ASU Basketball: ‘Bubble Watch’ entering Senior Day
By Trevor Booth
Bracket Matrix
If you haven’t visited The Bracket Project’s Bracket Matrix, I would highly recommend it. This is a comprehensive list of 115 mock brackets across the web, and the site does an excellent job of organizing its content.
Its home page shows a cumulative bracket, which takes each team’s average seeding across the websites into an organized ‘matrix.’ As of Feb. 21, the Sun Devils appeared in 83 (72 percent) of projections, averaged as a No. 12 seed and one of the ‘Last Four In.’
This would place ASU at the First Four in Dayton, Ohio, the same location of last year’s NCAA Tournament loss to Syracuse. That means the Sun Devils have work to do if they want a bye into the field of 64.
Of all the mock brackets, ASU’s highest seed was No. 8, as listed by Team Rankings and TRMD Index. Chris Mackinder of Deuce2Sports and Dan Vasta qualified the Sun Devils as a No. 9 seed.
Now, there’s no guarantee that these brackets will line up with ASU’s actual tournament hopes. That will come down to the NCAA Tournament committee and their decisions that are aligned through “observations, discussions with coaches, directors of athletics and commissioners, and review and comparison of data,” according to the NCAA.
However, ASU is a common selection across this matrix. While the Sun Devils would likely want to separate from Dayton, this is promising entering the final two weeks of the regular season.
Barring a loss to Cal tomorrow, they’ll likely stay in this position going into their three final road games.