As another three days have passed, only 76 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball games have been played. In total, 8 of the 76 games involved ranked opponents; one of which resulted in a #12 Miami 64 – 61 victory over #3 Virginia on February 22nd. With only seven days before the first Conference Tournament (Patriot League), the shuffling seems to get a little slower compared to the volatile swings over January and through the beginning of March.

In this edition, we update the rankings based on these games and give insight to the our predicted state of the NCAA tournament entries.

Of the 32 conferences, only 14 conferences have a team in our Top 68 rankings. Due to this, there are 18 teams outside of the Top 68; meaning that the only entrant for their conference will be through the conference tournament. These 18 teams push the Top 68 list down to a Top 50 list, which in turn forces four more conferences (Horizon League, Mountain West, Sun Belt, WAC) out of the tournament picture and into the “win the Conference Tournament or else” list. These four teams push the Top 50 list down to a Top-46 list. Therefore forcing 22 conference tournaments to be the be-all-end-all tournament for majority of D-I.

The 10 conferences with effectively guaranteed at-large bids are not much of a surprise: Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, ACC, Pac-12, SEC, Atlantic-10, Big West, American, and Missouri Valley. Of these 10 conferences, two have a single team in the Top-46: Big West (Hawaii) and Missouri Valley (Wichita State). This means if these teams fail to win their conference tournament, two more teams are thrust onto the Bubble.

This up-coming weekend, we will give an in-depth look at all 32 conferences.

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. Also, in recent light of team discipline, Louisville has also been disqualified from the post-season.

Other Teams Disqualified: Abilene Christian, Grand Canyon, Incarnate Word, Mass – Lowell, Northern Kentucky, NJIT (Transition to Division 1); Alcorn State, Central Arkansas, Florida A&M, Stetson (NCAA Violations: APR); Missouri, Pacific, Southern Mississippi (Self-Imposed)

Fitting our models, we find that there is a 0.5477 r-squared, indicating an “O.K. but no-where predictive” fit to the games played. Note that an r-squared value of 0.25 typically indicates coin flips. Using the rankings as determination for conference winners, we have the following teams with automatic bids:

1. America East: Stony Brook (23-5, 14-1)
2. American: Connecticut (19-8, 9-5)
3. Atlantic 10: Dayton (22-5, 12-3)
4. Atlantic Coast: Miami (22-5, 11-4)
5. Atlantic Sun: North Florida (20-10, 9-4)
6. Big 12: Kansas (24-4, 12-3)
7. Big East: Villanova (24-3, 13-1)
8. Big Sky: Weber State (20-7, 12-2)
9. Big South: Winthrop (20-7, 12-4)
10. Big Ten: Michigan State (23-5, 10-5)
11. Big West: Hawaii (22-3, 11-1)
12. Colonial Athletic: UNC – Wilmington (21-6, 13-3)
13. Conference USA: UAB (22-5, 12-2)
14. Horizon League: Valparaiso (24-5, 14-2)
15. Ivy League: Princeton (18-5, 8-1)
16. Metro Atlantic: Monmouth (23-6, 15-3)
17. Mid-American: Akron (21-7, 10-5)
18. Mid-Eastern: Hampton (16-9, 11-2)
19. Missouri Valley: Wichita State (21-7, 14-2)
20. Mountain West: San Diego State (20-7, 13-1)
21. Northeast: Wagner (18-9, 11-5)
22. Ohio Valley: Belmont (20-9, 12-3)
23. Pac-12: Oregon (21-6, 10-4)
24. Patriot League: Bucknell (15-12, 12-4)
25. Southeastern: Kentucky (21-7, 11-4)
26. Southern: Chattanooga (24-5, 13-3)
27. Southland: Stephen F. Austin (21-5, 14-0)
28. Southwestern Athletic: Texas Southern (14-12, 13-1)
29. Summit League: South Dakota State (21-7, 10-4)
30. Sun Belt: Arkansas Little Rock (24-3, 14-2)
31. West Coast: St. Mary’s (22-4, 13-3)
32. Western Athletic: New Mexico State (20-9, 11-1)

Dropped Out: Virginia (21-5, 10-4), Texas A&M (20-7, 9-5), Yale (18-6, 9-1), Boston University (17-11, 10-5), Southern (18-9, 10-4)

Jumped In: Miami (FL), Kentucky, Princeton, Bucknell, Texas Southern

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

1. Xavier (24-3, 12-3)
2. Oklahoma (21-5, 9-5)
3. West Virginia (21-7, 10-5)
4. North Carolina (22-5, 11-3)
5. Virginia (21-5, 10-4)
6. Maryland (23-5, 11-4)
7. Iowa (20-6, 11-3)
8. Arizona (22-5, 10-4)
9. Duke (20-7, 9-5)
10. Baylor (20-8, 9-6)
11. Utah (21-7, 10-5)
12. Iowa State (19-9, 8-7)
13. Texas (18-10, 9-6)
14. Purdue (21-7, 9-6)
15. Indiana (22-6, 11-3)
16. Texas Tech (18-9, 8-7)
17. Texas A&M (20-7 (9-5)
18. California (19-8, 9-5)
19. Notre Dame (18-8, 9-5)
20. Seton Hall (19-7, 9-5)
21. Pittsburgh (19-7, 8-6)
22. St. Joseph’s (22-5, 11-3)
23. South Carolina (22-5, 9-5)
24. Butler (18-9, 7-8)
25. USC (19-8, 8-6)
26. Providence (19-8, 7-7)
27. Michigan (19-9, 9-6)
28. Syracuse (18-10, 8-7)
29. Colorado (19-9, 8-7)
30. Oregon State (15-10, 6-8)
31. Cincinnati (20-8, 10-5)
32. Wisconsin (17-10, 9-5)
33. Florida (17-11, 8-7)
34. Creighton (17-10, 8-6)
35. Vanderbilt (17-11, 9-6)
36. Kansas State (15-12, 4-10)

DROPPED OUT: Washington (16-11, 8-7)

SNEAKED IN: Vanderbilt

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. Tulsa (19-9, 11-5)
2. Washington (16-11, 8-7)
3. George Washington (19-7, 8-5)
4. Georgia Tech (16-12, 6-9)
5. UCLA (15-12, 6-8)
6. Florida State (16-11, 6-9)
7. VCU (20-7, 12-2)
8. Stanford (13-12, 6-8)
9. Alabama (16-11, 7-8)
10. Gonzaga (21-7, 13-3

FLOATED OUT OF BUBBLE: Clemson (16-12, 9-7)

CLIMBED INTO BUBBLE: Gonzaga

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

NCAA March Madness seedings based on our rankings as of February 23rd, 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. As the conference games continue to play out, the field of 68 will become much clearer.