Last Four In: North Dakota, New Hampshire, Delaware, UC-Davis
First Six Out: Idaho, Montana, Austin Peay, Fordham, Rhode Island, Eastern Kentucky
Before we dive too deeply into this second to last Bracketology Breakdown, I’m going to go much more in depth with my annual bonus edition. Expect that on Monday, here on the Madness. So, a few of these projections may be a bit preliminary. Though, I wouldn’t expect a huge difference come the special edition release.
Not a lot of change this week. Did move Austin Peay out, despite their win. The A-Sun/WAC Alliance is so strange. Each conference will name their champion after next week. Then the better of the two champions will receive the automatic bid from their Alliance by a combined Power Ranking. Abilene Christian has already clinched the WAC side, even if they lose next week to Stephen F. Austin. The A-Sun side is currently led by Central Arkansas. They are actually tied with Austin Peay, but won the head-to-head meeting. Games against Jacksonville State are not supposed to count in the standings. So the Power Ranking SHOULD be deciding between Central Arkansas and Abilene Christian. ACU was leading between the two coming into this last week and their win over Sam Houston should look better towards that compared to Central Arkansas’ over Stephen F. Austin. The question will come next week if UCA wins and ACU loses. The same result for each will, undoubtedly, give the nod to Abilene Christian. Sorry for the long explanation.
Davidson has temporarily played themselves out of the Pioneer automatic again, getting smashed by San Diego. Right now, Dayton slides in, having the best conference record, that doesn’t belong to ineligible St. Thomas. A potential three-way tie for the bid could happen after next week, involving Butler. Each team would have a win and a loss against the other two. I’ll address that in the Bonus edition.
The last bid, moving UC-Davis in after their whooping of Idaho, in Idaho. It may be short lived, the Aggies will probably need to win at Sacramento State next week to secure a bid. There’s still some moving parts, but the bubble did a good bit of shrinking overall this week. And, of course, we still have the Ohio Valley Conference automatic bid to discuss.
Not a lot more to say here until Monday.
Bids By Conference
**Atlantic Sun (0):
Big Sky (4): *Sacramento State, Montana State, Weber State, UC-Davis
Big South (1): *North Carolina A&T
Colonial (5): *William & Mary, Elon, Richmond, New Hampshire, Delaware
Missouri Valley (3): *South Dakota State, North Dakota State, North Dakota
Northeast (1): *St. Francis
Ohio Valley (1): *Southeast Missouri
Patriot (1): *Holy Cross
Pioneer (1): *Dayton
Southern (4): *Samford, Furman, Chattanooga, Mercer
Southland (2): *Southeastern Louisiana, Incarnate Word
**Western (1): *Abilene Christian
* denotes an automatic qualifier
** one of the champions between the Atlantic Sun and Western combined, will also receive an automatic bid
