Running 2023-24 NCAA Basketball Thread

With all the ejections, South Carolina will have six players available for its NCAA Tournament opener, and LSU will have five players available. Or are only the brawlers kicked out of the first game?

 

Been mostly a dud so far but the CAA is gonna heat up tonight, @Cosmo.

 

unapologetically chippy

 

There's precedent for the committee taking at-large candidates with exactly one Q1 win, but we're obviously talking about a small sample size.
The selections:
2019: Nevada
2021: Drake and Syracuse
2023: NC State

The Sycamores' resume is comparable to the past three teams on that list. For whatever it's worth, I haven't seen any observer list either Drake or Indiana State on the bubble list.

 

I think the broadcasters corrected their previous declaration of further suspensions and said only the Gamecock player ejected for fighting will be barred from the NCAA opener.

 

I don't like Lunardi, but he had Drake as a first four out going into today. So I assume he'll flip them with Indiana State. The issue the Valley has with this stuff is they are done a week early and all the bubble teams have a chance to move ahead of them.

 

What’s 10’s NIL?

I’m so sick of LSU’s shit.

 

Yep. Out of sight, out of mind.
If JMU doesn't win the Sun Belt, it'll set the record for most wins by an excluded team. Dukes won at Michigan State in November but stand 322 in schedule strength.

 

I saw someone actually just say James Madison is above Indiana State too.

 

As a MW fan, another interesting comparison is New Mexico. Their metrics are great, but they only have two Q1 wins, a Q3 loss, a really bad Q4 loss to Air Force at home, and have 10 Q4 games and will get another in the MW tourney, playing Air Force again. They are snuggled right in there with all these teams we are talking about. They barely are ahead of Indiana State with one more Q1 win I'd guess.

 

Joe Lunardi is not even in the top 50 of people who post brackets or do bracketology.

He has done it for so long and has the biggest platform, so a lot of fans figure he is the go-to guy and the gold standard. Wrong.

John Feinstein called him out a few years ago for creating a cottage industry for himself and I think Feinstein did his own bracketology and performed even better than Lunardi.

Go to The Bracket Matrix and you'll see almost 200 "bracketologists". Lunardi ranks 98th in their five-year Bracket Matrix rankings.

The Bracket Project - Ranking the Bracketologists