2015 NCAA Tournament Bracketology

By virtue of their B1G Conference Playoff title, the Minnesota Gophers will be playing in the NCAA Tournament as a #3 seed.

Now that all of the other conference tournament results are in, let's take a stab at predicting the brackets the NCAA Selection Committee will unveil tomorrow afternoon.

The field of 16 breaks down like this:

1 Seeds
Minnesota State (#1 Overall)
North Dakota
Boston University
Miami

2 Seeds
Denver
Minnesota-Duluth
Michigan Tech
Nebraska-Omaha

3 Seeds
Harvard
Minnesota
Boston College
St. Cloud State

4 Seeds
Yale
Quinnipiac
Providence
RIT

The first step of the Bracketology process is to place host teams in their own regionals.

North Dakota is placed in the Fargo regional as the only host team that made the tournament.

Next, starting with the #1 overall seed (Mankato), #1 seeds are placed in the regional closest to them - Mankato is placed in the South Bend regional, Boston University is placed in the Manchester regional, and Miami is placed in Providence (BU is about as close to Manchester as Providence, and this makes things easier down the line).

Now we place the remaining teams in their regionals based on ideal seed bands (1 vs 16 and 8 vs 9, 2 vs 15 and 7 vs 10, 3 vs 14 and 6 vs 11, 4 vs 13 and 5 vs 12):

When we do that, we get the following:

South Bend
Mankato vs RIT
Nebraska-Omaha vs Harvard

Fargo
North Dakota vs Providence
Michigan Tech vs Minnesota

Manchester
BU vs Quinnipiac
Minnesota-Duluth vs BC

Providence
Miami vs Yale
Denver vs St. Cloud State

Now, we're looking to eliminate first-round intra-conference matchups.  We have only one in Providence with Denver playing St. Cloud.  Because the NCHC has three #2 seeds, the only way to avoid this matchup is to swap Minnesota and St. Cloud State.  Now we're left with:

South Bend
Mankato vs RIT
Nebraska-Omaha vs Harvard

Fargo
North Dakota vs Providence
Michigan Tech vs St. Cloud State

Manchester
BU vs Quinnipiac
Minnesota-Duluth vs BC

Providence
Miami vs Yale
Denver vs Minnesota

Now, what can we do to maximize attendance at these sites?  One thing we can do is swap Minnesota and Harvard, to bring the Crimson out East and the Gophers back West.

South Bend
Mankato vs RIT
Nebraska-Omaha vs Minnesota

Fargo
North Dakota vs Providence
Michigan Tech vs St. Cloud State

Manchester
BU vs Quinnipiac
Minnesota-Duluth vs BC

Providence
Miami vs Yale
Denver vs Harvard

You'd like to get Providence in Providence, so let's swap Yale, Quinnipiac and Providence to try and preserve bracket integrity as best we can.  So now we've got:

South Bend
Mankato vs RIT
Nebraska-Omaha vs Minnesota

Fargo
North Dakota vs Quinnipiac
Michigan Tech vs St. Cloud State

Manchester
BU vs Yale
Minnesota-Duluth vs BC

Providence
Miami vs Providence
Denver vs Harvard

Okay.  All four regionals look pretty good from an attendance perspective here.  South Bend is probably the weakest of the four, but Minnesota usually travels pretty well and Mankato isn't that far either.  We'd love to get Miami to South Bend, and the committee in the past has said that "a flight is a flight" and sent a higher-ranked team farther in favor of a bus ride for a lower team.  However, the committee also likes to keep the 1 vs 16 matchup intact, and moving Mankato to Providence would screw up our whole "Providence in Providence" idea.

So, the question is: does the committee care more about preserving the 1/16 match up, or about attendance?  If they care about attendance more I could see Mankato going to Providence, but in the past they've been sure to protect that 1/16 matchup so I can't see them changing that now.  Here's my final bracket:

South Bend
Mankato vs RIT
Nebraska-Omaha vs Minnesota

Fargo
North Dakota vs Quinnipiac
Michigan Tech vs St. Cloud State

Manchester
BU vs Yale
Minnesota-Duluth vs BC

Providence
Miami vs Providence
Denver vs Harvard