NCAA Tournament

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Everyone else has a prediction of who's getting in, who's on the bubble, etc. So I may as well too. To start things off here's a list of who's already in via automatic bid, either winning their conference tournament or the regular season in the case of the Ivy League.

Gonzaga, Butler, Belmont, Bucknell, Oakland, St. Peters, Indiana State, Old Dominion, Morehead State, Wofford, Long Island, Northern Colorado, Arkansas-Little Rock, and UNC Ashville.

So that's fourteen automatic qualifiers that have won their conference tournaments so far and more to come. There will be twelve conference championship games tomorrow, so for college basketball fans tomorrow should be an entertaining day full of good basketball games. There's also four championship games on Sunday with the ACC, Big Ten, Atlantic 10, and SEC all playing their games then. That will give the field of 68, thirty automatic bids leaving 38 at large bids to be decided by the committee. Here are my locks and the consensus locks for the most part.

Ohio State, Notre Dame, Kansas, Pittsburgh, Duke, North Carolina, Texas, BYU, Purdue, San Diego State, Florida, Syracuse, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Louisville, St. Johns, West Virginia, Connecticut, Georgetown, Arizona, Kansas State, Vanderbilt, Xavier, Texas A&M, Cincinnati, Temple, UCLA, UNLV, Missouri, Utah State, George Mason, Florida State, Illinois, Washington, St. Mary's, Marquette, Villanova

So that's 37 locks to go with the 14 automatic bids already punched. That's 51 of the 68 spots that are taken right now. There's also 8 smaller conferences that still have automatic bids to go and you have 59 spots accounted for, leaving 9 spots for the remaining at large teams. Plus these bubble teams need BYU or San Diego State to win their conference tournament and not New Mexico or another spot is gone. And some teams in the bigger conferences could steal a bid by winning their conference tournament. But for now there are nine spots for these remaining teams.

Richmond, Michigan, Clemson, Boston College, Michigan State, Virginia Tech, Colorado, Georgia, Alabama, USC, Missouri State, California, Penn State, Nebraska, Memphis, Baylor, and UTEP.

That's 17 teams for 9 spots. Those 9 spots could become less than that if some teams not expected to make the tourney win their conference tournament.