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It was a wild weekend in college basketball, with Michigan State doing themselves the most good it appears, and it appears some major teams played themselves somewhat safely into the NCAA Tournament, while some mid-majors might come up one win short.
To help find The Chosen 68, we choose the Wisdom of The Crowd to decide which teams are in and which teams are out of the 2021 NCAA Tournament.
Similar to Nate Silver’s model of predicting elections, we take the data from five bracketologists and update it each week. All bracket makers shall be counted equally, and we’ll ask expert for their 16 teams on the bubble: The last eight in the NCAA Tournament in their estimation, and the first eight out.
Some list this data automatically with their projections, but for the others we reach directly to directly to get their most accurate picture.
Our “model” is pretty simple: 16 points for being the eighth-from-last team in the NCAA tournament, to one point for having seven teams between you and even making the First Four. If a team has an average of 9.0 points or higher, they should reach the NCAA field according to the averages.
Because some teams will avoid the last-eight-in all-together, while other brackets will have that same team on the bubble, we’ll mark teams “Safe” that are ahead of the 16 points available on the top “next four in” line.
Our bracketologists:
Joe Lunardi, ESPN.com (from this tweet)
Chris Dobbertean, Blogging The Bracket
Patrick Stevens, Washington Post
Shelby Mast, Bracketwag.com
Kerry Miller, Bleacher Report
Below are the bubble selections for all our tracked bracketologists:
Bracketology March 8
| Points | ESPN | Blogging the Bracket | Washington Post | Bracket Wag | Bleacher Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Points | ESPN | Blogging the Bracket | Washington Post | Bracket Wag | Bleacher Report |
| 16 | Michigan State | Michigan State | North Carolina | Michigan State | Georgia Tech |
| 15 | Louisville | Maryland | UCLA | Wichita State | Louisville |
| 14 | Georgia Tech | VCU | Maryland | VCU | UCLA |
| 13 | VCU | Louisville | Michigan State | St. Bonaventure | Wichita State |
| Last Four In | |||||
| 12 | Colorado State | Colorado State | Saint Louis | Drake | Colorado State |
| 11 | Boise State | Drake | Drake | Colorado State | Drake |
| 10 | Drake | Boise State | Mississippi | Boise State | Utah State |
| 9 | Xavier | Xavier | Xavier | Xavier | Xavier |
| First Four Out | |||||
| 8 | Utah State | Saint Louis | Colorado State | St. John's | Boise State |
| 7 | Syracuse | Syracuse | Boise State | Utah State | Syracuse |
| 6 | Saint Louis | Utah State | Syracuse | Syracuse | Saint Louis |
| 5 | Seton Hall | St. John's | Utah State | Saint Louis | Seton Hall |
| Next Four Out | |||||
| 4 | Memphis | Mississippi | Seton Hall | SMU | Mississippi |
| 3 | SMU | SMU | St. John's | Memphis | Memphis |
| 2 | Mississippi | NC State | Duke | Seton Hall | SMU |
| 1 | St. John's | Seton Hall | Stanford | Duke | NC State |
Here are the averages for the teams on the bubble. Remember an average of 9.0 or better means you should be in the tournament.
March 8 Bubble Averages
| Team | Not on bubble brackets | Points | Average |
|---|---|---|---|
| Team | Not on bubble brackets | Points | Average |
| Georgia Tech | 3 Safe | 30 | 15.0 |
| Louisville | 2 Safe | 43 | 14.3 |
| VCU | 2 Safe | 41 | 13.7 |
| Michigan State | 1 Safe | 61 | 15.3 |
| Colorado State | 55 | 11.0 | |
| Drake | 55 | 11.0 | |
| Boise State | 46 | 9.2 | |
| Xavier | 45 | 9.0 | |
| Saint Louis | 37 | 7.4 | |
| Utah State | 36 | 7.2 | |
| Syracuse | 33 | 6.6 | |
| Mississippi | 20 | 4.0 | |
| Seton Hall | 17 | 3.4 | |
| St. John's | 17 | 3.4 | |
| SMU | 12 | 2.4 | |
| Memphis | 10 | 2.0 | |
| NC State | 3 | 0.6 | |
| Duke | 3 | 0.6 |
The gurus of grids agree on one thing: Xavier is THE bubble team. All five have the Musketeers as the last team in the NCAA Tournament. They’ve got a Big East Tournament to play that should move them up and down the field, but for now that’s an area of consensus.
- Michigan State’s big win over Michigan yesterday likely puts them in the field, as they went from one of the out teams to strongly in via our sample now. Even if they took an unexpected loss early in the Big Ten Tournament, they’re likely safe. Tom Izzo got it done in March yet again.
- Syracuse makes everyone’s grid for the first time, though none have them in the field currently. They have work to do in Greensboro.
- Memphis blew a huge opportunity yesterday at Houston, as this is their strongest position on our table anyway. Getting that first Quad 1 win (they’re 0-3 in that category) might have been enough to get them more reasonably in the mix.
- Drake is out of games to do anything about their fate, and will be the team on pins and needles rooting for favorites all week long to avoid bid steals.