Want Winthrop to get highest seed possible in NCAAs? Here’s who to root against
Instead of sizing up the best teams in the country, fans interested in seeing the Winthrop Eagles advance past the first round of the NCAA tournament should focus their attention on teams the Eagles won’t meet at all.
Say, for instance, Eastern Washington of the Big Sky Conference.
According to BracketMatrix.com, a website that compiles over 120 brackets made by professional “bracketologists” (including ESPN’s Joe Lunardi), Winthrop’s cumulative average seed is 15.8.
Broken down, that means that 100 sites put Winthrop as 16 seeds — including ESPN, CBS, The Athletic, Fox College Hoops and Yahoo! Sports. Twenty-two sites rank them as 15 seeds. And two, BracketDoctor and GMoneySports, rank them as 14 seeds.
(To be clear, the company’s notoriety doesn’t necessarily correlate with the company bracket’s accuracy. In fact, per the website’s rankings of each bracketologist, Yahoo! Sports’ Brad Evans is 20th out of 133 entities that have submitted brackets over the last five years. ESPN’s Lunardi ranks 55th.)
The biggest takeaway from this data?
Winthrop is considered a relatively mobile 16-seed in these early projections, likely buoyed by the team’s nonconference win against nationally-ranked Saint Mary’s in the team’s first road trip of the season.
Winthrop’s 15.8 ranking is the second-best cumulative ranking of the teams projected to be No. 16 seeds, behind the Horizon League’s Northern Kentucky. This means that if a team projected to be a 14 or 15 seed loses in its respective conference tournament, Winthrop will be among the first of the 16 seeds considered to move up.
And a higher seed, of course, would enable the Eagles to face a less-daunting first-round opponent.
Who should Winthrop fans cheer for (or against)?
If the Eagles are to rise from their projected 16-seed station, teams seeded above the Eagles from one-bid conferences — or who otherwise need to win their conference tournaments in order to make the tournament — need to lose in their conference tournaments.
Here are a few of them:
Arkansas-Little Rock of the Sun Belt Conference (15.35 cumulative average seed, per Bracket Matrix.)
North Dakota State of the Summit Conference (15.22)
Eastern Washington of the Big Sky Conference (15.16)
UC Irvine of the Big West Conference (14.91)
Hofstra of the Colonial Athletic Association (14.36)
Colgate of the Patriot League (14.32)
As of Tuesday afternoon, the above teams had not obtained their conference’s sole NCAA tournament bid.
That said, two conferences — the CAA and Summit — will crown their conference champion on Tuesday night.
The Patriot League will have its conference tournament winner on Wednesday. The Big Sky and Big West will hand out their automatic bids on Thursday. And the Sun Belt will lock in its NCAA tournament representative on Friday.
Winthrop projection conclusion
In short, Winthrop is overwhelmingly picked to be a 16 seed in the 2020 NCAA tournament, and the Eagles will likely have to travel across the country to face one of the nation’s blue blood programs.
But if other one-bid conference tournaments don’t go as planned? Things could change.
When is the NCAA selection show?
Winthrop learns its postseason destination this weekend on Selection Sunday. The NCAA selection show begins at 6 p.m. Sunday and is broadcast on CBS.
This story was originally published March 10, 2020 at 4:16 PM.
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