96 Team Bracketology w/ NKY's Twist

First and foremost, I don't necessarily believe this would work like this, but this is my idea of how it would work! I'll open a forum on this site so you all can put your ideas on here, or as always, I'm available on Twitter @BracketNKY. Let me know what you all think; I had several requests for this over the last couple of weeks! I apologize for how long it took to come out!

96 team bracket added criteria:

• The top 24 conferences get 2 AQs: Conference tournament and regular season champ. The bottom 8 will get an AQ into the NIT if it is a different winner. The tournament champ will decide the AQ from the bottom 8 conferences.

• In the case of one team sweeping the regular season and conference tournament, the runner-up for the regular season gets it.

• NET ranking for conferences will decide conference rankings.

• One really fun thing is that NET rankings can change throughout champ week, resulting in AQ movement until selection Sunday.

• ALL conference championship games will end by Saturday night, allowing the committee time to evaluate all teams after all games have been played and give us a bracket on Sunday night.

• If a team sweeps the regular/conference tournament, they then get an automatic bye into the round of 64.

• Each bracket region is broken into pods. The first three rounds are at the same pod, then the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 are neutral, as well as FF/championship.

• The top 4 seeds remain the “Protected” seeds; and will each host a pod.

• I believe that this would incentivize schools to be for this because it would be a money-making proposition for the school and the city.

• If there's a situation where a team may host games at more than one arena, it’s up to the school & NCAA to decide which is best to host.

• Rematches from the regular season cannot happen in the 1/2 rounds but can after that.

• The AQ’s who earn a bye but aren’t a top 4 seed will be placed into the bracket starting with the five seed.

• This bracket broke down to have 14 AQ’s with a bye who were in my true seed line under a 4 seed, so they filled 14/16 of the 5-8 seed line groupings, bumping teams down several seed lines to make this happen.

• Yes, this is completely unlikely to happen like this, but in my opinion, it’s the best way to reward teams to compete in both the regular season and conference play.

• NO play-in games; all teams are in or out.

• NCAA Seed List effectively gives us 1-17 seeds when eliminating the play-in games, and it is what I used for seeding. I seeded 1-12.5 in order of NCAA selection this year, then the at-larges started.

• I had to add in 15 at-large teams into the bracket, meaning we also added in 13 AQ’s.

• This # feels like it splits between the large and smaller schools to help balance it out.

True Seed List (Split into two pictures to help with reading):

BUBBLE: Keep in mind I used the NIT to try and guide how seeds would break this year!

Brackets:

Bracket AQ Bye Notes:

• FAU switched for Iowa

• Charleston switched for Utah State

• Iona switched for NC State

• Vermont switched for Iowa State

• Colgate switched for Northwestern

• UNC-Asheville switched for Memphis

• TX A&M CC switched for Arkansas

• Howard switched for Missouri

• Princeton switched for Creighton

• Oral Roberts switched for Duke

• VCU switched for Kentucky

• UCSB switched for Michigan State

• Furman switched for Maryland