BYU Basketball Misses the Cut in Joe Lunardi's Latest Bracketology

BYU basketball fans enjoyed arguably the most entertaining season since Jimmer Fredette last year. The hype surrounding BYU basketball has only grown since the end of the season as Mark Pope and staff have added a variety of intriguing pieces to the roster. BYU landed grad transfers Matt Haarms and Brandon Averette and they flipped Caleb Lohner from Utah to BYU. Those roster moves, however, were not enough to convince Joe Lunardi that BYU would earn a spot in the field of 68 this season.

In his latest bracketology, Joe Lunardi has BYU on the bubble in the "Next Four Out" group. In other words, he projects that BYU will be five spots away from making the NCAA tournament. Lunardi's "First Four Out" are USC, Minnesota, Providence, and Colorado. The "Next Four Out" are BYU, Penn State, Maryland, and Cincinnati.

The only WCC team to make the field of 68 in Lunardi's projection was Gonzaga - Lunardi projects the Bulldogs to be the best team in basketball next season and the overall no. 1 seed.

Obviously, you should take any preseason projections with a grain of salt. However, projections like these shed some light on the national perspective of the BYU basketball program after the Cougars lost key Seniors from last year's squad.

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