One week separates us from judgment day. The action in the conferences on the lower rungs of D-1 changes the shape of the 15s and 16s that serve as fodder for the high and mighty programs. It can also shrink the bubble, as we found with Wichita State’s MVC semifinal loss yesterday. It would be silly to exclude the Shockers from the field; they obviously won’t come in as high as the 6 that EBS still awards them, but they were a unanimous pick on Bracket Matrix until yesterday’s loss (and are still on 77 of 84 brackets listed).
How the EBS sets the bubble is interesting, and I hope to have some time to address its strength and liabilities during the week.
Cutting to the chase, though, the spreadsheet is where it always is, and the seed line will appear below the fold.
1s: Kansas, Virginia, Villanova, Oklahoma
2s: North Carolina, West Virginia, Miami, Oregon
3s: Michigan State, Kentucky, Xavier, Utah
4s: Maryland, Duke, Indiana, Purdue
5s: Iowa State, Arizona, California, Texas A&M
6s: Iowa, Wichita State, Texas, Baylor
7s: Wisconsin, Texas Tech, Seton Hall, Vanderbilt
8s: Saint Mary’s, Notre Dame, Valparaiso, Saint Joseph’s
9s: Dayton, VCU, Butler, Connecticut
10s: San Diego State, Cincinnati, USC, Tulsa
11s: Pittsburgh, Colorado, Gonzaga, Yale
12s: Oregon State, Princeton, Providence, Syracuse, Arkansas-Little Rock, South Dakota State
13s: Monmouth, Akron, Stephen F. Austin, Hofstra
14s: Stony Brook, Hawaii, Northern Iowa, Chattanooga
15s: UAB, New Mexico State, Winthrop, Weber State
16s: Lehigh, Wagner, North Florida, Texas Southern, Austin Peay
sportsmanteaux 
Where is South Carolina. If you’re going to leave them out at least address it in your discussion. Pretty sure they are in more brackets than Wichita state.
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Fair question! They were the third team out in this calculation, ranking 54th overall.
The Gamecocks’ KenPom and RPI rankings have both hovered in the mid-50s for the past couple weeks. The 20+ point losses to Alabama and Kentucky are responsible for most of the downward movement USC’s had in KenPom. Fortunately, they do have a neutral-site defeat of fellow bubble denizen Tulsa, plus a big road win at Texas A&M to bolster their resume.
Despite where EBS has had USC lately, I expect the Gamecocks will come in somewhere around the Bracket Matrix consensus of a 9-seed. (I run the EBS not as a devotee, but as someone interested in teasing out what objective factors influence the selection committee’s subjective decisions.)
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