Baylor holds steady in latest ESPN Bracketology projection after Las Vegas trip
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Every Tuesday morning, ESPN college basketball analyst Joe Lunardi releases his latest projected bracket of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
On this week's edition, the Baylor Bears were moved to the West Region for the first time this season as a #7 seed. Their projected first-round matchup in this iteration would have the Bears facing off with #10 seed UCLA Bruins (5-2), the Bruins' stock fell following an eight-point loss to Cal last Tuesday. Even though Baylor changed regions, they stayed as the #7 seed for the third week in a row.
Being in the West region forces Baylor to travel substantially more than when they were in the East or Midwest regions. The matchup with UCLA would be played in Portland and if they were to move past UCLA, they would face the winner of the #2/#15 matchup of Gonzaga and Austin Peay.
With the projection, the West region lines up as follows (ordered by seed #): Arizona, Gonzaga, Michigan State, Tennessee, St. John’s, Texas Tech, Nebraska, SMU, UCLA, Saint Louis, Belmont, Tulsa, East Tennessee State, Austin Peay and Tennessee State. There is a bit of familiarity with this version of the West region with Baylor losing to St. John's by 15 points on 11/25. Baylor will host #19 Texas Tech on 1/20 and host #2 Arizona on 2/24. Baylor has their work cut out for them with nine games against current ranked teams on their schedule in #2 Arizona, #6 Louisville, #8 Houston, #9 BYU, #10 Iowa State, #19 Texas Tech and #21 Kansas.
With this currently projected tournament field, Baylor will have faced 10 tournament teams. The top overall seed is Michigan, and the four #1 seeds are Michigan, Purdue, Duke and Arizona. The Big Ten and SEC are tied with 11 teams each projected to make the Big Dance followed by the Big 12 with 9 teams and the ACC with 7 teams.
Baylor will look to improve their standing in the tournament this week when they host Sacramento State (4-5) on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. and visit Memphis (2-4) on Saturday at 4:30 p.m.
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Allen began covering college sports as an intern for InsidetheGators.com for the Florida Gators 2021 football season. He has been a freelance sportswriter for the past four years at newspapers such as the Ocala Gazette, Ocala Star-Banner and GatorBait Media. As a lifelong sports fan, Allen's dream is to cover sports every day.