2024 Men's NCAA Tournament Bracket: Latest Projection of the Field of 68
One month into the 2023-24 men's college basketball season, and our updated projected No. 1 seeds for the 2024 NCAA tournament are Arizona, Houston, Kansas and Purdue.
Beyond that, there were many significant changes from our previous projection in light of all that went down in the ACC/SEC Challenge, the Big 12/Big East Battle, some early conference showdowns and a few key rivalry games in the past seven days.
One other big development this week: The annual debut of the NET rankings. That initial batch of the primary sorting metric the selection committee uses to select and seed the field was released Monday morning.
However, early-season NET rankings are always a bit ridiculous, so we're not putting much stock in that data point just yet. For now, we're still primarily relying on other predictive metrics such as KenPom.
At some point in the next couple of weeks, though, we'll start paying more mind to NET rankings, Quad-based records and result-dependent metrics such as KPI and Strength of Record.
With all that out of the way, let's start with the full bracket before some brief commentary on the current state of the bubble and a full conference-by-conference rundown, highlighting some of the biggest changes from one week ago.
The Projected Bracket
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East Region (Boston)
Indianapolis, IN
No. 1 Purdue vs. No. 16 Lipscomb
No. 8 Iowa State vs. No. 9 Ole Miss
Pittsburgh, PA
No. 4 TCU vs. No. 13 UNC-Greensboro
No. 5 Kentucky vs. No. 12 Dayton
Salt Lake City, UT
No. 3 BYU vs. No. 14 Weber State
No. 6 Illinois vs. No. 11 Arkansas
Brooklyn, NY
No. 2 Connecticut vs. No. 15 Winthrop
No. 7 Auburn vs. No. 10 James Madison
Midwest Region (Detroit)
Omaha, NE
No. 1 Kansas vs. No. 16 Morehead State/Norfolk State
No. 8 Texas A&M vs. No. 9 Wisconsin
Brooklyn, NY
No. 4 Oklahoma vs. No. 13 Hofstra
No. 5 San Diego State vs. No. 12 Nebraska/USC
Charlotte, NC
No. 3 North Carolina vs. No. 14 Colgate
No. 6 Ohio State vs. No. 11 South Carolina
Indianapolis, IN
No. 2 Marquette vs. No. 15 Wright State
No. 7 UCLA vs. No. 10 Northwestern
South Region (Dallas)
Memphis, TN
No. 1 Houston vs. No. 16 Jackson State/Sacred Heart
No. 8 Michigan State vs. No. 9 Villanova
Omaha, NE
No. 4 Colorado State vs. No. 13 Grand Canyon
No. 5 Virginia vs. No. 12 Liberty
Pittsburgh, PA
No. 3 Creighton vs. No. 14 Kent State
No. 6 Duke vs. No. 11 New Mexico/Colorado
Spokane, WA
No. 2 Gonzaga vs. No. 15 McNeese State
No. 7 Clemson vs. No. 10 Princeton
West Region (Los Angeles)
Salt Lake City, UT
No. 1 Arizona vs. No. 16 Iona
No. 8 Nevada vs. No. 9 Mississippi State
Spokane, WA
No. 4 Texas vs. No. 13 UC Irvine
No. 5 Alabama vs. No. 12 Indiana State
Charlotte, NC
No. 3 Florida Atlantic vs. No. 14 Vermont
No. 6 Tennessee vs. No. 11 Cincinnati
Memphis, TN
No. 2 Baylor vs. No. 15 South Dakota State
No. 7 Miami vs. No. 10 Providence
10 Words on Each of the 10 'Bubbliest' Teams
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Fifth-to-Last In: Arkansas Razorbacks (6-3)—Massive home win over Duke, but resume still needs work.
Fourth-to-Last In: New Mexico Lobos (7-1)—Already thriving and has yet to play at full strength.
Third-to-Last In: Colorado Buffaloes (6-2)—Losing rivalry game at CSU leaves Buffaloes straddling cut line.
Second-to-Last In: USC Trojans (5-3)—Can Bronny James save what has been an erratic team?
Last Team In: Nebraska Cornhuskers (7-1)—Got pummeled by Creighton but lives to see another day.
****Cut Line****
First Team Out: Oregon Ducks (5-2)—Dramatic overtime victory over Michigan keeps Ducks in the mix.
Second Team Out: Memphis Tigers (5-2)—Three huge games coming up in the next two weeks.
