Friday saw some shuffling all over the bracket as the meat of the major conference tournaments took place. In particular, we saw Auburn fall off of the top line of the bracket following a loss to Texas A&M. Kentucky took the Tigers' place as the fourth overall No. 1.
Auburn still has a shot to backdoor its way to the top line of the bracket again, but I would not bet on it.
The Tigers are one of six teams in contention for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, but one team that pretty much everyone assumes is part of that group is not.
Here are the teams in contention for earning a spot on the top line and who the three teams still alive in their respective conference tournaments are playing Saturday:
- Gonzaga
- Arizona (vs. UCLA in Pac-12 Tournament final)
- Baylor
- Kentucky (vs. Tennessee in SEC Tournament semifinal)
- Kansas (vs. Texas Tech in Big 12 Tournament final)
- Auburn
Of course, missing from that list is Duke.
The Blue Devils are suffering from the weakness of the rest of their league. The ACC is not giving Duke the chances they need to resume build to compete with the potential No. 1 seeds. The Blue Devils have just five Quad 1 wins, which include Gonzaga and Kentucky, so that's great, but only Arizona has a few as five wins among the potential No. 1s and the Wildcats only have three losses. Every other team in contention for a top spot in the bracket has at least eight Quad 1 wins.
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The quality of Duke's losses is a problem as well. As of this morning, Duke has as many Quad 2 losses (3) as the six No. 1 seed contenders combined and the Blue Devils also have a Quad 3 loss.
Of course, the committee could simply decide that they think Duke is one of the top four teams in spite of the evidence to the contrary. It is a subjective process after all, albeit guided by objective data.
Here is another odd fact about the ACC. Each of the 15 ACC teams have played more games against Quad 3 teams than every other team in the other major conferences except for six teams in the Pac-12 and Mississippi State. The Pac-12 also has a large gap between its top teams and everyone else.
As you might expect with the vast majority of teams that were either in the bracket or close to it, there was some seed shuffling all over the bracket. There figures to be less of that from here on out, although I will do some seed scrubbing before Sunday's bracket comes out.
