March Madness 2023: Men's Bracketology and NET Rankings Before Selection Sunday
Selection Sunday is right around the corner as championship tournaments begin to wind down. The field of 68 is starting to crystalize with each and every result—surprising or not—with teams playing themselves in or out of the big dance.
A few of the bigger conferences will be wrapping up their tournaments Saturday and Sunday, and with each of the winners earning automatic qualification to March Madness, the result of those tournaments will be profound.
College basketball experts, like ESPN's Joe Lunardi, have stayed locked in throughout the entirety of the season and have kept an especially close eye on championship week, Lunardi has been updating his bracketology with each passing day.
The ever-important NCAA NET Rankings—which replaced the RPI Index in recent seasons—is also a good source to keep an eye on in order to get a sense of what the selection committee may be thinking before the field of 68 is unveiled.
There will be plenty more twists, turns and incredible basketball to be played before the sun sets on championship week.
But, for now, here are some bracket and tournament storylines leading up to Selection Sunday.
Make your picks: Play the NCAA March Madness Men's Bracket Challenge and Tournament Run.
Jayhawks for Top Seed?
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In a college basketball season in which there hasn't been a clear front-runner or much consensus, it isn't a surprise that multiple teams are up for the top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament as they head into the final couple days of championship week.
Alabama, Houston and Kansas have perhaps gotten the most buzz to get the honor, but as championship week starts to come to a close, there's starting to be a bit of a consensus.
Lunardi and The Athletic's Brian Bennett both believe that the Kansas Jayhawks have done enough to prove themselves as the best team in college basketball so far this season.
The program is going through a bit of a difficult spell at the moment despite its success on the court. Kansas' Hall of Fame coach Bill Self is set to miss the rest of the Big 12 tournament after undergoing what was called a standard medical procedure in a school statement.
It's unclear what his status for the NCAA Tournament will be.
Self's team has continued its dominance on the court, however. The Jayhawks have cruised to the tournament final with pair of blowout wins over West Virginia and Iowa State, respectively.
But the main reason that Lunardi, Bennett and other experts see Kansas as the top seed is because of how good the team has been when it faces off against some of the best competition in the country.
The Jayhawks have 16 Quad 1 wins, shattering the previous record of 13 set by Michigan State in 2019. They also lead the nation with seven Quad 1A wins, games against the best of the best.
They'll get an opportunity to add another in the Big 12 championship game.
Has Clemson Done Enough?
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Clemson has been a bubble team for a while now, a squad just on the outskirts of the top three teams in the ACC. And, for some reason, as of Friday Night, Lunardi still had the Tigers as one of his first four out.
Clemson is not going down without a fight, however. It fought its way to the ACC Tournament semifinals and is looking like a team that may be riding some late-season magic.
The Tigers had won five of their seven games leading up to the semifinals, including a dominant performance in the quarterfinals against N.C. State, coming out with 80-54 victory.
It's hard to tell at this point whether Clemson's run is enough to book a ticket to the big dance, especially with a 76-56 loss to Virginia in the semis. But it has shown itself as an extremely dangerous team.
The team has four players scoring in double-digits, including forward Hunter Tyson and center PJ Hall, who are both scoring 15.5 points per game and knocking down over 41 percent of their three-point shots.
An appearance in the championship game may have been enough to seal the Tigers' fate, but without it, as good as they have been, it looks like there's still a chance that one of the ACC's best teams misses out.
North Carolina's Fate Likely Sealed
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Staying in the ACC, North Carolina needed a miracle run through the conference tournament in order to have a shot at making it into March Madness.
There were no miracles for the Tar Heels, who lost to Virginia in the quarterfinals Thursday, closing what was a difficult and disappointing season in Chapel Hill, to say the least.
UNC came into this year as the preseason No. 1 team and is now set to miss the NCAA Tournament for the first time in over a decade. The last time was in 2010 when the team went 21-17 and 5-11 in conference play.
Once the Tar Heels lost to Duke at the Dean Smith Center in its regular-season finale, it was always going to be an uphill climb, and the nine-point loss to the Cavaliers likely sealed their fate.
They went 11-9 in conference play and had some inexplicable losses to some of the lesser-talented teams in the conference, such as Pitt, N.C. State and Wake Forest.
Lunardi currently has them on the edge of the bubble as one of his next four out. Some freak things would have to happen in order to make room for UNC.
Now, a team with talents such as Armando Bacot and Caleb Love won't be participating on the college game's biggest stage, which is truly one of the more shocking storylines of the season.
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