With March Madness and the NCAA Tournament right around the corner ESPN’s Bracketologist Joe Lunardi released his latest
Now as far as the teams out of Michigan go he has one team making it outright, one team on the bubble and two team totally out of the running.
The team that makes it outright are the Oakland Golden Grizzlies who just clinched the Summit League after their 71-69 win over North Dakota State Thursday night. Oakland makes it in as the 13th seed in the East Region facing #4 Villanova in the first round.
On the bubble is Michigan State.
Lunardi has Michigan State playing Boston College for the 12th seed in the West Region. He has the winner of that game playing #5 Arizona.
For Michigan and Detroit the news isn’t so good. Unfortunately for these two teams Lunardi doesn’t have have either one of these two teams making the NCAA Tournament.
The good news however for Michigan State and Michigan is there is still plenty of Big Ten conference play still left as well as the Big Ten tournament.
This year the NCAA expanded the tournament by three teams this year. There will also be a single play-in game at Dayton that will balloon to eight teams playing in four games. This is officially called the First Four.
According to David Mayo of the Grand Rapids Press, the last four automatic qualifiers play each other in two games. The last four at-large teams do the same. The four winners in those games join the other 60 teams in the main bracket.
Source: Grand Rapids Press, ESPN
