GPL Bracketology 2024 Edition: Who Goes Where?

With all the conference tournament games in the books, we now know the 16-team NCAA field. Congrats to UMass, narrowly sneaking ahead of Colorado College to nab the last spot in the field (and mess up the brackets a bit, more on that later).

I’ve been thinking through what I believe the brackets will look like when revealed by the selection committee Sunday afternoon. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Let’s go step by step to try to mimic the committee as much as possible.

Step 1: Identify and rank the 16 teams in the tournament-

1. BC
2. BU
3. Denver
4. Michigan State
5. Maine
6. North Dakota
7. Minnesota
8. Wisconsin
9. Quinnipiac
10. Michigan
11. Omaha
12. Cornell
13. Western Michigan
14. UMass
15. RIT
16. Michigan Tech

Step 2: place regional hosts into host sites-

1. Providence, RI – None
2. Springfield, MA – #4 UMass
3. Sioux Falls, SD – #3 Omaha
4. St. Louis, MO – None

Step 3: place #1 seeds by proximity to the regions-

1. Providence, RI – #1 BC
2. Springfield, MA – #1 BU, #4 UMass
3. Sioux Falls, SD – #1 Denver, #3 Omaha
4. St. Louis, MO – #1 Michigan State

Step 4: place the two, three, and four seeds in order to preserve bracket integrity where possible-

1. Providence, RI – #1 BC, #8 Wisconsin, #9 Quinnipiac, #16 Michigan Tech
2. Springfield, MA – #2 BU, #7 Minnesota, #10 Michigan, #14 UMass
3. Sioux Falls, SD – #3 Denver, #6 North Dakota, #11 Omaha, #15 RIT
4. St. Louis, MO – #4 Michigan State, #5 Maine, #12 Cornell, #13 Western Michigan

Step 5: Avoid inter-conference matchups – we have inter-conference matchups in Springfield (BU/UMass and Minnesota/Michigan) and Sioux Falls (North Dakota/Omaha). Here is where UMass messes up the brackets. With UMass locked into the #4 seed in Springfield, that means that BU has to move west. Omaha is also locked into the 3 seed in Sioux Falls, so North Dakota cannot play there as the #2 seed. We will swap the top two teams in Springfield with the top two teams in Sioux Falls to solve both of these problems for now.

1. Providence, RI – #1 BC, #8 Wisconsin, #9 Quinnipiac, #16 Michigan Tech
2. Springfield, MA – #3 Denver, #6 North Dakota, #10 Michigan, #14 UMass
3. Sioux Falls, SD – #2 BU, #7 Minnesota, #11 Omaha, #15 RIT
4. St. Louis, MO – #4 Michigan State, #5 Maine, #12 Cornell, #13 Western Michigan

Step 6: Move teams around to maximize attendance, where it makes sense to do so – the only real obvious move I see here is swapping the whole 5/12 and 6/10 matchup. NoDak/Michigan moves to St. Louis, and Maine/Cornell moves to Springfield.

The result is a bracket that is the best it can be in my opinion given UMass needs to be in Springfield – while BU moves west, we have BC, Quinnipiac, Maine, Cornell, and UMass out east. Attendance should be good at those two regions, and Minnesota is in Sioux Falls so that region should be fine. Finally, we have four western teams in St. Louis, including North Dakota who always travels well.

So, below is my final bracket prediction for the 2024 tournament. I have Minnesota traveling to Sioux Falls, where they’ll face regional hosts Omaha in the first round. We’ll see what the committee actually does Sunday evening.

Final predicted bracket:

1. Providence, RI – #1 BC, #8 Wisconsin, #9 Quinnipiac, #16 Michigan Tech
2. Springfield, MA – #3 Denver, #5 Maine, #12 Cornell, #14 UMass
3. Sioux Falls, SD – #2 BU, #7 Minnesota, #11 Omaha, #15 RIT
4. St. Louis, MO – #4 Michigan State, #6 North Dakota, #10 Michigan, #13 Western Michigan

The only other thing I could see the committee doing is swapping Denver to St. Louis and moving MSU to Springfield. They’d also need to move Western Michigan out of St. Louis in that scenario to avoid a first-round conference matchup with Denver – WMU would move to Sioux Falls to face BU and RIT would move to St. Louis to face Denver. Is that version of the brackets better? Better for Denver – closer to home than Springfield MA, and they likely deserve to stay closer to home as the #3 overall ahead of MSU who is the #4 overall (and, frankly, Springfield MA isn’t that much farther from East Lansing than St. Louis is). I’d gripe about it if I were BU, though – they’d draw a much more difficult first round matchup in WMU than they would have otherwise in RIT. I don’t think the benefit to DU is worth the loss of bracket integrity that would come with BU facing WMU in the first round, and I don’t think attendance will matter in either of these cases, so I prefer my version above.