bracketology

[XU-PA]

Both Palm, (collegerpi.com) and Creme (espn) Have Xavier as a 2, that's the obvious, but both also have placed our opening round brackets into the Dayton Region.

Great news!!

[X-band '01]

Xavier has to take care of their business first - either Charlotte, Temple or certainly Dayton is capable of crashing the party.

[STL_XUfan]

Well there is our girls motivation for the next 2 days. Win out and you get every game in front of a home crowd.

Now lets Keep UConn out of our bracket and it will be like Christmas on selection Monday.

[X-band '01]

There's little chance that UConn and Xavier would be in the same region - Duke is likely to be placed as a 2 seed in the Philadelphia region with UConn anyway due to geographical and S-Curve considerations.

About the only way that Texas A&M can leapfrog past Xavier now would be to win the Big 12 Tournament; they're the main threat to keep Xavier out of the Dayton region.

[coasterville95]

Great news if it holds, I could probably be talked into my second ever (and third ever) trips to UD Arena to watch the women get to the Final Four.

[HomerCecil]

Creme has Xavier projected back out to Spokane for whatever reason, and giving Texas A&M the Dayton slot. Root hard for the Aggies to lose early in the Big 12 tournament (I don't think losing to Baylor in the final would hurt them).

[X-band '01]

1 potential land mine was avoided with UConn beating Notre Dame for the Big East championship; the Irish hung around for most of the game. Creme must be high on UCLA/Notre Dame again if he's sticking Xavier out west in Spokane instead of Dallas.

[XU-PA]

1 potential land mine was avoided with UConn beating Notre Dame for the Big East championship; the Irish hung around for most of the game. Creme must be high on UCLA/Notre Dame again if he's sticking Xavier out west in Spokane instead of Dallas.

There was some talk about that during the UConn/Notre Dame game last night. And Notre Dame certainly did themselves some good in that game, staying close all along. Not sure where the UCLA talk comes, playing in the pac 10 usually doesn't bring much credit unless you're Stanford, or beat Stanford. They do have a Notre Dame win, but that was very very early in the season, and by 3 in OT.
That #2 choice will certainly be as tough as who are the last 4 in/out for the committee will be very interesting to watch. Same thing every year, lots of good teams in the east and midwest, someone has to move!!!!!

[HomerCecil]

Nope, he has Texas A&M in Dayton. He'd had them in Spokane and us in Dayton but swapped us. No idea why as the Big 12 hasn't started yet (except for opening round games).

[XU-PA]

Homer, you know the way things stack up in the bracket better.
Why is putting Texas A&M in the dallas region along with Baylor not a good thing? They have an SOS and RPI that merits preferential treatment, in fact they sit one behind Baylor in RPI but have a better SOS mark, and a meeting with in conference rival Baylor couldn't happen till the regional final.
Seems to me that giving some love to the #2's isn't so bad.

[xu_fan]

Homer, you know the way things stack up in the bracket better.
Why is putting Texas A&M in the dallas region along with Baylor not a good thing? They have an SOS and RPI that merits preferential treatment, in fact they sit one behind Baylor in RPI but have a better SOS mark, and a meeting with in conference rival Baylor couldn't happen till the regional final.
Seems to me that giving some love to the #2's isn't so bad.

He can't put Baylor and Texas A & M in the same bracket unless there are more than 4 big 12 schools in the 1-4 seed line and since there are not A&M willnot be in Dallas no matte what....

[XU-PA]

I've been watching the realtime rpi bracket for a while, all season long I thought he was kind of dismissing X by leaving them as an above 3 seed. but now, maybe It makes sense.
Knowing that our SOS is weak compared to the other teams in the top 10 rankings and rpi, he has put them as a 4, he has our 1st 2 rounds in the dayton bracket. He's got DePaul as the 2, Miami as the 3 and Tenn as the 1.
He's also put Dayton in, as a 10 making us a 3 team conference, which makes sense since we stack up as #7 conference overall rpi. Temple is in as an 8.

[X-band '01]

He can't put Baylor and Texas A & M in the same bracket unless there are more than 4 big 12 schools in the 1-4 seed line and since there are not A&M willnot be in Dallas no matte what....

The NCAA screwed this up a couple of years ago when UConn and Rutgers met in the regional final. Nowadays, the NCAA is not going to repeat the scenarios for the reasons listed above.

You should also keep in mind that the NCAA already sent Texas A&M out to Gonzaga's subregional last season - Xavier caught a break last year by playing the Zags and not A&M. The NCAA is not going to give the Aggies the shaft in consecutive years.

[X-band '01]

A&M won their Big 12 opener yesterday - they play Oklahoma in the Big 12 semis next.

I took a closer look at Creme's updated bracket - he's got UCLA as a 2 seed now. That screws things up for Xavier even more since we now have 2 possible 1-2 seedings of fellow conference members that need to be avoided. A&M and Baylor can't be paired together, and UCLA and Stanford can't be paired together. Notre Dame was listed as a 3 but they also have a head-to-head loss to UCLA earlier in the year.

That sucks - it may take an early loss by UCLA to knock them out of the 2-seed line.

[HomerCecil]

Yup. I think we're headed out west.

[XU-PA]

appears the opportunity for any upset to change things substantially is gone. Unless Standford were to get knocked off in the Pac-10. Really doesn't matter between Texas Z&M and Baylor at this point.
ESPN's bracket today, same as earlier this week, a #2 in the west bracket.

I just wonder if being a 2 is a negative for X. 2 or 3, really not that much difference, perhaps as a three we'd get better treatment when going to the 3rd round?

[X-band '01]

If getting a 3 means going to Dayton and playing either Notre Dame or DePaul, I'd be fine with it. Otherwise, I'd just take the 2 seed and the easier road to the Sweet 16 that it offers.