2018-19 Preseason Bracketology

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College hoops season starts on Tuesday, which means it's time for me to roll out my preseason bracketology. Doing this in the preseason is always a bit of a crapshoot- I spent a while digging through various computer rankings, conference media polls, recruiting rankings etc. Things obviously change massively throughout the season though- I would bet there's going to be at least one team who does not  appear in my bracket who earns a protected seed, probably multiple. Similarly, at least one of my protected seeds will miss the tournament entirely. That's part of the fun of this whole exercise though.

Overall, the seed list feels very power-conference heavy to me. Nevada and Gonzaga are the only teams from outside the Power Five+Big East in the top half of the bracket, and there's a lot of schools that I normally think of as mediocre Power Five programs in the bracket. The American, Atlantic 10, WCC and Mountain West feel particularly weak to me- this has been a trend for a few years now as a lot of the bigger programs in these conferences get snapped up by the Power Five+Big East. But it seems especially bad this year- it was not long ago that the Atlantic Ten was routinely sending 4 or 5 teams to the tournament, and Saint Louis is the highest (and only) A-10 team here as a 10 seed.

I will probably post my next seed list around the time of the Thanksgiving tournaments- I'm still going to be primarily focused on college football through bowl season and then around the new year my focus shifts to college hoops for the next few months.

1: Kansas, Kentucky, Virginia, Gonzaga
2: Duke, Nevada, North Carolina, Villanova
3: Tennessee, West Virginia, Michigan State, Syracuse
4: Oregon, Florida State, Kansas State, Auburn
5: Michigan, Mississippi State, Purdue, Virginia Tech
6: Clemson, Florida, Marquette, Indiana
7: Wisconsin, TCU, St. John's, UCLA
8: LSU, Washington, Texas, Providence
9: Nebraska, Cincinnati, Loyola Chicago, Miami (FL)
10: Iowa State, UCF, Maryland, Saint Louis
11: Notre Dame, USC, Xavier, Western Kentucky
12: (Houston/Arizona), (Texas Tech/Creighton), Buffalo, Montana
13: Northeastern, South Dakota State, Harvard, Georgia State
14: UNC Greensboro, New Mexico State, UC Irvine, Rider
15: Belmont, Wright State, Vermont, Lipscomb
16: Stephen F. Austin, Radford, (St. Francis PA/Lehigh), (Texas Southern/North Carolina Central)

First Four Out: Alabama, Butler, BYU, St. Joseph's
Next Four Out:  NC State, San Diego State, Vanderbilt, Minnesota

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