Bracketology 2023: Final projected field of 68 ahead of Selection Sunday

The bracket banner is updated on the side of the J.W. Marriott with the results of the first day of games during the 2021 NCAA Division I basketball tournament in Indianapolis, Indiana, on Saturday, March 20, 2021. Mandatory Credit: Barbara Perenic/IndyStar via USA TODAY Sports /

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Bracketology Selection Sunday (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) /

The first “back to normal” NCAA Tournament since the onset of Covid was a thriller that saw Kansas cut down the nets. The encore edition is fast approaching and before we know it brackets will be like new cars to an Oprah audience, everyone gets one. The season is well underway and we now have enough data to start looking at teams and where they stand.

While there are still two and a half months until Selection Sunday some of the postseason puzzle slowly starts to come into focus. Some teams are building their resumes to be No. 1 seeds and national title contenders, while others are fighting to show they deserve an invitation. By this time in the season, while the guest list for the NCAA Tournament is far from finalized, it has been whittled down from the 363 at which it started.

The selection process is as transparent as it had ever been and because of that, we can gain insight into how the committee is thinking and what aspects of a team’s resume they are valuing from year to year. Now that we are into the new year, there is enough of a baseline to begin building a field. With the New Year upon us, it is bracket time! Every week leading up to Selection Sunday, I will give you a look at what I think the bracket could look like up to that point by looking at resumes and metrics that the committee will use such as KenPom, Sagarin, and Strength of Record among others. The results, rankings, and metrics included in this column will be through Sunday of the previous week and the automatic qualifiers will be a conference’s top team in the NET on Monday morning.

Welcome to Selection Sunday, it seems like yesterday we tipped off the season in early November but the time has come and the bracket will be revealed tonight. All but five automatic qualifiers have been determined, so for the purposes of this final bracket, those five spots will be taken by the highest remaining seed in the tournament. With all of that being said, let’s dive into the last look at the field in 2023.

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