Well, after getting my CBB predictions in “early” last year (mid-November), I’m back to the usual time of early-to-mid-December. Why does it always take me until a few weeks into the season to finish my picks? It’s not a matter of wanting to gain some information from the early games. Actually, I try and pay little attention to the results prior to getting out my predictions and I don’t look at any of the stats or standings. Obviously, I’m not going to ignore injuries or suspensions, but it’s not a huge advantage.
It always takes me a while to make my CBB picks for two main reasons. The biggest reason is fall sports. The baseball pennant races last into October and then the postseason lasts all of that month. More importantly I spend most of my free time during fall weeks writing about college and pro football. So there’s not a lot of downtime.
The other major reason is the sheer size and scope of Division I college basketball. It just takes a while to complete this thing. Compounding the issue, CBB is the sport that I have to spend the most time researching each year.
That leads me to another issue. As I was writing this intro I realized that readers might wonder how I come up with my predictions. For NFL, NBA, and MLB picks I basically just go off of my own knowledge and feelings. For college football I’m mostly just going off my own knowledge and feelings, however, I always rely on Phil Steele’s invaluable CFB preview to learn about some of the smaller conferences and for a refresher. And of course, we all rely on the recruiting/scouting services to tell us which new players to pay attention to and for spring/summer camp developments.
CBB is a different story. Because of players leaving early and all of the transfers and newcomers, I can’t even stay up on all of the teams from major conferences. The only people who can keep up with all of Division I CBB are the guys who get paid to do nothing but eat, sleep, and drink college basketball year round. And even then it would be tough. Obviously I retain knowledge from year to year, but on Halloween if you asked me to give you my opinion on how the Pac-12 would be this year I would struggle to write more than 2 paragraphs. It goes without saying that I wouldn’t have the slightest clue who was likely to make it to the Dance out of the America East Conference.
So, each year around mid-November I go out and buy all of my favorite CBB publications and I print out a slew of reports from sources on the internet and I just cram. It’s kind of strange that this method could not be any more different from my method for CFB, where I never use anything other than Steele’s preview. I should maybe say here that if it sounds like I’m plugging for Phil Steele here or something shady like that, don’t worry, I’m not. His college football preview is simply that good/indispensable.
Anyway, I end up using my own knowledge and feelings along with the picture I come up with from all of the different sources to make my best guesses at what the year will be like. So, no, I don’t scout the SWAC. What I do is scout all of the best reports done by guys who get paid to scout the SWAC. And that’s how I come up with my picks.
The format of these predictions is almost exactly the same as last year. I predicted the standings for all of the conferences; the conference champions; the tournament teams; and the national awards. I always predict win-loss records for the SEC teams only.
One thing I always like to point out is that when I make my CBB predictions I always assume that the regular season champs from the low-major conferences will also get the automatic bid to March Madness (in other words, win their conference tournament). We all know that this is highly unlikely but it makes it easier and it would really be silly for me to go through and guess which #7 seed with a .500 record will sneak into the Big Dance by knocking off the regular season champ.
Moving on, I predicted the POY for each conference and the four #1 seeds for the NCAA Tourney as usual. Once again this year I resisted the urge to predict the layout of the NCAA Tournament brackets. To be honest, it wasn’t that strong of an urge. There’s just no real reason to spend time deciding whether I think a team is a #8 or #9 seed. Furthermore, it would be a pain in the ass to keep up with all of the guidelines that the committee uses when coming up with the matchups as far as conference affiliation, location, etc. I stuck with my usual routine of picking the field of 68, the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight, the Final Four, the National Final, and the National Champion.
There is one other minor addition this year. This season there are a number of teams that are ineligible for their conference tournaments and for postseason tournaments. These bans are due either to restrictions regarding teams making the transition into Division I or to the NCAA’s new policies regarding academic standards. As shown below, these teams will be marked with asterisks.
By the way, as we all know, conference realignment has been an ongoing process over the last year or so and there are more changes to the conferences this year than normal (there will be plenty more in the years to come).
One final note: if the abbreviations for some team names seem inconsistent at times (for example: St. John’s and Saint Joseph’s), note that I went with each team’s preferred title. Actually that’s not entirely accurate. Sometimes I refused to play along (for example: I went with BYU instead of Brigham Young). For the most part it’s consistent.
2011-2012 College Basketball Predictions
· Conference champions in bold italics.
· At-large bid teams in bold.
· * denotes team ineligible for conference and postseason tournaments.
