Bracketology Update 1/22/15

ESPN’s Joe Lunardi released his latest bracket and “Bracket Math” Thursday with games through January 21st. Lunardi has 7 Big East teams in the field after only having 6 in on his bracket released on Monday this week and the league also is dominating the 6 seed line.

This also seems like as good a time as any to re-introduce a section of these bracketology update posts that will continue from now on and that is the section that uses information from BracketMatrix.com. More on that below.

Here is a breakdown of Lunardi’s latest bracket math:

• Villanova – #6 – 2nd 2 seed (East) – was #3
• Georgetown – #20 – 4th 5 seed (Midwest) – was #25
• Seton Hall – #22 – 2nd 6 seed (West) – was #20
• Providence – #23 – 3rd 6 seed (South) – was #21
• Butler* – #24 – 4th 6 seed (Midwest) – was #22
• Xavier – #41 – 1st 11 seed (East) – was #40
• St. John’s – #46 – 4th Last Four In (Midwest) – 2nd 12 seed – was #70

Villanova moves down a line after losing to Georgetown while the Hoyas move up 2 lines with that win. Seton Hall drops a line to 6 but Providence and Butler remain in tow and the league has 3 of the 4 6 seeds according to the bracket math which would be very interesting if it actually happened. Xavier moved down a line but only by 1 spot on the S-curve and St. John’s jumps from being in the “First Four Out” category to being the “Last Four In” category giving them a First Round play-in game against another 12 seed. 7 teams is a fantastic number for this league but I have a hard time seeing it actually happening with teams likely to beat up on each other over the next 6 weeks.

*Butler is a 6 seed in the “Bracket Math” but a 7 seed on the bracket due to rules against conference members playing in the first or second round if they played twice during the season. St. John’s would be the 11 seed on that 6 seed line so Butler got moved down a line to a 7 on the bracket.

Conference Breakdown

• ACC (8)
• Big 12 (7)
• Big East (7)
• Big Ten (6)
• SEC (4)
• American (3)
• Mountain West (3)
• Pac-12 (3)
• Atlantic 10 (2)
• Conference USA (2)
• Missouri Valley (2)

The 2015 Bracket Matrix

BracketMatrix.com is a very informative site and I think it adds value to the bracketology discussion so I’ll be featuring a section in these bracketology updates with information like average seed, number of brackets Providence appears in and a few other things. The appeal of BracketMatrix.com is that they are sort of like a composite bracket.

They do that by taking a plethora of available and updated brackets from a variety of sources – Lunardi and Jerry Palm included – and average out the results. They also have a rating system to show which brackets are the most accurate year after year. Let’s get down to business in this first installment of the 2015 Bracket Matrix section:

• Bracket Matrix Average Seed for Providence: 7
• Numbers of Brackets Providence appears in: 66/66
• Best Seed: 4
• Worst Seed: 12

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Mike Hopkins

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