College Basketball: Early Auto-Bids Full Of Bracket Busting Potential
By Jacob Rude
Mar 7, 2015; Nashville, TN, USA; OVC tournament champions Belmont Bruins following the game against the Murray State Racers at Nashville Municipal Auditorium. Belmont won 88-87. Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-USA TODAY Sports
3. Belmont Bruins
Busting Bracketology – 14th seed, South Region
The perennial bracket busters likely won’t be busting brackets this year, no matter how much you’ll want to write their name into round two. It would take a very favorable match-up and a very vulnerable higher seed (looking at you, Louisville) for the Bruins to repeat bustings of years past.
Much like the team preceding them, Belmont’s only win over a top 100 RPI team came against Murray State, their Ohio Valley Conference tournament finals opponent. That being said, this is an efficient Bruins squad. They’re 8th in the nation in effective field goal percentage and get 66% of their shots at the rim, 23rd highest in the country. However, more impressively (or importantly for bracket busting hopes), this team shoots 47.8% of it’s shots from beyond the three-point line and hit 38.1% of them.
Under the right circumstances, Belmont could repeat the feats of their predecessors. But it’d have to be the absolute perfect circumstance.
Next: North Florida Ospreys