The seed list below is our best current prediction of the final NCAA Tournament seed list. It is predictive of where things will end up. It is not a reflection of where things currently stand. (Update: With selection happening today, it is now a reflection of where things stand.)
The seed list below is subjective. We start with our college basketball model’s outputs and then make slight adjustments based on known weaknesses of our model. Our college basketball model simulates the remainder of the season 10,000 times, including the selection process and postseason tournaments. It gives us the likeliest automatic bid in each conference as well as each team’s median position on the committee’s seed list. With that information, we build the seed list. Here is how the model works, in full detail.
If you’re looking for a reflection of where the bracket currently stands, we’d recommend Bracket Matrix. It is a great resource. It has all the brackets.
If it’s bracketology you want, or if you’re looking for more detail on teams chances to make and/or win the NCAA Tournament and NIT, those links are here:
Automatic bids are marked with an asterisk (*).
Last Updated: Sunday 3/17 – FINAL
| Seed | Team | Team | Team | Team |
| 1 | Houston | UConn* | Purdue | North Carolina |
| 2 | Tennessee | Iowa State* | Arizona | Marquette |
| 3 | Creighton | Illinois* | Duke | Baylor |
| 4 | Auburn | Kentucky | Kansas | Alabama |
| 5 | South Carolina | BYU | Wisconsin | San Diego State |
| 6 | Utah State | Florida | Saint Mary’s* | Texas Tech |
| 7 | Gonzaga | Dayton | Nevada | Washington State |
| 8 | Clemson | Nebraska | Texas | Boise State |
| 9 | Mississippi State | New Mexico* | TCU | Colorado State |
| 10 | Colorado | Michigan State | ||
| 10 (First Four) | Northwestern | Texas A&M | Florida Atlantic | Oklahoma |
| 11 | Oregon* | Drake* | NC State* | Grand Canyon* |
| 12 | Duquesne* | James Madison* | McNeese* | UAB* |
| 13 | Samford* | Yale* | Vermont* | College of Charleston* |
| 14 | Akron* | Oakland* | Morehead State* | Colgate* |
| 15 | Western Kentucky* | South Dakota State* | Long Beach State* | Longwood* |
| 16 | Stetson* | Saint Peter’s* | ||
| 16 (First Four) | Grambling State* | Montana State* | Howard* | Wagner* |
Subjective adjustments we’re making here, away from our model’s bracketology:
- We’re flipping Marquette up to a 2-seed, Baylor up to a 3-seed, and Auburn down to a 4-seed. This is a combination of our model accounting more heavily for the SEC Tournament than the committee likely does, as well as some AP Poll timing we’re still figuring out how best to incorporate in our model (there’s evidence the penultimate AP Poll correlates with seeding beyond what would independently be the case, but it correlates more with some types of teams than others, and Baylor closing the regular season with a very understandable loss is one of the cases where the correlation should be weaker).
- We’re pushing San Diego State up to a 5-seed while dropping Gonzaga to a 7-seed. The committee was higher on San Diego State than expected in the seed reveal a few weeks back, and we expect that to be indicative of a continued high opinion of the Aztecs, whom our model also likely underestimates by weighting SOR so heavily (long story short, SOR doesn’t like teams who play a lot of competition against teams from high altitudes). On the Gonzaga side, it’s hard to see a team who spent so much time in bubble discussion moving all the way to a 5-seed, even with the strong conference season.
- We’re dropping Utah State to a 6-seed and raising Wisconsin to a 5-seed. Utah State’s NCSOS number is fine, but we expect the committee to be wary of a team in the 40’s in kenpom who didn’t play a single power conference opponent. Wisconsin’s overall body of work is stronger than that of Gonzaga by enough that we expect it to outweigh Gonzaga’s predictive and polling advantage, especially with Wisconsin finishing this portion of the season strong.
- We’re pushing Texas Tech up to a 6-seed and dropping Dayton to a 7-seed. We’re worried about recency bias weighing down Dayton.
- We’re moving Boise State to the 8-line, because of the MWC/SOR thing. Colorado State to a 9-seed, for the same reason. We’re dropping Colorado and Michigan State to 10-seed status because we believe they’ll be among the last at-larges voted into the field, negating their stronger performance in metrics normally correlated with seeding.
- We’re pushing Virginia out of the field and moving Oklahoma in. We believe Oklahoma’s more nondescript finish to the season will earn them the bid, especially with Virginia’s kenpom rating so poor and public perception so low when it comes to Virginia. Our model does account for Oklahoma’s undefeated record against Q2, Q3, and Q4, but it’s rare for that to be present on a bubble résumé, so we’re not very confident in how much benefit we assign. We also know our model struggles because it fails to account for a team’s best wins. Oklahoma having beaten Iowa State should help a lot. Its second-best win (BYU at home) is comparable to Virginia’s best (Florida on a neutral court), and that continues down the line, with the Iowa State victory standing out, especially right now.