The Sunday Slide: Bracketology is Upon Us

It’s Selection Sunday (for college basketball). Fittingly, our first bracketology updates of the 2025 season are coming this week. Can you believe we’re already at that point in March?

Our Bracketology Department (unofficial title) does an excellent job year over year projecting the tournament teams, and they often come close to nailing the seeding. Jeremy Fallis is your women’s bracket expert, and Patrick Stevens is the men’s counterpart.

Jeremy and Patrick will have weekly bracket projections all the way through Selection Sunday, when they’ll hop on the phone late at night with the Selection Committee chairs to provide insights into why the teams of note were chosen. They put in the work.

Keep in mind that brackets projections are just that – projections. It’s driven by data and facts. It’s not meant as a slight to your team. And because it’s only March 16, there’s plenty of time for a team’s resume to improve.

In my eyes, bracketology time means it’s crunch time. Not that we’re sprinting to the finish. Rather, it feels like results matter now more than ever.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

Remember how we talked about razor-thin margins last week? (If you didn’t, here’s a handy link for you.) Those margins don’t just pertain to matchups within the Top 20. Anyone can be put on notice. This week, it was Mercer’s unexpected 11-10 win over a Clemson team that had shown tons of promise. Now, Mercer isn’t a slouch, but Clemson owns wins over Notre Dame and Syracuse. A complete shocker.

It truly was a not-so-great week for Clemson. After a loss like that, you really want a bounce back game the next time out there. Well, the Tigers had No. 2 North Carolina up next on their schedule. The Tar Heels dismantled them 18-5, further proving the clear line between the ACC’s elite (Boston College, UNC) and the next crop of teams.