Welcome to my first ever 76 team bracketology. This was my first time ever putting together a 76 team bracket, and there were some things that jumped out to me about the process:
-The play-in games go a lot further up the seed list than I realized. We’re going to have 10 seeds coming from play-in games, and potentially 9 seeds coming from play-in games if we get a lot of bid stealers.
-The play-in game matchups are somehow even worse than I thought. They all look like crappy December 27 bowl games (Minnesota/West Virginia, anyone?).
-The committee has stated that the play-in games for auto-bids are going to go in straight order of seeding. That is, this seed list features 65 James Madison vs. 66 Wright State, and 75 Bethune Cookman vs. 76 LIU. This is going to result in some decent mid-major 15 seeds getting knocked out in the play-in round.
This bracket features 14 SEC teams and 13 Big Ten teams. I don’t think the Power 2 will actually get 27 teams in- maybe more like 23 or 24? It also features 0 at-large teams outside the Power Five. Inevitably a few teams like Saint Louis, Memphis, Utah State etc. will play their way into the at-large pool, but it’s not clear who those teams will be yet.
Bids by Conference:
SEC: 14
Big 10: 13
Big 12: 10
ACC: 7
Big East: 5