Below is a look at my 65-team field and some NCAA Tournament projections as of the start of business on Thursday. I didn’t worry about regions or matchups or pods or any of those intricacies that make the final bracket the dazzling dance card that it is. We are less than two weeks to Selection Sunday, but we’re still a long way from that point, if you know what I mean. There is a ton of basketball left to be played and outside of Syracuse and Kansas as the No. 1 seeds it’s safe to say that there are no other seeds (not teams, but seeds) that are set in stone.

In creating these projections I purposely didn’t account for something that I guarantee will happen: upsets in the conference tournaments. In the one-bid leagues like the Atlantic Sun or Big West I simply picked the team in first place in the regular season or one of the highest rated teams and gave them the bid. I’m not going to spend time (yet) trying to figure out the matchups and who is going to be upset in the No. 29 ranked conference in the sport.

As for the mid-major conferences like the WAC, the Horizon, or Conference USA I have not projected any upsets. It’s not that I don’t think that they will happen. Just the opposite. I think that upsets will happen in the WAC Tournament and then one other between Conference USA (leaving UTEP in a pickle), the Horizon League (highly unlikely, but possible), the Missouri Valley (there is no chance that I think Northern Iowa is winning the MVC Tournament) and the West Coast Conference (Gonzaga could lose to St. Mary’s or Portland). I am firmly on record as saying that there will be at least two upsets out of these conference and, thus, I think that two bids will be “stolen”.

If you want an early prediction or projection I will say that the Pac-10, WAC and Missouri Valley will have bids “stolen” from them. I don’t think that Cal, Utah State and Northern Iowa will win their conference tournament and that mid-major teams from those leagues will steal three bids. Further, just about every year there is a team in one of the BCS conferences that makes a run to try to steal a bid by winning the conference tournament. So that would mean that my “last four in” would all get bounced if the conference tournaments don’t go according to plan; which they never do.

That’s the most important thing to take away from this whole exercise: below is my seeding for my NCAA Tournament projections based on the close of the regular season. But at least two, three or four of these bids will be stolen by other teams in the conference tournaments, which will make my “last in” and “last out” groupings meaningless.

So with that in mind, here is a look at my seeding projection for the NCAA Tournament:

No. 1 seeds
Syracuse
Kansas
Duke
Kentucky

No. 2 seeds
Purdue
Kansas State
Villanova
Ohio State

No. 3 seeds
West Virginia
New Mexico
Michigan State
Pittsburgh

No. 4 seeds
Wisconsin
Vanderbilt
Tennessee
Xavier

No. 5 seeds
Maryland
Baylor
BYU
Butler

No. 6 seeds
Texas A&M
Temple
Gonzaga
Georgetown

No. 7 seeds
Texas
Wake Forest
Oklahoma State
Missouri

No. 8 seeds
Richmond
Clemson
Northern Iowa
Marquette

No. 9 seeds
Florida State
Utah State
Connecticut
Louisville

No. 10 seeds
UTEP***
Georgia Tech
California***
UNLV*

No. 11 seeds
Illinois*
Florida*
Mississippi State**
Mississippi**

No. 12 seeds
Siena***
Virginia Tech**
Old Dominion
Cornell

No. 13 seeds
Murray State
Akron
Dayton**
San Diego State**

No. 14 seeds
Weber State
Wofford
Pacific
North Texas

No. 15 seeds
Sam Houston
Oakland
Boston
Belmont

No. 16 seeds
Coastal Carolina
Morgan State
Lehigh
Jackson State/Robert Morris (Play-in game)
                               
* Denotes one of the last eight teams in
** Denotes one of the last four teams in
*** Denotes that they may lose their bid if they lose their conference tournament

The last five teams that I put in, in order, were:

No. 61 – Mississippi
No. 62 – Virginia Tech
No. 63 – Dayton
No. 64 – San Diego State
No. 65 – Notre Dame

The last four teams I left out, in order, were:

No. 66 – Mississippi State
No. 67 – Charlotte
No. 68 – UAB

Here is the seeding breakdown for this version of my NCAA Tournament Projections (seeding):

(BCS Conference = 34)
ACC – 7
Big 12 – 7
Big Ten – 5
Big East – 9
SEC – 65
Pac-10 – 1^

(Mid-Major = 11)
MWC – 4
A-10 – 4
MVC – 1^
CUSA – 1
WAC – 1^

(One-bid leagues = 20)
CAA – 1
WCC – 1^
Horizon – 1^
Metro – 1
MAC – 1
Big West – 1
Southern – 1
Big Sky – 1
Oho Valley – 1
Sun Belt – 1
A-Sun – 1
Southland – 1
Ivy – 1
Summit – 1
America East – 1
Patriot – 1
Big South – 1
MEAC – 1
NEC – 1
SWAC – 1

^ Denotes that this is a league where if the top team in the league gets upset then a bid will be stolen. (Obviously if a team comes out of nowhere in a league like the Big East or Big Ten or even Mountain West then a bid will be stolen. The odds suggest that this will happen in at least one league. But with these four leagues there is one specific team that has to win the conference tournament in order for this seeding to hold.)