Third Team Out: Texas Tech Red Raiders (5-2)—Doing some soul searching after allowing 103 points to Butler.
Fourth Team Out: Utah Utes (5-2)—Pac-12's fourth bubble team plays massive game against BYU Saturday.
Fifth Team Out: Iowa Hawkeyes (5-3)—Potent offense, per usual, but blowing too many early chances.
ACC Summary
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5 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 10. North Carolina, 17. Virginia, 22. Duke, 25. Miami, 26. Clemson
Also Considered: Pittsburgh, NC State
Biggest Change: Duke takes a nosedive
You really couldn't ask for a much worse week for the Duke Blue Devils.
After Arkansas' win over Duke in an ear-splittingly loud Bud Walton Arena, Razorbacks head coach Eric Musselman said: "We weren't gonna guard (Mark) Mitchell. They had to take out one of their best offensive rebounders." Pretty serious red flag there for the Blue Devils' starting power forward.
Jon Scheyer responded by keeping Mitchell on the bench at the start of the next game against Georgia Tech, but they lost Tyrese Proctor to a lower-leg injury 75 seconds into that one and had to rely pretty heavily on Mitchell throughout the game and lost again to an inferior foe—in part because of a soft technical foul Mitchell picked up for taunting after a late dunk.
Now we all wait to find out the extent of Proctor's injury—he was on crutches after the game—while we begin to seriously question a tournament resume that consists of one neutral win over Michigan State and little else.
I'm not going to say the sky is falling in Durham, but 5-3 (or worse) through eight games is extremely unfamiliar territory for Duke fans. It's a fate that has befallen the Blue Devils just once in the past four decades, when they went 13-11 and missed the 2021 NCAA tournament.
The game at Madison Square Garden against Baylor in two weeks is starting to loom large, as it's not looking like there are going to be a ton of opportunities for quality wins in ACC play this year.
Big 12 Summary
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9 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 2. Houston, 3. Kansas, 6. Baylor, 11. BYU, 14. TCU, 15. Texas, 16. Oklahoma, 32. Iowa State, 41. Cincinnati
Also Considered: Texas Tech, Kansas State
Biggest Change: Kansas gets back on track
In what almost turned into the most ridiculous trap-game loss in college basketball history, Kansas came home from the loaded Maui Invitational, set its sights on the huge Friday night showdown with Connecticut and glanced right past little ol' Eastern Illinois.
Can you blame the Jayhawks, though? The Panthers entered that night at Phog Allen with just one D1 win, by two points on a neutral court against a Coppin State team that even Louisville managed to beat by 20. But they hung right with Kansas for 35 minutes, trailing by just one with five minutes remaining before letting the Jayhawks win by eight.
They bounced back, though, and came out on fire against the reigning champions, leading Connecticut by double digits for most of the first half. The Huskies did eventually claw back to take the lead, but the Jayhawks righted the ship with four triples in the span of six possessions, coupled with tight defense on the other end.
Tristen Newton's 31 points and late-in-the-shot-clock heroics weren't enough to overcome yet another great night from KU's trio of Kevin McCullar Jr., KJ Adams Jr. and Hunter Dickinson.
Kansas had slipped to our No. 6 overall seed after the loss to Marquette in the Maui semis, but neutral wins over Kentucky and Tennessee to go along with this home win over Connecticut are too impressive to ignore.
The Jayhawks climb back up to the No. 1 seed line and could be gearing up to go on a tear. Per KenPom, they have at least a 70 percent chance of victory in each of their next 11 games before a trip to Iowa State in late January.
Big East Summary
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5 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 5. Connecticut, 7. Marquette, 9. Creighton, 34. Villanova, 37. Providence
Also Considered: Butler, St. John's
Biggest Change: Villanova takes sixth place in the Big 5 Classic
Villanova went 3-0 in the Battle 4 Atlantis against Texas Tech, North Carolina and Memphis and went 0-3 in the Big 5 Classic against Penn, Saint Joseph's and Drexel.
Folks, welcome to the most befuddling resume of the 2023-24 season.
After that sensational Feast Week showing, the Wildcats skyrocketed up to a No. 3 seed in our last projection of the tournament field. But back-to-back embarrassing losses in Philadelphia leave so many more questions than answers in Kyle Neptune's second season on the job.
There is one simple explanation for this chaos, though, and it is how aggressively they are steering into the randomness of three-point shooting. Not only have 50.5 percent of Villanova's field-goal attempts come from behind the arc, but opponents are also taking 46.0 percent of their shots from downtown.
