February 15 seeding update

Changes since Thursday afternoon:

• Mercifully, the only bubble team that played was Missouri, and they eked out a 1 point win over Arkansas, so they stay in the field.  
• Southern Miss was lit up by UAB, and so drops to a #12.  I don't like their profile much; their best wins are over fellow automatic qualifiers North Dakota State and Georgia State, and it's hard to argue that with three bad losses they have a better resume than any at-large team. 
• UCSB takes back the top spot in its conference from UC Irvine.  
• Arizona's loss to Arizona State doesn't affect them...yet.  They are still a #1 seed in the West, still play Weber State in the round of 64.  At best it could affect who the #4 seed in their region is.  However, another loss does put them in some danger, and two would probably drop them to a #2.
• Arizona State, of course, is on the rise.
• I also did some minor shuffling of the autobid schools.  It's tempting to just list them by RPI, but I wanted to go a little more in-depth than that.
• I considered flipping Texas and Virginia, but I looked again at their profiles, and Texas just has better wins.  Virginia may be 11-1 in the ACC, but their conference schedule has included most of the dregs of that conference, and they are only 1-1 against the other top teams in the conference (lost at Duke, won at Pitt).  They have nothing to compete with Texas' win over Kansas.

Enjoy Saturday's action!

Seed bands for February 15:

#1: Syracuse, Arizona, Florida, Wichita St.
#2: Villanova, Kansas, Michigan St., Duke
#3: Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa St., San Diego State
#4: Iowa, Cincinnati, Creighton, Texas
#5: Virginia, Kentucky, Louisville, Ohio State
#6: Pittsburgh, UCLA, Saint Louis, Oklahoma
#7: Memphis, Connecticut, Kansas St., North Carolina
#8: VCU, Gonzaga, New Mexico, Arizona St.
#9:  Massachusetts, George Washington, Colorado, Southern Methodist
#10: Oklahoma State, California, Xavier, Minnesota
#11: Tennessee, Richmond, Stanford, St. Joseph's*, Oregon*
#12:  Georgetown*, Missouri*, Toledo, Southern Miss., North Dakota St.
#13: Belmont, Green Bay, Mercer, Georgia State
#14:  Stephen F. Austin, Delaware, Vermont, UC Santa Barbara 

#15:  Iona, American, North Carolina Central, Robert Morris
#16: Utah Valley, Weber State, Yale*, Davidson*, Southern*, Coastal Carolina*

* Denotes teams in first-round (play-in) games