2023 CSJ Sagarin NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament Projections-Mar. 5
The CSJ’s NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament using the Sagarin rankings to field of the 68 teams that make-up the tournament for March 5th, 2023. This is the next to last projection in the field as we now are in the midst of conference tournament play.
Houston is not only the top High Major team in this projection, the Cougars are also the top seed overall.
Another High Major team in Gonzaga is also projected as a #2 seed.
A total of 9 High Major and 20 Mid-Major teams are projected to make the Field of 68 teams in this projection.
We use the Sagarin rankings to select our Top 25 teams currently for our Mid-Major poll and High Major poll.
We will give one last projection for the Field of 68 schools next week as we now currently know of five automatic selections with Fairleigh Dickenson winning the Northeast Conference, Southeast Missouri State winning the Ohio Valley Conference, Drake winning the Missouri Valley Conference, UNC Asheville winning the Big South Conference, and Kennesaw State winning the Atlantic Sun Conference.
The remaining 27 conference tournaments will be completed over the next week.
Automatic Qualifiers
The following are the 32 projected Division I conference champions. The ones highlighted in YELLOW are what we categorize as Mid-Major conferences. The ones highlighted in GREEN are ones we categorize as High-Major conferences. And the ones highlighted in BLUE are ones we categorize as Major conferences.
The schools in bold and with an * indicate those schools have already won their conference’s automatic selection.
Click on the graphic for a larger view.
Field of 68
The following are the 68 teams based on the Sagarin rankings and using the 32 automatic qualifiers (and the 36 at-large qualifiers. Note just as above, the teams highlighted in YELLOW are ones from Mid-Major conferences, in GREEN are High Major conferences, and in BLUE are from Major conferences.
Click on the graphic for a larger view.
Each of the seeds are highlighted for the four regions with the exception of the #11 and #16 seeds, which have more teams as those are the seeds in these projections that would play in the First Four games. The eight First Four teams are highlighted on the left in ORANGE and in italics. These teams are the last four at-large teams and the last four automatic qualifying teams.
All the Mid-Major conferences are projecting just the conference champions as qualifiers and no at-large selections.
The High Major conferences, however, have three leagues with multiple selections in the American Athletic Conference, Mountain West Conference and West Coast Conference. The AAC has two in Houston and Memphis. The WCC also has two with Saint Mary’s and Gonzaga. The Mountain West also has two with San Diego State and Utah State.
The first eight out has two High Major teams just out. Cincinnati from the AAC and Boise State from the Mountain West are this week’s just out teams.
High Major and Mid-Major schools are as follows as the top 12 seeded schools:
#1 seed -- Houston (High) (1st overall) #2 seed -- Gonzaga (High) #4 seed -- Saint Mary's (High) #8 seed -- Memphis (High) #9 seed -- San Diego State (High) #11 seed -- Utah State (High) #11 seed -- Florida Atlantic (High) #12 seed -- Drake (High) #12 seed -- VCU (High) #12 seed -- Drake (High) #12 seed -- College of Charleston (Mid) #12 seed -- Toledo (Mid)
Originally from LaMoure, North Dakota, Kent is a 1996 graduate of North Dakota State University. His prior writing experience is over 15 years having previously worked with D2football.com, I-AA.org, and College Sporting News before coming to College Sports Journal in 2016. His main focus is college football is the Missouri Valley Football Conference within the Division I FCS. And in 2017, he began also to look at the FBS Group of Five conferences of the American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, and Sun Belt.
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