Our latest NCAA bracket has two Big East teams looking out for No. 1
This week has been chaos. A bloodbath. An utter disaster if you’re a ranked team.
And what does that mean for my newest bracket? It means that the teams who survived the week move up. Not necessarily the teams that have gotten some big wins but the teams who have avoided bad losses. (I’m looking at you Iowa, Maryland and kinda sorta Oklahoma – though the team the Sooners lost to, Texas Tech, is now comfortably in my field after three straight wins over ranked teams.)
And this is why we have a surprising development on the top seed-line: Two teams from the Big East are now looking at one-seeds in the NCAA tournament.
Kansas is the No. 1 overall seed. That’s pretty indisputable given its stellar resume. And Villanova as my second overall seed? Hard to argue against.
That’s where things start to get interesting.
Among the following teams, who would you pick for your final two one-seeds: Virginia, Xavier, Oklahoma, Miami or Michigan State? (I drew the line at Iowa after its road loss to Penn State.)
You can make an argument for all of them. I went with Virginia and Xavier because, quite simply, when you stack all those resumes next to each other, those are the two that are a hair above the others.
And so the Big East gets two one-seeds, and next week’s meeting between Villanova and Xavier will carry that much more significance.
| Midwest Region (Chicago) | ||
| Seed | Team | Location |
| 1 | Kansas* | at Des Moines |
| 16 | Bucknell*/Hampton* | |
| 8 | Providence | |
| 9 | Michigan | |
| 4 | Dayton | at Denver |
| 13 | Akron* | |
| 5 | Texas | |
| 12 | Yale* | |
| 6 | Arizona* | at Providence |
| 11 | Valparaiso* | |
| 3 | North Carolina* | |
| 14 | Hawaii* | |
| 7 | UConn | at St. Louis |
| 10 | Texas Tech | |
| 2 | Michigan State | |
| 15 | UNC-Asheville* |
