Hits, misses from Joe Lunardi and the men’s selection committee
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Joe Lunardi, Senior Citizen Author, ESPN.comMar 17, 2024, 09:00 PM ET Close Homeowner college basketball bracketologist for ESPN
- Contributor to SportsCenter, ESPN Insider
- Released first public bracket in 1995
The biggest unfavorable from the 2024 NCAA guys’s basketball bracket is something the selection committee might not manage. It simply lacked areas before all the worthy teams might be included this year.Some will blame
the quote burglars: NC State, Oregon, New Mexico, Duquesne and Florida Atlantic (the last one by losing). Others will use this year’s self-destructing bubble to argue for a bigger field. Count me in for really modest, very cautious expansion, if that ever concerns pass.But my biggest
takeaways typically use on a team-by-team level. For those feeling snubbed, let me provide a couple of suggestions.Oklahoma: Don’t go 4-12
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in Quadrant 1– or 2-12 versus Quadrant 1 competition teams.Seton Hall: Do not lose in the preliminary of
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the conference tournament with a web in the 60s. Indiana State: Attempt to be a bubble group in a year without five bid stealers. I feel worst for you.Pittsburgh: The next bubble team to make it with a No. 343 nonconference schedule
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will be the first.St. John’s: Do not put the “Ziggy” on Villanova. The Wildcats’collapse really harmed you.Editor’s Picks 2 Associated It’s just sad to a degree that these teams lost out. All can winning games in this year
‘s field
, maybe even reaching the second weekend. But the same might be stated for a minimum of NC State, Oregon and New Mexico. The most important rule of Bracketology never ever alters: The best method for any bubble group to get in is to not be a bubble team.That said, I was happily shocked– not a lot, but not a little– by a few of the committee’s choices: The Mountain West was properly downgraded(in terms
of seeding) for the large majority of its Quadrant 1 wins being available in conference play. There is plainly an understanding that individual internet
numbers were a bit inflated in an otherwise exceptional conference.The Atlantic 10 got very good seeds for both its at-large group(7-seed Dayton )and its automated qualifier (11-seed Duquesne). For the league’s seventh-place finisher to get an 11-seed in the Big Dance tells me the league is
well on its method to more quotes in the future.Men’s Tournament Difficulty Total your bracket by picking the winner for each game of the 2024 males’s NCAA competition. Play Guys’s Competition Challenge On
the other side, I did grimace a bit over the following: Florida Atlantic was seeded at No. 8 on credibility, not accomplishment. The Owls lost to Temple, folks
, and those are the wrong Owls this season. FAU had too many losses for a seed this good.Boise State must have remained in FAU’s spot. The committee needs to take a
mulligan and make a straight swap on that one. My Mountain West comments above do not use to Boise State, which showed itself well above First Four caliber both home and away.I can’t assist but question if BYU was dropped a seed line to accommodate its no-Sunday rule.I also wonder if
the ACC had more powerful in-room lobbying than the Big East. The latter had 3 legitimate bubble groups to the ACC’s one, yet just Virginia broke through.Seeded too high: FAU, Michigan State Seeded too low: Boise State, South Carolina, Nevada Lastly, I began feeling very worried
around 5 p.m. ET that my apparently annual miss was going to be Oklahoma. However even with that, my
bracket would not have been 68-for-68. Virginia would not have actually been my”having reservations “choice to change the Sooners.Thankfully, come Thursday afternoon– or perhaps even Tuesday night– none of this will matter
. And neither will I. See you next season!