NCAA Tournament Bracket Watch: Florida keeps the last No. 1 seed and other last calls

The Athletic has live coverage of the men’s NCAA Tournament Selection Show and bracket reveal.

Editor’s note: This article is part of the Bracket Central series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s & women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.

For the first of these final guesses: Florida retains the fourth No. 1 seed. Technically, it’s not retaining — the NCAA Tournament selection committee declared the top 16 seeds on Feb. 21 and is about to release a full bracket, and everything else is guessing — but Florida had a strong claim to it entering the weekend.

Then Vanderbilt crushed the Gators, 91-74, in Saturday’s SEC semifinals. Connecticut, the projected fourth No. 1 for most of the season and a team that beat Florida in December, tipped off with a rare opportunity to move the needle in this year’s Big East, against St. John’s in the title game. Houston, fresh off profile-enhancing wins over BYU and Kansas, got a shot at undisputed No. 1 seed Arizona. Movement was possible.

Until UConn lost 72-52 and Houston lost 79-74. I’ll stick with Florida. It’s close, but the predictive metrics favor the Gators slightly over Houston and decisively over UConn. Also, I’ve got Houston as the No. 5 overall seed in this bracket, the No. 2 seed in the South Region, which means playing in Houston if it makes the second weekend.

Other final guesses of note:

• The St. John’s win over UConn jumps Rick Pitino’s team to the 4 line, dropping Kansas to a No. 5 seed.

• Miami (Ohio) is in Dayton, making the MAC a two-bid league — Akron beat Toledo in a thriller Saturday to take the automatic bid — and reinforcing the importance of the Wins Above Bubble metric. It has the RedHawks comfortably in the field even after their loss to UMass. Predictive metrics tell us Miami should be nowhere near it. To me, that spells Dayton and the First Four.

• The committee talks itself out of Auburn. San Diego State could have made it easy by beating Utah State in the Mountain West final and claiming a second spot for that league while bumping a bubble team. But I’m going with SMU for the final spot, even though the numbers slightly favor Auburn. SMU is close enough that the committee will pass on making history with the first at-large team with 16 losses.

• Two significant seeding jumps are possible based on Sunday’s results. Yes, that’s right, Sunday results affecting seeding — I believe it actually happens and recently explained why. Well, maybe we’ll get a chance to test that belief. Vanderbilt got a massive profile boost with the Florida win, but I can’t quite put the Commodores past Gonzaga for the final No. 3 seed. With a win over Arkansas, Vanderbilt should supplant Gonzaga as a No. 3 seed. And if Purdue beats Michigan in the Big Ten title game, that should propel the Boilermakers past Michigan State for the final No. 2 seed.

As mentioned, we are looking at two MAC bids, and we might be looking at three for the Atlantic 10, after Dayton’s incredible finish and win over Saint Louis. This bracket projects VCU to beat Dayton in the title game. But if Dayton wins, I’m guessing VCU gets an at-large bid and SMU gets bounced.

 

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