Men’s Bracketology 1/15/2026

I’m trying a bit of a new approach with this seed list. My logic goes something like the following:

-Take every team’s current resume metrics

-Use their predictive metrics to estimate what’s going to happen the rest of the season

-Combine their current resume with their predicted resume from the rest of the season to estimate their final resume

-Rank teams based on their expected final resume

I built a crude model for this over the past few days, and these are the initial results.

I would say that this passes the smell test pretty well. Teams with big discrepancies between their resume and their predictives (Indiana, NC State, UCF) are generally placed somewhere between the two, which seems reasonable to me.

I would like to briefly shout out Texas who has picked up 2 Q1-A wins in 2 games, winning at Alabama and vs. Vanderbilt. The Longhorns were nowhere near the field a week ago and now are one of my last teams in.

1: Arizona, Michigan, Connecticut, Purdue

2: Duke, Iowa State, Houston, Vanderbilt

3: Nebraska, BYU, Gonzaga, Illinois

4: Michigan State, Virginia, Florida, Kansas

5: Alabama, Texas Tech, Villanova, Clemson

6: Utah State, Arkansas, Tennessee, Miami (FL)

7: Louisville, St. Mary’s, St. John’s, North Carolina

8: Iowa, UCF, Georgia, SMU

9: Seton Hall, NC State, Saint Louis, USC

10: Kentucky, Wisconsin, Auburn, Indiana

11: New Mexico, (Baylor/Texas), (Ohio State/Missouri), Miami (OH)

12: Belmont, Yale, McNeese, South Florida

13: High Point, Liberty, Hawai’i, Utah Valley

14: Hofstra, East Tennessee State, St. Thomas, Troy

15: Wright State, Portland State, Quinnipiac, Navy

16: Austin Peay, UT-Martin, (Vermont/Bethune-Cookman), (LIU/Norfolk State)

First Four Out: Texas A&M, UCLA, San Diego State, LSU

Next Four Out: Stanford, Creighton, George Mason, Virginia Tech

In the Hunt: TCU, Washington, Santa Clara, Oklahoma State, Syracuse, VCU

On the Radar Screen: Murray State, Dayton, Oklahoma, Butler, Nevada, California

Moving In: Kentucky, Baylor, Texas, Missouri

Moving Out: LSU, UCLA, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M