A Better Bracket, 2024

What if you actually had to beat your peers to get a shot at the natty?

In 2022, our own

David Peterson

and

Ret!

lamented the selection committee’s tendency to boost mediocre power conference teams over mid-major teams that dominated their conference. Especially on the bubble, it seems the Texas A&Ms of the world will always get the nod over the Indiana States.

As such, they devised two simple rules to create a fairer bracket, requiring that you actually play above-average basketball against the other teams in your league. Those rules are:

1. At-large selections must have a record greater than .500 in conference play. To be clear, not .500 or greater—greater than .500. If you go 9-9 in the Big 12, you’re out.

2. At-large selections must also finish in the top half of their conference standings, rounding down if there is an odd number of teams in the league. For example, in the 15-team ACC, an at-large selection must have finished seventh or higher. This does not apply to 10th-place NC State because they won the autobid.

For the past two years, they’ve published a bracket that follows these two rules, but they’re both busy this week, so I’m keeping up the tradition in their stead.¹

Let’s build A Better Bracket for 2024.

To begin, let’s look at the actual NCAA Tournament bracket and see who we’re losing.

Teams in red are eliminated from A Better Bracket.

Six teams miss the cut.

Packing Their Bags

[7] Texas | 9-9 in Big 12

You really can’t take any bad losses in the Big 12 if you wanna stay on the right side of .500, and unfortunately, Texas took two in a row back in January, losing at West Virginia and then at home to UCF.

The Big 12 is kinda brutal for this exercise but them’s the breaks. Plenty of other quality teams who beat their peers more often than not are lined up out the door.

[8] Mississippi State | 8-10 in SEC (ninth in 14-team league)

Weird résumé for Mississippi State. In the non-conference, they beat Washington State and Northwestern at an MTE in Connecticut on back-to-back days. A couple weeks later, they lost at home to Southern.

In SEC play, the Bulldogs mostly beat the teams they were supposed to (though they cut it close against Arkansas at home), but lost to almost everyone else. Two key wins are what landed them in the NCAA field: at home against Tennessee and Auburn.

We would have liked to see two more.

[9] Texas A&M | 9-9 in SEC

I already ragged on Texas A&M in the intro but man. They lost at home to LSU, Ole Miss, and Arkansas, and on the road to Vanderbilt. Win any one of those four games and they get to stay here. Instead, they’ll head back to College Station to take another bad home loss in the NIT.

[9] Michigan State | 10-10 in B1G

Michigan State sure tried to play their way out of the NCAA Tournament in the late going, losing at home to Iowa and Ohio State and on the road to Indiana. Winning one of those three games would have kept them in this field, but instead, we can boot them for the frauds many people have thought they were all year.

[9] TCU | 9-9 in Big 12 (eighth in 14-team league)

As with Texas, a home loss to UCF is what did TCU in, theirs coming on the last day of the regular season.

[10] Colorado State | Seventh in 11-team Mountain West

Wow. I don’t think I ever expected a mid-major team to get cut from the field for this bracket, but the Mountain West was just that good this year.

In the real world, I’m elated at the reality of six-bid Mountain West. For the purposes of this bracket, Colorado State didn’t prove themselves quite enough against the other quality teams in the league.

Picking the Field

Now that we’ve eliminated the teams who don’t pass the smell test, we can replace them with some nice, rosy qualifiers who actually won their games.

Last year, David excluded teams who declined their NIT invites, which removed two teams from consideration: Dayton and North Carolina. This year, though…this year, 17 teams declined their invites.

This includes every Pac-12 team who missed the NCAA Tournament except Utah. I wonder how silly the committee felt calling Oregon State.

At this point, cutting all NIT decliners would remove too many good teams from the equation, which would make for a worse bracket. And we’re trying to make A Better Bracket, so…

Anyway, here’s how I’m gonna do this. I’ll start with the official “first four out” the selection committee released along with the bracket and then go down the list of NIT seeds, interspersing decliners where I feel they make sense. If a team meets the qualification standards, I’ll add them to the field; if they don’t, I’ll skip them. I’ll keep going down the list until I get to six new at-large bids.

Let’s get started:

1. Oklahoma: Skip (the Big 12 is at their limit; Oklahoma went 8-10 anyway)

2. Seton Hall: Add #1 (13-7 in Big East; fourth place in 11-team league)

3. Indiana State: Add #2 (17-3 in Missouri Valley; champion of 12-team league)

4. Pitt: Add #3 (12-8 in ACC; fourth place in 15-team league)

5. St. John’s: Add #4 (11-9 in Big East; fifth place in 11-team league)

6. Wake Forest: Add #5 (11-9 in ACC; fifth place in 15-team league)

7. Villanova: Skip (the Big East is at their limit; Villanova went 10-10 anyway)

8. Ohio State: Skip (9-11 in B1G; 10th place in 14-team league)

9. Cincinnati: Skip (7-11 in Big 12; 10th place in 14-team league)

10. Princeton: Add #6 (12-2 in Ivy; champion of eight-team league)

I placed St. John’s immediately after the first four out, which I think is fair. Additionally, I had planned on slotting Memphis after the NIT 2-seeds. Had none of Villanova, Ohio State, Cincinnati, or Princeton been eligible, Memphis would have qualified for the final spot, but Princeton was a shoo-in here.

With our new at-large qualifiers selected, all we have left to do is reveal the bracket.

The Bracket

Teams in green are new to the bracket. Teams in blue moved up a seed line, and Nevada is an even darker blue because they moved up two.

We got rid of five power conference teams and one mid-major, replacing them with four power conference teams and two mid-majors.

You might think that’s basically meaningless, and in some sense you’d be right, but c’mon. You’re gonna tell me a bracket with Indiana State and Princeton is less intriguing than one with Tom Izzo in it for the 98th consecutive year? With TCU in it after playing one of the worst non-conference schedules known to man, woman, or enby and not even breaking .500 in league play?

No shot.

1. I’m actually the one who crafted last year’s bracket, but I didn’t even do it right. I accidentally gave a bid to Colorado, who finished 8-12 in the Pac-12. I’ve triple checked to ensure I haven’t done something like that again this year.

In any case, here’s last year’s piece and 2022’s.