Palo Alto:
1. Stanford (Pac-12)
16. Southern (SWAC)
8. Tennessee
9. Purdue
Des Moines:
5. South Dakota (Summit)
12. James Madison (CAA)
4. Drake (MVC)
13. Middle Tennessee (CUSA)
There’s a reason I still have Drake hosting despite being a mid-major that suffered an unfortunate string of losses in December. The Bulldogs played the third-best non-conference schedule in the country and used that to rack up wins over South Dakota, South Carolina, and Rutgers. And their four losses are all against the RPI top 25, with their “worst” coming on the road. Drake just can’t slip up moving forward.
Spokane:
6. Kentucky
11. Boise State (Mountain West)
3. Gonzaga
14. UC Davis (Big West)
Raleigh:
7. California
10. Michigan
2. NC State
15. FGCU (ASUN)
I’m sure I’ll be asked to defend Gonzaga here as well, so before you start accusing me of pro-mid-major bias (though is that ever a bad thing?) here we go: Like Drake, Gonzaga has a great record and its losses are to good opponents (No. 1 Notre Dame and projected 9 seed BYU). They’ve also beaten Stanford and Rutgers. One could argue that the BYU loss should knock them down a little bit and I’m not sure how hard I’d fight against that. But here’s the thing: If you’re going to look at BYU’s win and say “wow, the Cougars must be good because they beat Gonzaga,” you can’t then turn to Gonzaga and say “well maybe the Zags aren’t that good after all.”