Men's NCAA Bracket 2023: Who Got Screwed in the NCAA Bracket?

At long last, we have a bracket for the 2023 men's NCAA tournament. The action will get underway with a pair of "First Four" games in Dayton on Tuesday.

And once the games begin, we'll turn all of our focus to the action on the court.

For now, though, we've got some serious gripes with the selection committee's decisions.

There were teams left out who were more deserving than most of the No. 11 seeds.

There were teams whose seed lines defy all logic.

And, of course, there are some serious geographical issues.

For what it's worth, my final bracket did pretty well. If my quick calculations are correct, I tallied a Bracket Matrix score of 366, which is probably my highest ever. Go me!

Still, I've got some bones to pick.

I knew I was going to be in the minority in having Vanderbilt in the field, but I stand by my decision and think the committee really screwed up here.

The Commodores had seven wins over the field: vs. No. 4 seed Tennessee, two wins over No. 6 seed Kentucky, vs. No. 8 seed Arkansas, vs. No. 9 seed Auburn and one win over each half of the Midwest Region's No. 11 seed play-in game (Mississippi State and Pittsburgh).

And then there's NC State.

The Wolfpack had a home win over No. 5 seed Duke, a home win over No. 5 seed Miami and just so happened to end up with a win over No. 13 seed Furman.

Frankly, NC State's third-best win of the season might have been its neutral-site victory over Vanderbilt.

And yet, Vanderbilt wasn't even mentioned as one of the first four teams out while NC State got a straight No. 11 seed clear of Dayton.

I was torn between NC State and Vanderbilt as my last team into the field, and yet the committee had at least eight teams in between them?

Including North Carolina as the third team out, after the Tar Heels did absolutely jack squat this season?

Yes, Vanderbilt had an unsightly home loss to Grambling State, plus a pair of not-great losses to Southern Miss and LSU. And it ended up with a NET and predictive metric ranks in the 80 range.

But actually beating quality opponents used to count for something.

Putting NC State in and having North Carolina ahead of Vanderbilt simply because neither of those Tobacco State schools suffered bad losses is a bad look—especially considering UNC AD Bubba Cunningham was one of the members of the selection committee.

Maybe it's because one of Vanderbilt's biggest wins came in the SEC tournament and the committee doesn't care about conference tournament results. But that's a discussion for another day.

Five weeks ago, Rutgers felt like a threat to make the Final Four. The Scarlet Knights were 16-7, looked like the second-best team in the Big Ten and were projected for something in the vicinity of a No. 5 seed.

But then Mawot Mag suffered a torn ACL and their season unraveled.

They lost seven of their final 10 games, including a not-great home loss to Nebraska and an even less-great loss at Minnesota. Despite eking out road wins over Penn State and Wisconsin, despite winning what we deemed something of a play-in game against Michigan in the Big Ten tournament and despite putting up one heck of a battle with Purdue in the subsequent quarterfinal, it's not hard to argue Rutgers didn't look like a tournament team down the stretch.

But the overall resume was still strong.

Predictive metrics aren't worth a ton in bracketology, but at No. 35, the Scarlet Knights were the highest rated team on KenPom to miss the cut. They also had the second-highest NET (No. 40) among teams left out, landing two spots behind a North Texas team without any great wins. BPI (if you want to talk about metrics no one really cares about) had Rutgers at No. 26.

Apparently a road win over No. 1 seed Purdue, road wins over No. 7 seed Northwestern and No. 10 seed Penn State and home wins over No. 4 seed Indiana, No. 7 seed Michigan State, No. 8 seed Maryland and No. 10 seed Penn State wasn't enough for this committee.

Here's my biggest gripe, though: If how Rutgers looked since early February was such a sticking point with the committee, why the heck didn't it matter for Vanderbilt, which was red hot in its final 12 games?

Justice for Jerry Stackhouse and the 'Dores, please.

Remind me to never again focus on wins against the field. But it really is a shame that two teams with seven wins against the field were left out in favor of a pair of 10-loss teams who won two home games (NC State) and three home games (Nevada) against the field.

At a certain point, sheer volume of losses creates something of a glass ceiling.

With 15 losses, it is mighty difficult to earn an at-large bid. Suffer 14 losses and it's hard to imagine getting anything better than a No. 9 seed. And I suppose, historically speaking, the case for a 13-loss team getting anything higher than a No. 6 seed is pretty weak. Not sure if it has ever happened, actually, and now wishing I had looked up that before putting together my final projection.

But, come on, this Iowa State team was no normal 13-loss team.

The Cyclones had six Quad 1A wins, tied with Texas and Baylor for the second-most in the nation behind only Kansas. (Not a bad league, that Big 12.) They also had 10 total Quad 1 wins, good for fifth in the nation behind those three league mates and Alabama. And they had no losses in Quad 3 or Quad 4.

But instead of Iowa State, that final No. 4 seed went to Virginia.

The Cavaliers had just one Quad 1A win—a neutral-site win over Baylor, who Iowa State destroyed three damn times, by the way—and they played in just 10 total Quad 1 game, going 5-5 against that slate. They also suffered a terrible 15-point loss to Boston College late in the season.

Yet, Virginia was reward for taking on fewer losses against a much weaker schedule.

Here's the part that really grinds my gears.

