The Bracket Bouncer: Who Won’t Get an NCAA At-Large

Good afternoon, Big Blue Nation!

Today is the first edition of The Bracket Bouncer: The machine that takes college basketball teams and declares their bubbles popped. Any team listed here will, unless the machine is faulty, win their conference tournament to go dancing in March. We will go through five conferences a week until we’ve hit them all, then update regularly.

Let’s get started.

America East: Everyone

Vermont’s not a world-beater this year so this conference is a one-bidder this time around.

AAC: Cincinnati, Temple, South Florida, UCF, Tulane

Rough start for the Bearcats, who usually are quite good. The road to the NCAAs for these teams runs through Houston.

ACC: Georgia Tech, Miami, Notre Dame, Boston College

Too many losses too early for most of these teams, especially Boston College who is only 2-6. These teams will struggle as conference play begins.

A-Sun: Everyone but Liberty

I don’t know enough about Liberty and their schedule to eliminate them yet, but their odds of making an at-large are not good.

A-10: Everyone but Richmond, VCU, and Saint Louis.

Richmond is doing everything right in the early going and is rolling towards an at-large. VCU and Saint Louis have had a nice starts as well. Everyone else? Pretty awful, including Dayton, who went 29-2 last year with a superteam.

Eliminated teams: 28

That’s it for this week! Next time we’ll do five more conferences. Stay tuned especially for when we get to the SEC and get to look at Kentucky’s fate. Until next time!