Yes, Villanova shooting a ton of threes is nothing new. It consistently did so over the final nine seasons under Jay Wright. But the Wright-led Wildcats were much better about both A) making their threes and B) defending their opponents' perimeter shots.
In the Battle 4 Atlantis, they more or less broke even from the perimeter, shooting 33.3 percent and allowing 35.3 percent, and Eric Dixon carried them from there. But in their three losses, the Wildcats shot 24-for-97 (24.7 percent) while allowing 29-for-60 (48.3 percent) from distance, and they simply couldn't overcome that massive gap.
Maybe it was just three rough games that will prove to be the exception to the rule as the season progresses. Goodness knows that even during their national championship years, the Wildcats occasionally had nights where they couldn't buy a triple or a stop at the other end. But three games that bad in the first month of the season is not promising.
Big Ten Summary
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7 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 4. Purdue, 23. Ohio State, 24. Illinois, 31. Michigan State, 33. Wisconsin, 38. Northwestern, 47. Nebraska
Also Considered: Iowa, Michigan, Rutgers, Indiana
Biggest Change: Greetings, Northwestern
Northwestern had spent the previous two weeks in our "Also Considered" bucket—not quite good enough for a mention among the First Five Out but good enough that we didn't immediately toss them aside on our first pass through the 362-team list of candidates.
However, beating what was previously our No. 1 overall seed is a mighty fine way to leap straight from "Also Considered" to "somewhat comfortably in the field."
It was an extremely physical affair Friday night, featuring 56 fouls called and about 294 others that weren't.
But there was nothing fluky about Northwestern upsetting AP No. 1 Purdue for a second consecutive season.
Zach Edey got his (35 points, 14 rebounds, three blocks) as Purdue finished plus-25 on the glass, but the veteran backcourt trio of Boo Buie, Ty Berry and Ryan Langborg decimated Purdue's guards.
Statistically, Fletcher Loyer had the best night of Purdue's three guards, but only because the box score doesn't show how often the Wildcats intentionally got Loyer switched onto Buie so he could embarrass the sophomore Boilermaker in isolation.
The Wildcats finished the night with 22 assists against just three turnovers, more than making up for Purdue's clear advantage on the boards.
And after that clinic on how to counteract an unstoppable 7'4" force of nature, Northwestern is sitting at 6-1 with the lone blemish coming on a neutral floor against Mississippi State. (Which does look a little less forgivable after the Bulldogs lost at home to Southern on Sunday. Yikes.)
We'll find out in January just how legitimate the Wildcats are, as three of their next four Big Ten games come against Illinois, Michigan State and Wisconsin. But they look legit right now.
Pac-12 Summary
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4 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 1. Arizona, 28. UCLA, 45. Colorado, 46. USC
Also Considered: Oregon, Utah, Washington State
Biggest Change: Arizona climbs to No. 1 overall
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
To be clear, Arizona appears to be very, very good, but it did need some help to move up to our No. 1 overall seed.
While the Wildcats had a light week consisting of a home game against Colgate (which they won by 27), the rest of the college basketball world crumbled around them, as AP No. 1 Purdue, No. 3 Marquette and No. 4 Connecticut each suffered road losses—two of the three to then-unranked foes.
Thus, Arizona moves indisputably to the top spot, almost by default.
The Big 12's Houston and Kansas are still solidly up there with the Wildcats, but the Cougars' top wins aren't quite as strong as Arizona's (at Duke; Michigan State on a neutral floor), and the Jayhawks already have a loss on their ledger. That leaves those two sort of a half-tier below the Wildcats on what is currently a top tier of three teams.
But, goodness gracious, Arizona is going to have to defend its top spot throughout December.
The Wildcats' four remaining nonconference games are against Wisconsin, Purdue, Alabama and Florida Atlantic, each of which ranks comfortably in the KenPom top 20 at the moment. None of the four are true road games for Arizona, but it only gets the Badgers at the McKale Center.
Lots of upcoming neutral-site gems for a team that didn't partake in an MTE tournament during Feast Week.
SEC Summary
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9 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 18. Kentucky, 19. Alabama, 21. Tennessee, 27. Auburn, 29. Texas A&M, 35. Ole Miss, 36. Mississippi State, 42. South Carolina, 43. Arkansas
Also Considered: Florida
Biggest Change: So, Ole Miss might be for real
Last week, we put the Rebels as our final at-large team in the field, throwing them a bone for sitting at 5-0, even though none of the five wins were impressive from either a scoring-margin or a quality-of-opponent perspective.
