Men’s NCAA Bracket 2024: Who Got Screwed in the NCAA Bracket?

At long last, we have a bracket for the 2024 men’s NCAA tournament. The action will get underway with a pair of First Four games in Dayton on Tuesday.

And once the games begin, we’ll turn all of our focus to the action on the court.

Promise.

For now, though, we’ve got some serious gripes with the selection committee’s decisions.

There were teams left out who were more deserving than several of the No. 10 seeds.

There were teams whose seed lines defied all logic.

And, of course, there are some serious geographical issues.

For what it’s worth, my final bracket did pretty well. If my quick calculations are correct, I tallied a Bracket Matrix score of 349, which is right around my average for the past five years—though we’ll see where it ranks this year.

Still, I’ve got some bones to pick.

First things first, I had this correct.

Based on all of the data and the criteria that we use in trying to project what the selection committee will do, it wasn’t exactly a pretty picture for any of St. John’s, Seton Hall or Providence.

The Red Storm had a 58.5 KPI/SOR average, which would have been the worst in the NET era to receive an at-large bid.

Providence had a 10-13 record against Quads 1-3, which again would have been a first in the NET era. We’ve not seen a team get an at-large bid at even two games below .500 against that group, let alone three games below .500.

And Seton Hall just didn’t have great metrics. The Pirates entered Selection Sunday outside the top 60 in NET, KPI, KenPom and BPI. That’s a lot of computers saying you don’t deserve an at-large bid.

Individually, in a vacuum, etc., I can see why they were left out.

But the Big East got three teams in?

Are you freaking kidding me??

THREE?!?

Did y’all watch all of the incredible Big East games this season (not involving Georgetown or DePaul, of course)?

Are we intentionally trying to push the agenda to expand the field here?

Even in addition to the three that just missed the cut, Villanova, Butler and Xavier were solid teams. It was a war on a nightly basis, and for Seton Hall to go 13-7 in Big East play and not be deemed one of the 36 best “wild cards” is preposterous.

Granted, the Pirates were at least the second team out. So, if NC State and Oregon hadn’t pulled off some bid thievery—or even if New Mexico had lost the Mountain West championship against San Diego State—they would have gotten in. For those couple of teams who just missed the cut, it was a cruel Championship Week.

But St. John’s wasn’t even among the First Four Out?

Wow.

And here I was told the Johnnies were a 100 percent lock after beating Seton Hall in the quarters. (Never call anyone close to the bubble a lock. It rarely ends well.)

Again, I had this one right. In fact, I exactly nailed Indiana State as the Third Team Out.

But I’m no happier about it than I am about the three-bid Big East.

Indiana State was a very good team. With Robbie Avila barely able to play because of immediate foul trouble, the Sycamores almost messed around and won at Michigan State. The final margin was MSU by 12, but ISU led by five midway through the second half.

With Avila out entirely for the opening week game at Alabama, the Trees still put up a pretty good fight. Again, the final margin doesn’t do it justice. That was a dead heat between two solid teams for the first 15 minutes, they kept it competitive for another 15 and then the Tide just pulled away late for a 22-point victory.

They swept a good Bradley team.

They beat Drake—who, to the surprise of some, got a No. 10 seed instead of a No. 11, so clearly the committee valued the Bulldogs.

Early in the week, selection committee chair Charles McClelland made it a point to say they were aware that the Sycamores were without a key starter (Jayson Kent) for the loss to Southern Illinois.

But the real kicker is Indiana State finished top 45 in every metric, and was even 29th in the NET—the somewhat controversial sorting tool that the NCAA spent a lot of time and money putting together as a replacement for RPI.

It was a close call, don’t get me wrong. And if there hadn’t been five bid thieves, the Sycamores would’ve made the cut.

What really got screwed by not including Indiana State, though, is the viewing audience.

We could’ve had cult hero Avila, Isaiah Swope and an incredibly potent offense playing in Dayton in the First Four.

Instead, we’ll be subjected to watching Virginia—who in addition to getting absolutely blown out in nine of its 10 losses and just generally playing like garbage away from home, really should have been left out of the field for wetting its pants at the end of the ACC semifinal and allowing NC State’s run to continue.

It is awesome that six Mountain West teams made the tournament. We talked about the six-bid MWC dream all season, and by golly, they did it.

But goodness gracious was the seeding brutal.

When San Diego State appeared at No. 14 in the Top 16 Reveal last month, we all kind of took that as a, “Well, alright then, I guess this committee really does respect the Mountain West.”

Turns out, though, they only like the Aztecs, who only fell four spots to No. 18 overall (a No. 5 seed) despite going just 4-4 overall since the reveal.

Utah State won the MWC regular-season title and got a No. 8 seed.

New Mexico won the MWC tournament and got a No. 11 seed, suggesting the Lobos would have missed the tournament had they not won those four games in four days. (And Evan Washburn asking Jaelen House how it feels to be a “lock” to dance immediately after the second of those four wins could have been an awful jinx.)

And Boise State, Colorado State and Nevada all landed among the last five at-larges, along with Virginia and Colorado.

Nevada was the biggest WTF of them all. In all the years I’ve been doing this, I don’t think I have ever missed a team by four seed lines, but I had the Wolf Pack at No. 24 overall (bottom No. 6) and they landed at No. 37 (top No. 10).

