 seeds.
Chances are, Palm would be in agreement on at least three of them, too: Purdue, UConn and Houston. Those three teams are hold the top three spots in both NET Rankings and KenPom. They all finished the regular season with identical 28-3 records, and all nine of their collective losses came against Quad 1 opponents.
The final top seed for Lunardi and Bennett is Tennessee, which lands fifth on both the NET Rankings and KenPom. Bennett has Arizona, Tennessee and North Carolina vying for that spot, but he knocked out Arizona for its losses to Oregon State, Stanford and USC and picked Tennessee over North Carolina for having, in his opinion “the better wins, better resume average and (playing) in a tougher conference.”
That said, Bennett also conceded this potential two-team race “could very well come down to how both teams play in their conference tournaments this week.”
The Last Teams In 2 of 3
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There is nothing comforting about being on the bubble, and things feel even more precarious for those who receive the “Last Four In” distinction. Sure, it’s better that being left off of the bracket, but with the potential for considerable changes during conference tournament play, teams have zero margin for error.
That’s perhaps why Lunardi, Bennett and Palm have three different takes about the final quartet to secure a tournament invite, although they do agree on one thing: St. John’s is getting one of those spots. That being said, the Johnnies are Lunardi’s literal last team in the tournament, and since the others didn’t get that specific, maybe it’s the case for them, too.
Other than St. John’s, six different schools were mentioned by the experts among their last four picks. Of those six, three were selected by multiple experts: Lunardi and Bennett both had Virginia and Indiana State in these spots, while Lunardi and Palm each had Colorado.
As for single selections, Bennett backed Texas A&M, while Palm went with New Mexico and Seton Hall. Lunardi and Bennett, meanwhile, included Seton Hall among its final four byes.
The First Teams Out 3 of 3
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No team wants to be left out of the Big Dance, but that will be the fate for a number of tournament-hopefuls. These experts have an idea of who will wind up with that misfortune.
While the trio didn’t all have the same school among their “First Four Out,” Bennett and Lunardi agreed on Villanova and New Mexico falling into that group. Lunardi and Palm, meanwhile, both had Texas A&M and Iowa landing there.
New Mexico, of course, cracked Palm’s last four in, but Villanova didn’t even make his next four out. Bennett, meanwhile, had Texas A&M among his last four in, but Iowa landed among his next four out.
As for single selections, Bennett was the only one with Colorado and Wake Forest among the last four in, while Palm was the lone expert to put Utah and Pittsburgh in that group. The only school among this quartet who wasn’t a next four out or worse for the other experts was Colorado, a tournament team for Lunardi and Palm.
