If you are looking for Gonzaga in this bracket, you can stop. The Bulldogs are not there. I cannot remember the last time I did a bracket without Gonzaga in it. The Zags played an ambitious nonconference schedule, as they always do, but did not win any of those games. As it stands now, their best win was against Syracuse in the Maui Invitational.
Elsewhere, it was a wild week in college basketball with four out of five teams in the AP Top 25 losing this week, But sometimes, when everybody loses, nobody loses. That is how it went at the top of the bracket, where three of the four No. 1 seeds lost tis week. The result is that the order did not change. Purdue, Kansas, Houston and UConn are still the No. 1 seeds.
Purdue lost at Nebraska 88-72 this week, which put the Cornhuskers into the bracket this week as a No. 8 seed.
Houston’s welcome to the Big 12 was a first road game at Hilton Coliseum, the second toughest road environment in the league behind Kansas – and excluding Houston. Not surprisingly, the Cougars took their first loss of the season to Iowa State
The worst loss of the three No. 1 seeds this week was the Jayhawks’ defeat at UCF.
Bracketology top seeds
Check out Palm’s latest bracket and full field of 68 at the Bracketology hub.
Marquette lost to Butler on Wednesday, but also lost backup guard Sean Jones for the season with a knee injury. Jones was third on the team in assists, just five behind leader Oso Ighodaro despite playing just over half as many minutes.
The loss by the Golden Eagles dropped them from a No. 2 seed last week down to a No. 4 seed while North Carolina took their spot up on the No. 2 line. Once you get away from the No. 1 seeds, the teams are pretty tightly bunched together.
Conference play will keep things fluid
There are eight teams each from the Big East, Big 12 and SEC. The Big Ten is fourth with six teams. Once you get past the No. 4 seeds, you have a lot of teams from those conferences with pretty soft resumes where teams have either not yet strengthened their schedule to make up for nonconference fluff, or finally found a quality win after a few tries. Those teams will sort each other out as we go through conference play.
BYU bumped down
BYU is not always an easy team to bracket. The Cougars cannot play on Sunday due to the religious rules of the school. In this bracket, they were originally a No. 9 seed, but there were no places where both the regional and subregional were played on Thursday and Saturday. That meant swapping BYU down to a No. 10 seed to find a suitable place to play. Mississippi State went up to a No. 9 seed in the Cougars’ place.
Note: I’ll be updating the bracket on Mondays and Fridays until we get to conference tournament time, when the updates are daily.
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