Thursday, February 27, 2014

Bracketing information

I see fellow bracketologists already making mistakes.  So as a final reminder, here's the bracket conflicts you need to be aware of:

1) San Diego St cannot play in San Diego in the first 2 rounds.  The distances to Spokane and San Antonio are about equal; I'm starting to think SDSU will get sent to Spokane to clear up room for other eastern-based teams in San Antonio.
2) Memphis cannot play in the South bracket.
3) St John's cannot play in the East bracket.
4) Other two longshot conflicts still in play:  NC State/Raleigh and Marquette/Milwaukee.  We'll worry about Stetson, IUPUI, and Washington St only when we need to cross that bridge.
5) BYU cannot play in the East or Midwest regionals, and also cannot play in Raleigh, San Antonio, San Diego, and St Louis.  Wonderful.

New bracketing rules this year, compared to last year:

1) In the old days, the top 3 teams from each conference had to be in 3 separate brackets.  Now, the rule has changed such that the top 4 teams from each conference have to be in 4 separate brackets, BUT only if they are all top-4 seeds.  Otherwise, they can intermingle within the same bracket.  I would tend to think the selection committee will still try to uphold the previous rule as long as it fits in the bracket, but they have the freedom to put, say, Arizona and UCLA in the same regional now.  This particular rule will likely come into play for the Big 10, though.  It could get messy.
2) Conference mates that only meet once in the regular season can meet as early as the round of 32.  Again, I'd imagine the selection committee will try to avoid the situation when possible, but now they have the freedom to create the situation instead of moving teams up or down a seed line.  Conference mates that meet twice must avoid each other until the round of 16, still.  Non-conference matchups can be repeated in the round of 32 and beyond.

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