Bracketology: Boise State boosts NCAA Tournament standing after big win over San Diego State

Welcome to March!

The month got off to a great start for a few teams, most notably Iowa, which pounded Indiana 90-68 on the road. The Hawkeyes shot 55.6% from the floor and 56.5% from beyond the arc. As for the Hoosiers, well, sometimes, it’s just the other team’s day.

Still, that only counts as one win for Iowa and one loss for Indiana. Neither team moved off their line in the bracket but got closer to doing so. Xavier is a little bit of a floor for the Hoosiers right now because of their head-to-head win on the road.

Boise State was the only team to move up in the bracket due to a win on Tuesday. The Broncos upset Mountain West leader San Diego State 66-60 and is now a 10-seed. USC, meanwhile, was displaced and dropped to an 11-seed.

Bracketology top seeds

Check out Palm’s latest bracket, full field of 68 and all the teams on the bubble on the Bracketology hub.

One team I am getting a lot of questions about is Charleston (27-3). Not only are the Cougars absent from my bracket, they’re not even on the bubble.  

There is only one reason why that can happen: the schedule is nowhere near good enough to merit consideration. As of Wednesday morning, the Cougars’ schedule ranks 337th out of 363 teams. They have only played three of their 30 games against Quad 1 and 2 opponents, and the only Quad 1 game was a 16-point loss at North Carolina while they have home wins over Kent State and Virginia Tech in Quad 2. They also have two Quad 3 losses among their 27 Quad 3 and 4 games.

There just isn’t anything here to talk about except a gaudy record. For historical context, since I started tracking data in 1994, the worst SOS ranking for an at-large cam came in that first season.  Coincidentally, that team was Charleston, which got into the tournament with a schedule ranked 229th. 

If Charleston loses during its conference tournament at any point, it will finish with the third-best winning percentage of any team left out of the field. No. 2 on that list was the 1996 Charleston team which finished 22-3. The team with the best record to be left out of the tournament is Utah State, which posted a 24-3 record in 2004 but missed the cut.