College Basketball Bracketology: What’s Virginia’s Seed Situation?

With each passing day, college basketball teams inch closer to the NCAA Tournament and chances are dwindling fast to solidify a spot in the field. The latest bracketology projections provide context for where teams are late in the season as of 1 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 20.

My bracket is part of the bracket matrix under entry RWX. It is my 6th year doing a bracket and you can see my ranking here. I’m sharing my bracketology here on TheSabre.com. Discuss it on the message board.

For Sabre fans, Virginia did not have an impressive week but did get 2 wins in two Q4 games as opponents missed 3-pointers in the closing seconds. This time of year, picking up wins is more important than how you win. Obviously 2 blowout wins would have been nice and would have likely kept the Hoos’ NET higher and efficiency metrics better, but the NET ranking only fell 3 spots to 16, which is still fine.

This week offers two tough road games – a Q3 road game at Boston College and a Q1 road game at UNC. BC is playing well and will be a stiff challenge despite a poor NET rating of 184. It is a dangerous game as a loss could knock UVA down to a 4 seed pending on what happens across the country. The Tar Heels will be desperate as their NCAA lives may depend on how they do in their final two home games against UVA and Duke (more on that below). A 2-0 week will have UVA in excellent position to win the ACC Regular Season Championship outright as well. A 2-loss week, however, may send the Cavaliers down to the 5 seed area.

UVA is close enough to the 2 seed line, that winning out could result in a 2 seed. But that is the only scenario in play to climb in the seed race. Only UNC is a non Q3/Q4 game left on the schedule. So there just isn’t a lot of opportunity to improve the resume prior to the ACC Tournament.

Here is the full bracketology breakdown.

RaleighHOO's Bracketology 2023

• Last Four In: UNC, USC, WVU, Boise St.
• First Four Out: Wisconsin, Arizona St., New Mexico, Utah St.
• Next Four Out: Penn St., Michigan, Texas Tech, Oregon
• Comment: The last spot in the field today goes to UNC. But it is a difficult choice. The Heels have 0 wins against Q1, but they have no bad losses, and 5 Q2 wins. They only have one win over a likely at-large team in a home win over NC State. UNC has 4 games left, 2 Q3 road games @ FSU and @ ND plus two Q1 home games against UVA and Duke in Chapel Hill. If UNC can win the two Q3 games and split the home games, I think it will likely be in heading to the ACC Tournament. But a split would likely mean the Heels are in a very precarious position.
• Comment: Wisconsin and Arizona St. have the right number of quality wins but NET ratings in the 70s and at least one bad loss. They will be difficult to assess and compare against UNC. New Mexico and Utah St. also have interesting resumes and Texas Tech is making a charge. Should be an interesting next few weeks on the bubble.

Notes on my selection process:

1. I don’t create matchups. My goal is to match the NCAA S Curve and select the right teams. Honestly the bracketing procedures are too tedious.
2. Conference champions (* teams) in the pre-conference tournament brackets are picked by the team with the highest conference winning % at time of bracket creation. If there is a tie, the team with the highest NET is picked.
3. Brackets will be updated at least on Monday and Friday. As we get closer to the end of the season and during conference tournament weeks, it will be updated every day.