Virginia was No. 10 overall and Iowa State was No. 11 overall in the Top 16 reveal. After that peak behind the committee's curtain, Virginia went 5-3 overall while playing just one game against the field—the loss to Duke in the ACC championship. It deserved to fall, and it did fall six spots. Meanwhile, Iowa State smoked Baylor twice during a 2-5 finish in which it faced a No. 1 seed, a No. 2 seed, three games against a No. 3 seed, a No. 9 seed and an Oklahoma team that didn't make the tournament, but was rated higher on KenPom than any non-Duke team that Virginia faced in the past three-plus weeks.

Again, predictive metrics are just one data point, but since Feb. 18, Iowa State slipped from No. 15 to No. 23 on KenPom. Virginia plummeted from No. 17 to No. 34. But the Wahoos only lost seven total games, so here's your No. 4 seed.

Truthfully, I'm not that upset about this one.

I had Florida Atlantic at No. 33 overall (top No. 9 seed) before it won the C-USA championship over UAB, and then talked myself into the Owls as a No. 7 seed, rationalizing that it's where the selection committee put Murray State last year, and where it put Wofford in 2019.

But I can appreciate it was a tough resume to try to evaluate.

In a sea of middling Big Ten and SEC teams, here's this 31-win squad that certainly looks the part of a Sweet 16 candidate, but that didn't play a single game against an NCAA tournament team—save for a home game against No. 16 seed Northern Kentucky, which doesn't really apply to this discussion.

However, the Owls were 14th in the NET, with an average rank of 25.5 in the result-based metrics. And though BPI (42nd) and Sagarin (50th) weren't big fans of their work in Conference USA, KenPom did have them at 26th.

All numbers that point to a No. 7 seed, if not a No. 6 seed.

Instead, not only did FAU end up with a No. 9 seed, but it got paired up with what I think we can all agree is the best No. 8 seed in Memphis. That should probably be the marquee game taking place on either Thursday or Friday, pitting No. 19 vs. No. 26, according to KenPom.

I thought for sure it would be Florida Atlantic against the other metrics darling, Utah State, in a No. 7 vs. No. 10 opener. Sort of an "OK, one of you gets a shot at a No. 2 seed, but you duke it out to figure out who's more deserving" situation, but the committee didn't see it that way.

I already harped on Iowa State being under-seeded, but as a whole, the selection committee really did not seem to have much respect for the Big 12.

Texas did get its preferred spot in the Midwest (Kansas City) Region, but it ended up as the No. 6 overall seed, still behind UCLA. Pretty sure we were all down to either Purdue or Texas for the final No. 1 seed after the Longhorns destroyed Kansas in the Big 12 title game and after UCLA lost the war of attrition to Arizona in the Pac-12 title game.

(As an aside, why didn't that Pac-12 game matter? It was a rubber match between two teams who clearly entered as No. 2 seeds and who both wanted the West Region, yet despite the win, Arizona finished two spots behind UCLA.)

Elsewhere in the Big 12, not only was TCU a No. 6 seed, but it was the bottom No. 6 seed at No. 24 overall. With eight Quad 1 wins and only one bad loss, the Horned Frogs seemed ripe for a No. 5 seed. But, evidently, the committee was quite offended by the early Quad 4 loss to Northwestern State without either Mike Miles Jr. or Damion Baugh in the backcourt.

West Virginia as a No. 9 seed was fine, but the real dagger was leaving out Oklahoma State.

When asked why the 18-15 Cowboys missed the cut, committee chair Chris Reynolds cited their 18 Quad 1 opportunities, from which they only got six wins. But, apparently, Illinois only winning two of its 13 Quad 1 opportunities was good enough for a No. 9 seed, and NC State getting one win in seven tries against Quad 1 got the Wolfpack the No. 41 overall seed.

Even Kansas at No. 3 overall is hard to justify.

Why did the Jayhawks and their 17 Quad 1 wins get penalized for—without defensive star Kevin McCullar Jr. or head coach Bill Self available—losing to a great Texas team in the Big 12 championship while Houston and its seven Quad 1 wins got a free pass for barely showing up against Memphis sans Marcus Sasser?

It almost seems like they graded the entire Big 12 on a curve, mandating a certain "batting average" in its many Quad 1 opportunities instead of rewarding the teams for picking up a bunch of great wins against a brutal schedule.

This might be too "in the weeds" for some readers, but Albany and Orlando were the two subregional sites that none of the top teams wanted this year, with the exception of Connecticut being more than happy to play in Albany. Once UConn dropped out of the mix for the top three seed lines, though, it was just about a guarantee that the four No. 4 seeds would end up in Albany and Orlando, which is what we got in the end.

And with Miami spending much of the season loitering in that No. 4/5 range, it seemed almost inevitable that the Hurricanes would end up getting to play the first two rounds about 200 miles from home. (Just like Duke seemed destined to be a No. 6 seed in Greensboro until it went and won the ACC tournament and moved up a seed line.)

The 'Canes did get a No. 5 seed, but the lowest one at No. 20 overall. And despite earning the No. 1 seed in the ACC tournament, Miami was unable to finish ahead of either Virginia (No. 16 overall) or Duke (No. 18 overall) on the seed list. As a result, those ACC teams took the Orlando pods before it was Miami's turn to "draft."

Here's where they got screwed, though.

Duke is perfectly equidistant between Albany and Orlando. Per the distance spreadsheet I use, we're talking 536 miles vs. 537 miles. So the committee easily could have sent Duke to Albany as the No. 5 seed in either the Midwest or West regions. Instead, it opted to give Duke the East region for a possible home-away-from-home trip to Madison Square Garden if it advances out of the first weekend.

That said, it's the only spot where the committee treated the ACC unfairly. Five bids for that league and three spots in the top 20 overall was quite generous.