Mailbag 196: Where is Auburn in the early bracket projections?

This week: Ranking the remaining SEC games, Johni Broome's offensive impact, Turtle Hudson, lock-ins and Fritos with M&Ms

(Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

AUBURN — With the longest college football season of all-time now in the books, this weekend is the first in which college basketball will be firmly in the national spotlight.

And Auburn will be front and center for it all.

College GameDay is coming to town for Saturday’s top-10 showdown against Tennessee. The show has visited Auburn more than anywhere else in the last several years, so it’s fitting that the first on-campus show of the season will be on the Plains.

It also doesn’t hurt that Auburn, for the first time ever, is the unanimous No. 1 team in the country. After edging South Carolina and Georgia on the road — and hammering Mississippi State at home — without National Player of the Year contender Johni Broome, the Tigers got an early midweek break while the most of the SEC beat up on each other some more.

Auburn is the only team in the SEC that hasn’t lost a conference game yet, and rival Alabama is the only other one that hasn’t taken multiple losses. Additionally, Auburn is the only Division I team in the country that hasn’t taken multiple losses, period.

We’ll preview the visit from Tennessee later today with a podcast and tomorrow with a Stretch 4 newsletter. But, with so much attention shifting toward college basketball this week and Auburn getting an off date, this felt like the perfect time to take a look at where the Tigers stand in the early NCAA Tournament projections.

That question leads off this week’s mailbag. We’ll also tackle questions about Broome’s absence and potential return, Miles Kelly’s impact, Turtle Hudson’s work and a whole lot more.

Thanks as always for supporting The Observer. This weekend should be a fun one. Let’s go.

Assuming Auburn holds on to a 1-seed in the NCAA tournament, it looks like Lexington and Raleigh are the closest geographical sites. Where would you project the Tigers to be placed for the opening weekend?

If they drop to a 2 or 3 seed, would either of these locations be likely?

Michael

Around this time every year, I feel the need to sing the praises of the Bracket Matrix. For those who don’t know, Bracket Matrix is a website that tracks NCAA Tournament projections from all over the internet and combines them into a composite seed list.

The problem with bracket projections is that most people gravitate towards the big outlets: Joe Lunardi at ESPN and Jerry Palm at CBS. Well, over time, a lot of amateur “bracketologists” that you’ve never heard of have done a better job of predicting the field than those guys. Out of 179 veteran bracket projectors, Lunardi ranks 118th, and Palm ranks 164th over the last five years. There’s more value in casting a bigger net.

With that in mind, I went through the Bracket Matrix on Thursday and looked at the 60 projections that have been updated since, at least, the beginning of this week.