Jon Rothstein’s twitter calendar finally turned the page to March, the most beloved month of college basketball. Conference tournaments are starting as soon as next week, but for the bigger conferences, we still have one week of the regular season left to go. With that, we have a lot of shake up in the standings from the past week that can affect the seeding in Brooklyn. For this post, we will go over the bracketology for the A10 tournament’s top 4 seed race as well as bracketology for the NCAA tournament. Let’s go!
A10 Tournament Bracketology – Top 4 Seeds
1. Dayton
Dayton has wrapped up the A10 regular season title all by themselves at the top and are rewarded the #1 seed in the A10 tournament. That’s all we have so far for teams who have cemented their spot in the top 4 double-bye of the tournament.
2. Richmond
Look at who the new #2 is in town. After Rhode Island’s loss on Sunday, Richmond moves up to the 2 spot in the A10 standings due to holding the head to head tiebreaker over the Rams.
3. Rhode Island
Well, that was a disappointing performance at home against Saint Louis. Rhode Island moves down to the 3 spot in the standings. They can move back up to 2nd but need Richmond to lose as well as the Rams need to win they last two games.
4. St. Bonaventure, Duquesne, and Saint Louis
Now here’s where it gets tricky. Fourth place St. Bonaventure lost at La Salle on Saturday, which opened up the door for fifth place Duquesne to tie them. Well, the Dukes held serve at home against George Mason, which now makes the 4th spot a tie between Bona and Duquesne at 10-6. Alas, Saint Louis knocked off Rhody on the road to come even at 10-6 as well. So now we have a 3 way tie for 4th place with 2 games to go. Let’s go over the tiebreaker.
According to the tiebreaker rules for a 3-way tie, the winner goes to the team who has the best winning percentage against the other tied teams combined. Let’s go over them. St. Bonaventure is 1-1 against Duquesne, and has yet to play Saint Louis. Saint Louis is 0-2 against Duquesne, and as mentioned, has yet to play St. Bona. Duquesne is 2-0 against SLU and 1-1 against Bona. If you do the math, Duquesne has the best record/winning percentage against all teams combined with a 3-1 record. So, for right now, Duquesne holds the 4th spot in the standings.
NCAA Tournament Bracketology
Dayton
The Flyers keep winning and all the teams around them in the projections and rankings keep losing. Dayton keeps inching closer toward a #1 seed every day, as Power 5 teams like Florida State, Duke, and Maryland keep losing and squandering their chances of jumping Dayton or San Diego State in the brackets. Dayton is the projected first 2 seed in Lunardi’s bracket, which puts them most likely in San Diego State’s region. This is honestly a good region for them and one scenario Dayton fans should hope for. Baylor’s loss at TCU is not going to move the needle for Dayton to move up.
Rhode Island
Rhody’s loss to Davidson was not that bad since it was still a Quad 1 road loss. Now, their loss at home to Saint Louis will kick them out of the entire field entirely. That was a Quad 2 home loss; not good. They can get back to being in the field by winning at home on Wednesday against Dayton. That seems to be the only way it can happen at this point with so many Power 5 bubble teams winning as of late. If those bubble teams don’t start losing, and they don’t beat Dayton, they have to win the A10 tournament.
Richmond
Now the Spiders are a different story. Richmond’s loss at Bona last week was not good. Even though the Bonnies are a top 4-5 team in the A10, they are not top-100 in the NET, and it makes the road loss a Quad 2 loss. Not great. There is no more margin for error left for Richmond. They have two games left, home against Davidson and at Duquesne. Both are must wins.
Right now, Lunardi has Richmond in the First Four Out. Bracket Matrix has the same. Their win against Wisconsin on a neutral floor looks better and better every day, but the Radford loss now paired with the Bona and SLU losses do not look good. Even the VCU win at home is not that great anymore. Their best win after Wisconsin is at Rhode Island, who is now out of the field. They need to win out their last two games and most likely get to Sunday in Brooklyn to get a firm at-large bid in the tournament. Just getting to Saturday in Brooklyn might not be enough. They could also get some help from other bubble teams losing, so be sure to check scores from Indiana, Wichita St, USC, NC State, Xavier, Utah State, Oklahoma, and Rutgers this week.