NCAA Tournament 2017: What is Selection Sunday?

That leaves Kentucky (26-5, 16-2 SEC, RPI of 5, top-15 strength of schedule), which has a legitimate shot of winning the SEC tournament but would likely have to face Florida along the way to beat out Gonzaga or a Pac-12 team. It’s time for March Madness. However, March Madness has proven year after year that basketball knowledge can only take you so far.

UCLA didn’t make the tournament a year ago but has arguably the best player in the country in freshman guard Lonzo Ball and an explosive offense.

At one point, the only place you could get a copy of the bracket was out of the newspaper and make copies to pass around the office.

Things happened yesterday in college basketball. With its recent success in the SEC Tournament, Vanderbilt is nearly surely a lock (the Commodores are listed in 105 of 121 projections included at Bracket Matrix).

The Baylor front court may garner most of the headlines, but this Baylor team is going nowhere without Kristy Wallace running the show from the back court. However, that doesn’t prevent people from trying.

One side note is that, while no changes are in effect this year, the NCAA Tournament committee met earlier this year about changing or replacing RPI in its usage as an evaluation tool. “The outcome of tonight’s Pac-12 championship game between the two regular season co-champions could have a bearing and possibly the ACC title game as well”. So, 2^63. Nine point two quintillion.

They typically include the tournament sponsor (s) on the finalized bracket; however, the bracket will fit on a single piece of 8 x 11 paper when you print it out.

Or we could end up with another leaked bracket situation like a year ago.

There are so many ways that you can own a piece of the game that just filling out a bracket from the newspaper just seems so outdated these days. The odds of winning the Powerball are 1/175,223,510.

The Cardinals are coached by the great Rick Pitino and are loaded with potential National Basketball Association talent, but Kentucky media members predict the fate of the team in the tournament lies with their X-factors: Australian duo Mangok Mathiang and Deng Adel. We’ve seen small schools make Sweet 16 runs before. Also, we have been seeing increased scrutiny in the committee and their “Bubble Bias”. So that 10-8 conference record is a bit misleading.

By the end of the day, we’ll know where all 68 NCAA Tournament teams are headed, who they’ll play, and when they’re playing.

Rhode Island is one of the most precarious teams, with some pundits have them among the last four teams in the tournament and others placing them just outside the bubble.

I’m glad I learned my lesson many years ago because I don’t know if I could resist all these choices.

We ended up having a boat-load of quality mid-majors getting snubbed last season, and as a result we were left without a legitimate “Cinderella”.

Now, will there be upsets this year?

For what it’s worth, this is a very soft bubble, but Syracuse still doesn’t deserve to get in.

Bracket Matrix indexes 117 predicted brackets and, as of Thursday morning, had Syracuse averaging as the next-to-last at-large team (being listed in 69 of those brackets).