Honestly, if Virginia Tech hadn't gotten trounced by Florida Atlantic two Sundays ago, the Hokies would have been in and the Rebels would have been out.
However, after a 20-point victory over NC State in the ACC-SEC Challenge and a subsequent come-from-behind victory over Memphis, Ole Miss is starting to put together a solid little tournament resume.
They were both home games, and neither of those teams is exactly a lock to dance. They'll probably both be Quad 2 wins by the end of the year. But, 7-0 with a pair of Quad 2 wins is a whole lot better than 5-0 with nothing worth bragging about.
Between those two wins, the Rebels racked up 19 blocks and 13 steals, and they're already starting to look like some of Chris Beard's defensively elite teams from years past.
Save for a road game against UCF next Sunday, there's not much left on this nonconference schedule. They may well carry a 13-0 record into the new year. But let's see how that SEC opener at Tennessee goes before we get too carried away with Ole Miss' projected seeding.
Frequent Multi-Bid Mid-Majors Summary
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7 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 8. Gonzaga, 12. Florida Atlantic, 13. Colorado State, 20. San Diego State, 30. Nevada, 44. New Mexico, 48. Dayton
Also Considered: Memphis
Biggest Change: Time to put some respect back on FAU's name
After an embarrassing home loss to Bryant on Nov. 18, Florida Atlantic plummeted down the projected seed list.
The Owls opened the season at No. 10 in the AP poll, but the predictive metrics had them looking more like a No. 10 seed. We sided with the AP poll on that one, putting them at No. 13 overall in our preseason bracket. But after that dreadful defeat, they fell four seed lines and perhaps could/should have dropped even farther.
That loss was clearly the wake-up call FAU needed, though, as it has since been downright unstoppable on offense, averaging 88.8 points while stockpiling consecutive solid wins over Butler, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, Liberty and Charleston.
The Owls jump all the way up to the projected No. 3 seed line in advance of the first of their two biggest tests of the season: vs. Illinois Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. (The other is against Arizona in Las Vegas on Dec. 23.)
At this point, they've already shown they definitely belong in the NCAA tournament and have the potential to make another Final Four run. But a win over the Illini would be huge for the purposes of legitimizing this early seed projection.
One-Bid Leagues Summary
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22 Teams in the Projected Field (by Overall Seed): 39. James Madison, 40. Princeton, 49. Liberty, 50. Indiana State, 51. UC Irvine, 52. Grand Canyon, 53. Hofstra, 54. UNC Greensboro, 55. Kent State, 56. Vermont, 57. Colgate, 58. Weber State, 59. Wright State, 60. South Dakota State, 61. McNeese State, 62. Winthrop, 63. Lipscomb, 64. Iona, 65. Morehead State, 66. Norfolk State, 67. Jackson State, 68. Sacred Heart
Biggest Change: McNeese State is surging
Really, the most noteworthy change here is that we've elevated both James Madison and Princeton ahead of the final few at-larges and up to the No. 10 seed line. And the longer they remain undefeated, the higher they will continue to climb.
But let's dig a little deeper down the seed list to give a shoutout to McNeese State.
After 11 consecutive losing seasons and finishing last year at No. 335 in the KenPom rankings, the Cowboys took a gamble on former LSU head coach Will Wade.
It was a risk because of the then-TBD infractions headed Wade's way. McNeese State announced shortly after the hire that it was suspending him for the first five games of the season.
A few months later, the NCAA's Independent Accountability Resolution Process gave the former LSU coach a 10-game suspension and a two-year show-cause penalty, which means he hasn't been allowed on the bench for a game this season.
Nevertheless, the 41-year-old's impact from afar has been undeniable, as McNeese State has ascended all the way to No. 92 in the KenPom rankings, thanks to an 11-point season-opening win at VCU and a 21-point road victory over UAB last Tuesday.
The Cowboys are 7-2 and play the final game of Wade's 10-game suspension Tuesday against Mississippi University for Women. But a noteworthy test will come later this month (Dec. 29) at Michigan.
Hard to imagine there's a scenario in which McNeese State climbs all the way into the at-large conversation. But if it can close out nonconference play with home wins over Southern Miss and Louisiana before a road win over Michigan, we'll be ready to have that conversation.
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