Alphabetical list of the 68 teams on pace for March Madness

Is your college one of the 68 on pace to be invited to March Madness in eight weeks? Seven Big Ten teams are based on their projected RPIs, topping the Big East, Big 12 and Mountain West with six each. Syracuse won the battle of the Big East’s two projected No. 1 seeds (pictured).  In this first of two pieces we provide an alphabetical list of the teams on pace to be on the Selection Sunday brackets. A follow-up story will show the top three players on each team to show who has the best path to the Sweet 16.

UCLA, Kentucky and others are very likely to rise through the ranks to get higher seeds by Selection Sunday, but for now basing the selections just on results to date, here are the 68 and where they would be seeded.  For those who want to know more about how these selections are made, we break down these headings in this table below: 

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After being on the backburner throughout the NFL and college football season, college basketball takes center stage for two months outside of one huge event (the Superbowl).  This post walks through who is in and out right now, and the follow-up piece will run through the best three players on each of these 68 teams to determine who has the best path to advance in your brackets.

W-L: We start with the PROJECTED win-loss record based on how the team has played so far, as measured by Forecast RPI.  Akron projects to finish 22-6, while Arizona projects to finish 27-3.

SOS: Next we look at how hard it was to win those games.  Akron played only the 146th toughest Strength of Schedule, while Arizona played the 18th toughest (of 347 Division 1) teams.

RPI:  Those numbers plus how many games were played at home vs. on the road or at neutral sites give a good indication of how high the Ratings Percentage Index will be for each team.  The actual equation is a team’s record, the opponents’ records, and the opponents’ opponents’ records, but the key fact to understand is that when the home team wins a game they are only credited with 0.6 wins and the away team that lost only is blamed for 0.6 losses.  The real changes in RPI occur when a team wins on the road, for which they get 1.4 wins.  So if a team were to go 10-20 playing all road games they would be considered a 14-12 team, whereas if another team were to go 20-10 while playing all home games they would be considered not as good at 12-14.

Seed: In other sports the RPI determines who makes the tournament and what their Seed is (from 1 to 16).  In basketball, the Selection Committee starts with this order and makes adjustments for which teams are hotter, have significant road wins, may have played a portion of the season with a key player injured etc. In theory, the best No. 1 seed starts by playing the worst No. 16 seed (after a play-in game), etc., but teams are not supposed to meet conference foes in the first two rounds.

Based on the projected RPI based on games played through Sunday we had to switch the order for #10 seeds Pittsburgh and Wisconsin, #3 seeds New Mexico and Miami, #5 seeds Michigan State and Cincinnati, as well as switching the playin games so that A10 member Temple did not face the last team in La Salle (also of the A10).

Tournament Site: Every 1-, 2-, 3- and 4-seed basically has a pod of three other teams (or four other teams if there is a play-in game) in one city.  There are eight teams that must first go to a play-in game in Dayton, Ohio on March 19 or 20 and win to get to the city indicated under “tournament site”.  So if you look at the third, fourth and fifth teams listed on the table, Belmont would go to Kansas City as part of one group, while Boise State would also go to Kansas City as part of a completely unrelated “2nd group.”  Baylor would have to play a “1st 4” game in Dayton on March 20 to earn the right to go to Kansas City to join Boise State’s group.
Use this table as a key to find your team in the second piece which is broken down by tournament site.