Last night, Oklahoma (12-1) and Kansas (13-1) put together probably the best NCAA college game of the season in a thrilling 109-106 triple overtime that favored the Jayhawks at home. Billed as a match-up between #1 teams, the game brought everything to the table as far as high stakes competition, a challenge for the lead of not only the Big 12 conference but of the national rankings, and a compelling storyline with two more anticipated match-ups later this year (February 13th in Norman, OK; potentially March 12th in Kansas City, MO). Let’s see how this game, as well as the other 53 NCAA Division I basketball games shook up our rankings over the last two days.

March Madness Current Entrants:

Using the current games played, the locations of the games, and the disparity of scores, we are able to build out a current state of the 2016 March Madness Tournament.

Rules: In order to make the tournament, a team must win their conference tournament, win the Ivy League regular season, or become an “at-large” bid that is selected based on merit by an NCAA committee.

In this post, we give an updated rankings for all 351 NCAA Division I teams. But first, we identify the current teams on pace (projected by our models) for becoming conference champions and “at-large” bids.

It should be noted that our rankings will include the suspended Southern Methodist University, whereas the AP Top 25 Coaches’ Poll does not include the Mustangs.

Fitting our models, we find that there is a 0.6631 r-squared, indicating a fairly good fit to the games played.

1. America East: Stony Brook (9-4, 0-0)
2. American: Cincinnati (11-4, 1-1)
3. Atlantic 10: Dayton (11-2, 1-0)
4. Atlantic Coast: Louisville (12-2, 1-0)
5. Atlantic Sun: North Florida (11-6, 0-0)
6. Big 12: Kansas (13-1,2-0)
7. Big East: Villanova (12-2, 2-0)
8. Big Sky: Weber State (9-5, 1-0)
9. Big South: High Point (11-4, 4-0)
10. Big Ten: Michigan State (14-1, 1-1)
11. Big West: Hawaii (11-2, 0-0)
12. Colonial Athletic: James Madison (11-4, 1-1)
13. Conference USA: Louisiana Tech (12-2, 1-0)
14. Horizon League: Valparaiso (11-3, 1-0)
15. Ivy League: Yale (7-5, 0-0)
16. Metro Atlantic: Monmouth (10-4, 2-1)
17. Mid-American: Akron (11-2, 0-0)
18. Mid-Eastern: Norfolk State (5-10, 1-0)
19. Missouri Valley: Wichita State (8-5, 2-0)
20. Mountain West: San Diego State (9-6, 2-0)
21. Northeast: Wagner (8-5, 1-1)
22. Ohio Valley: Belmont (9-6, 1-0)
23. Pac-12: Arizona (13-1, 1-0)
24. Patriot League: Army (10-4, 1-1)
25. Southeastern: South Carolina (13-0, 0-0)
26. Southern: Chattanooga (12-2, 1-0)
27. Southland: Texas A&M Corpus Christi (9-3, 0-0)
28. Southwestern Athletic: Jackson State (7-8, 2-0)
29. Summit League: South Dakota State (13-3, 2-0)
30. Sun Belt: UT – Arlington (11-2, 2-0)
31. West Coast: St. Mary’s (13-1, 4-0)
32. Western Athletic: Grand Canyon (13-2, 0-0)

The remaining 36 “at-large” teams are then the top 36 teams in our rankings. These 36 teams are given as:

1. Oklahoma (12-1)
2. Xavier (13-1)
3. Purdue (13-2)
4. West Virginia (13-1)
5. Virginia (12-2)
6. Miami (FL) (12-1)
7. Iowa (11-3)
8. North Carolina (14-2)
9. Pittsburgh (12-1)
10. Texas A&M (11-2)
11. Michigan (12-3)
12. Providence (14-1)
13. Duke (12-2)
14. Butler (11-3)
15. Maryland (13-1)
16. Florida (9-4)
17. Iowa State (11-2)
18. Texas Tech (11-1)
19. Kentucky (11-2)
20. Vanderbilt (8-5)
21. Connecticut (10-3)
22. California (12-3)
23. USC (12-3)
24. Texas (8-5)
25. Gonzaga (12-3)
26. Indiana (12-3)
27. Colorado (12-3)
28. Kansas State (10-3)
29. Northwestern (13-2)
30. Baylor (10-3)
31. Oregon (11-3)
32. Ohio State (10-5)
33. Seton Hall (12-2)
34. Oregon State (10-2)
35. George Washington (12-2)
36. Utah (11-4)

The next set of teams are our current bubble teams. These are teams that are close to making the NCAA Tournament but are on the outside looking in.

1. Memphis (9-4)
2. Notre Dame (9-4)
3. St. Joseph’s (11-2)
4. Arkansas Little Rock (12-1)
5. Stanford (8-5)
6. Arizona State (10-4)
7. Richmond (8-5)
8. Washington (10-4)
9. Georgia (7-4)
10. VCU (9-5)

The current state of the NCAA Tournament is given as follows:

NCAA March Madness seedings based on rankings as of January 5th, 2016.

We note that we are not predicting the field of 68, but rather giving seedings based on play up to today. Our goal is to populate the March Madness tournament with current seedings; to give indication of where teams are sitting as of today. Since most conference games have yet to be played, we expect the predicted power house teams to climb to the top of these rankings (Maryland, Kentucky, Duke); provided they win almost all their games for the remainder of this season.

NCAA Rankings on January 5th, 2016:

We now present our top-to-bottom rankings based on wins, game locations, and disparity of points.