Did the selection committee penalize the Mountain West for struggling so often in previous years?

Has ESPN’s BPI—which we figured out earlier in the season includes an altitude factor and seems to harshly penalize the Mountain West, in particular—become a more important metric in the eyes of the committee? (And if so, what can we do to change that immediately?)

Again, it’s awesome that we got a six-bid MWC. But four of the six were egregiously under-seeded.

I had 67 of the 68 teams correct.

Oklahoma (First Team Out) was the one I missed, with Virginia being the team that made the cut instead of the Sooners.

Look, I definitely didn’t feel great about having Oklahoma in for my final projection. The Sooners were my third-to-last team in when all the dust settled, and it was tempting to scrub them all the way out of the field at various points throughout the week.

But every time, it came back to one simple thing: The resume was squeaky clean.

Top 50 in all the metrics? Yep.

No terrible losses? Heck yeah. Oklahoma didn’t even suffer a Quad 2 loss, let alone one in Quad 3 or Quad 4.

At least a couple of impressive wins? The Sooners beat both Iowa State and BYU at home, swept Cincinnati, won at Kansas State and beat all of Providence, Iowa, USC and Arkansas in nonconference play. None of those four nonconference wins came against teams who made the Dance, but all four were supposed to be good, and that is a nice quartet of wins when looked at collectively.

Could they have done more? Sure. Going 4-12 against Quad 1 isn’t exactly great.

But here’s why this was a serious screw job.

If the selection committee has a problem with a team only winning 25 percent of its Quad 1 opportunities, then why the hell is Michigan State (3-9 vs. Q1) a No. 9 seed with the same Q1 winning percentage and five Quad 2 losses, to boot?

I understand Michigan State has better predictive metrics, but is that seriously all it is? Suffering 14 losses is A-OK as long as KenPom thinks you’re a top-20 team?

At first blush, saying Gonzaga got screwed might seem a bit weird, as the Zags got a No. 5 seed when most had them projected as a low six or a high seven.

But allow me to explain.

First of all, Gonzaga should have been a No. 6 seed. That’s not me projecting. It’s literally based on the committee’s overall seed list. The Zags were No. 21 overall, but they got bumped up to a No. 5 seed because the committee couldn’t figure out how to put its No. 17 overall seed BYU on the No. 5 seed line while abiding by the Cougars’ “Will not play on Sundays for religious reasons” restraint.

(Which, by the way, would have been so freaking easy. Just put the Kansas pod in Spokane and the Alabama pod in Salt Lake City. Problem solved. Now BYU can be a No. 5 seed in the West.)

So that’s how Gonzaga landed at a No. 5 seed.

But the apparent penalty for being given that boost is A) They’re playing in Salt Lake City instead of in Spokane and B) They got an absolutely brutal first-round draw in McNeese State.

The SLC/Spokane thing was absolutely an intentional thing the committee did. No. 18 overall seed San Diego State—with a campus more than 400 miles closer to Salt Lake City than Spokane—should have gone to SLC. But rather than reward the Zags with what is basically a home game for the first weekend, the committee gave both SDSU and Gonzaga the shaft there.

Heck, even at that point, there was still a Spokane pod available, but they gave the second one to Saint Mary’s instead.

And the McNeese part. Woof. That’s a team that does a great job of defending the paint and forcing turnovers while daring you to shoot threes, while Gonzaga does the vast majority of its damage from two-point range. Just a nightmare draw. And if the Zags do win that one, they’re likely running into Kansas in the second round, who was arguably under-seeded as a No. 4.

Switch Gonzaga with San Diego State and I absolutely love the Zags to reach the Sweet 16.

As is? Not so much.

The NCAA doesn’t like when we do it, but every single year we try to tell you guys that the championship games on Sunday just do not matter for seeding.

Heck, this year, a lot of the Saturday games seemed to not matter. Iowa State still landing at No. 8 overall after annihilating Houston? FAU somehow still getting a No. 8 seed after losing to Temple? We already talked about the Mountain West, but New Mexico still getting seeded below the play-in games after that tournament run?

Sheesh.

But yeah, the Sunday games definitely don’t matter, and we saw that once again this year with both Illinois and Auburn winning their conference titles and still both landing behind Kentucky and its 8-8 record vs. Q1/Q2.

Heck, Auburn won a game on Sunday in which an opponent broke his damn leg playing in a game that we all knew wasn’t going to matter.

If EVER there was a time for the selection committee to try to prove that it cares about the Sunday games, this was the one.

And it still didn’t. Auburn landed at No. 15 overall, which we all knew was going to mean getting stuck in a Spokane pod.

On top of that, the Tigers drew arguably the best No. 13 seed in Yale and will likely need to face San Diego State in the Western Time Zone, just for the right to get annihilated by the heavy favorite to win it all.

The shame of the matter is that once it got down to No. 15 and No. 16 with both Spokane pods remaining, the bracketing principles do say that Auburn should have gone to the East Region as opposed to the West Region, which is how it went down. But common sense would have told you that Auburn would’ve been just fine playing its Sweet 16 game in Los Angeles against North Carolina instead of in Boston against UConn.