Jan. 1 Bracketology

Happy New Year! The new year brings conference play. It also brings a solidification of the college basketball postseason picture. Quite honestly though, there are still so many questions to answer. Northwestern (what? omg! what?) has rocketed up the bubble picture. The Big 12 has every eligible team thinking they're making the NCAA Tournament and the Mountain West has a ton of teams that could be playing in the NCAAs or NIT depending on how the next few months go.

It means that there is a lot of uncertainty in the bracket right now. I was actually quite surprised how much my brackets and rankings disagreed with something like T-Ranketology right now. There is a lot of basketball still to be played.

Note: The NCAA used "unseeded" teams last season after the No. 4 seeds. I'm mimicking that style in this bracket, though teams right now are still basically in seed order.

Also, there are some fun teams included in the bottom of this bracket. I hope squads like Sam Houston St., UAB and Loyola Marymount are given due consideration if they're close at the end of the season.

Last 8 NCAA Teams: New Mexico, Kansas St., Penn St., Iowa St., Northwestern, Michigan St., Utah St., Mississippi St.

NIT Bracket (bubble teams in italics):

1. Iowa
U. Drake

4. Clemson

U. Oregon

3. Seton Hall

U. Texas A&M

2. Pittsburgh

U. Cincinnati

1. Utah

U. Sam Houston St.

4. Nevada

U. UAB

3. LSU

6. St. John's

2. UNLV

7. Santa Clara

1. NC State

U. Southern Miss

4. UCF

U. Mississippi

3. Colorado

U. BYU

2. Boise St.

U. Villanova

1. Wake Forest

U. Georgia

4. USC

U. Michigan

3. Florida

6. North Texas

2. Arizona St.

U. Loyola Marymount