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NCAA Bracketology – 2024 March Madness men's field predictions – ESPN
Bracketology is now in its 30th season on ESPN.com. From now until Selection Sunday on March 17, we’ll keep you up to date on the postseason chances and projection of your favorite teams. Our brackets update Tuesday during the nonconference schedule before shifting to twice a week — Tuesday and Friday — once conference play hits in earnest in January. We culminate with daily updates throughout Championship Week in March, all with an eye toward the 2024 NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Purdue
Michigan St.
South Carolina
Much has been and will be made of the notion that Purdue — which stunningly lost to a 16-seed in last year’s NCAA tournament (and fell to a 15-seed the year before that) — could extract the ultimate revenge in April by winning the school’s first national championship. This would be the same path taken by Virginia after its historic loss to 16-seed UMBC in 2018, with the Cavaliers rebounding to capture the 2019 NCAA title. But there is an even more important similarity in the two cases. Both Purdue this season and Virginia in the 2019 campaign brought back measurably better teams than their immediate predecessors. Already defensively elite, the Cavaliers jumped from No. 30 to No. 2 in offensive efficiency when they won the title. And the current Boilermakers are up double digits in both offensive and defensive rankings through 11 games. So, let’s not let either team’s narrative, however captivating, obscure the truth that better basketball trumps all.
Moved Up
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Automatic Qualifier
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RULES
ESPN’s Bracketology efforts are focused on projecting the NCAA tournament field just as we expect the NCAA Division I basketball committee to select the field in March. ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi uses the same data points favored by the committee, including strength of schedule and other season-long indicators, including the NET and team-sheet data similar to what is available to the NCAA, in his projections of the field. Visit the NCAA’s website for a fuller understanding of NCAA selection criteria.
68-Team Bracket
The 68-team bracket is the standard version of the NCAA tournament field that has been in place since 2011. If the 2021 field is comprised of 68 teams, there will be some key differences to past years, however.
The primary adjustment from a normal year is, of course, the playing of the entire NCAA tournament at a single site. This eliminates the need for geographical considerations in seeding. Additionally, there will be at least one fewer automatic qualifier this season, as the Ivy League’s decision to forgo the 2020-21 season reduces the number of AQ entries to 31 for this season.
48-Team Bracket
In this projection, a condensed selection process would reduce the field by 10 at-large teams and 10 automatic qualifiers (the latter of which still receive a revenue unit). The top four seeds in each region would receive a bye into the second round, with four first-round games per region – 5 vs. 12, 6 vs. 11, 7 vs. 10 and 8 vs. 9 – being played without fans on the higher seed’s home court.
To minimize travel, first-round pairings will be guided by geography to the greatest extent possible. And the reduced field results in only 32 teams competing at the central site. All participants must post a minimum .500 conference record – the “Lunardi Rule” – for at-large consideration.
16-Team Bracket
In this projection, the committee selects and seeds the 16 best available teams. There are no automatic qualifiers, although all non-competing conference champions receive the designated revenue unit.
To maintain some sense of national balance, conference participation is capped at four teams. And no region shall have more than one team from the same conference.
