KenPom Bracketology 2/11

Xavier has bounced back from that embarrassing home loss against Creighton to pick up a couple of much-needed wins. While the Selection Committee will likely ding X for their bad losses - and rightfully so - the KenPom rankings see that a few loose balls breaking the other way could have them at 20-5 and riding high. Xavier's position in this bracket is probably a couple of lines higher than it would be if the bracket was being filled out for real today, but it's still nice to see X out of the places that have you playing a top-10 team in the second round.

Here's what the s-curve looks like with all the newest data in hand:

The	KenPom s-curve			2/11
1	KENTUCKY	VIRGINIA	ARIZONA	GONZAGA
2	Duke	VILLANOVA	WISCONSIN	Utah
3	OKLAHOMA	Kansas	Louisville	North Carolina
4	Northern Iowa	WICHITA ST.	Ohio St.	Baylor
5	Oklahoma St.	Notre Dame	Butler	Iowa St.
6	SMU	Texas	Xavier	Georgetown
7	Michigan St.	VCU	West Virginia	Iowa
8	SAN DIEGO ST.	Stanford	Mississippi	Arkansas
9	Georgia	Florida	STEPHEN F. AUSTIN	Dayton
10	Texas A&M	Cincinnati	LSU	Maryland
11	BYU	St. John's	Davidson	Providence
12	Temple	Alabama	Minnesota	Arizona St.
12	GREEN BAY	BOWLING GREEN
13	OLD DOMINION	HARVARD	MURRAY ST.	GEORGIA ST.
14	WOFFORD	UC DAVIS	WILLIAM & MARY	IONA
15	SOUTH DAKOTA ST.	NEW MEXICO ST.	NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL	VERMONT
16	ST. FRANCIS NY	HIGH POINT	FLORIDA GULF COAST	EASTERN WASHINGTON
16	COLGATE	TEXAS SOUTHERN
First 4 out	Vanderbilt	Indiana	UCLA	Boise St.
Next 4 out	Richmond	Rhode Island	Purdue	Illinois

And here's how that plays out in the bracket:

Thanks to Seton Hall's free fall, it looks like the Big East's ceiling is six teams in the tournament, barring something unlikely happening at MSG. Good riddance to them; they play like a bunch of punks. The Big Ten also has six teams in and another three (Indiana, Purdue, Illinois) on the KenPom bubble. The SEC continues its dominance of the middle of the bracket, placing four of the eight teams they have in on that 8/9 line.

A couple of mid-majors are putting together interesting groups, as the AAC and Atlantic 10 each have three teams in. Temple was the last team to make the cut today, and the A10 has Richmond and URI knocking on the door. Selection Sunday is just over four weeks away; time is running out for teams to make an impression on the Committee.