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Depending on how you look at things, there are around two to three at-large invitations up for grabs with a small pool of teams competing for those final positions. Yale took itself out of the mess with its win in the Ivy League championship today, but the crab bucket remains a crab bucket. Bracketologists -- individuals involved in a profession that requires the wearing of a laboratory coat for no particular reason -- have checked in with their final projections, efforts that may earn incineration treatment in just a few hours depending on wht the Selection Committee chooses to do.
Here how things look at the moment (click the names to go to the brackets):
FOY | STEVENS | "burnspbesq" | |
(1) | Syracuse | Syracuse | North Carolina |
Unseeded | Bryant | Bryant | Towson |
(8) | Cornell | Cornell | Ohio State |
Unseeded | Albany | Loyola | Duke |
(4) | North Carolina | Ohio State | Denver |
Unseeded | Towson | Lehigh | Yale |
(5) | Ohio State | Denver | Maryland |
Unseeded | Penn State | Duke | Albany |
(3) | Denver | North Carolina | Notre Dame |
Unseeded | Yale | Towson | Detroit |
(6) | Maryland | Maryland | Cornell |
Unseeded | Lehigh | Albany | Loyola |
(2) | Notre Dame | Notre Dame | Syracuse |
Unseeded | Detroit | Detroit | Bryant |
(7) | Duke | Penn State | Lehigh |
Unseeded | Loyola | Yale | Penn State |
Common last teams out (in no particular order): Bucknell, Pennsylvania, and Princeton. Common last teams in: Loyola, Duke, and Penn State. Those six teams are your focus for the evening in terms of "in-out" considerations.
As for seeding teams and pairing unseeded opponents with them, we'll see how this all shakes out. It looks like there are a few universal expectations -- Notre Dame and Syracuse to find its place at the top of the seeding hierarchy; North Carolina, Ohio State, Denver, and Maryland should have home games in the first round; Cornell and some combination of Penn State, Duke, Loyola, and Yale are in the conversation for a first round home game but are likely to draw a difficult opening weekend opponent (and there isn't a consensus on the opponents); and Syracuse and Notre Dame are getting Bryant and Detroit, respectively -- but this is where the Selection Committee has the greatest opportunity to do its own thing.