BCS High Majors
Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)
1. North Carolina
2. Duke
3. Florida State
4. Virginia
5. Miami
6. Virginia Tech
7. Clemson
8. North Carolina State
9. Maryland
10. Georgia Tech
11. Wake Forest
12. Boston College
Big East Conference
1. Connecticut
2. Syracuse
3. Louisville
4. Pittsburgh
5. Marquette
6. Cincinnati
7. West Virginia
8. Villanova
9. Georgetown
10. Notre Dame
11. Rutgers
12. St. John’s
13. Seton Hall
14. DePaul
15. South Florida
16. Providence
Big XII Conference
1. Baylor
2. Kansas
3. Missouri
4. Texas A&M
5. Oklahoma State
6. Oklahoma
7. Texas
8. Kansas State
9. Iowa State
10. Texas Tech
Big Ten Conference
1. Ohio State
2. Michigan
3. Michigan State
4. Purdue
5. Wisconsin
6. Illinois
7. Northwestern
8. Minnesota
9. Indiana
10. Iowa
11. Nebraska
12. Penn State
Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12)
1. California
2. Arizona
3. Washington
4. UCLA
5. Oregon
6. Stanford
7. USC
8. Arizona State
9. Oregon State
10. Washington State
11. Colorado
12. Utah
Southeastern Conference (SEC)
1. Kentucky (13-3)
2. Vanderbilt (12-4)
3. Alabama (11-5)
4. Florida (11-5)
5. Mississippi State (10-6)
6. Mississippi (9-7)
T7. Auburn (8-8)
T7. LSU (8-8)
9. Arkansas (7-9)
10. Tennessee (3-13)
T11. Georgia (2-14)
T11. South Carolina (2-14)
Non-BCS High Majors
Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10)
1. Xavier
2. Temple
3. Saint Louis
4. St. Bonaventure
5. George Washington
6. Charlotte
7. Saint Joseph’s
8. Duquesne
9. Massachusetts
10. Dayton
11. Richmond
12. Rhode Island
13. La Salle
14. Fordham
Conference USA (C-USA)
1. Memphis
2. Marshall
3. Central Florida
4. Tulsa
5. Rice
6. UAB
7. Southern Mississippi
8. East Carolina
9. SMU
10. UTEP
11. Tulane
12. Houston
Mid-American Conference (MAC)
East
1. Kent State
2. Akron
3. Miami (Ohio)
4. Buffalo
5. Bowling Green
6. Ohio
West
1. Western Michigan
2. Ball State
3. Central Michigan
4. Northern Illinois
5. Eastern Michigan
6. Toledo
Missouri Valley Conference (MVC)
1. Creighton
2. Indiana State
3. Wichita State
4. Drake
5. Northern Iowa
6. Evansville
7. Missouri State
8. Bradley
9. Illinois State
10. Southern Illinois
Mountain West Conference (MWC)
1. New Mexico
2. UNLV
3. San Diego State
4. Air Force
5. Colorado State
6. TCU
7. Wyoming
8. Boise State
Sun Belt Conference (SBC)
East
1. Florida Atlantic
2. Middle Tennessee State
3. Western Kentucky
4. Florida International
5. South Alabama
6. Troy
West
1. Arkansas State
2. Denver
3. Louisiana-Lafayette
4. North Texas
5. Arkansas-Little Rock
6. Louisiana-Monroe*
Western Athletic Conference (WAC)
1. Nevada
2. Utah State
3. New Mexico State
4. Hawaii
5. Idaho
6. San Jose State
7. Fresno State
8. Louisiana Tech
Mid-Majors
Big West Conference
1. Long Beach State
2. UC Santa Barbara
3. Cal Poly
4. Cal State Fullerton
5. UC Riverside
6. UC Davis
7. UC Irvine
8. Pacific
9. Cal State Northridge*
Colonial Athletic Association (CAA)
1. Virginia Commonwealth
2. James Madison
3. Drexel
4. George Mason
5. Old Dominion
6. Hofstra
7. Northeastern
8. UNC Wilmington
9. Delaware
10. William & Mary
11. Georgia State
12. Towson
Horizon League
1. Butler
2. Detroit
3. Cleveland State
4. Wisconsin-Milwaukee
5. Valparaiso
6. Wisconsin-Green Bay
7. Wright State
8. Loyola (Illinois)
9. Youngstown State
10. Illinois-Chicago
Southern Conference (SoCon)
North
1. Chattanooga
2. Appalachian State
3. Western Carolina
4. UNC Greensboro
5. Elon
6. Samford
South
1. Davidson
2. College of Charleston
3. Wofford
4. Furman
5. Georgia Southern
6. The Citadel
West Coast Conference (WCC)
1. Gonzaga
2. Saint Mary’s
3. BYU
4. San Francisco
5. Santa Clara
6. Loyola Marymount
7. Portland
8. Pepperdine
9. San Diego
Low Majors
America East Conference
1. Stony Brook
2. Boston University
3. Vermont
4. Albany
5. New Hampshire
6. Maine
7. Maryland-Baltimore County
8. Hartford
9. Binghamton
Atlantic Sun Conference (A-Sun)
1. Belmont
2. East Tennessee State
3. Jacksonville
4. North Florida
5. Kennesaw State
6. Lipscomb
7. Mercer
8. USC Upstate
9. Stetson
10. Florida Gulf Coast
Big Sky Conference
1. Weber State
2. Montana
3. Eastern Washington
4. Northern Colorado
5. Northern Arizona
6. Portland State
7. Montana State
8. Sacramento State
9. Idaho State
Big South Conference
1. UNC Asheville
2. Liberty
3. VMI
4. Coastal Carolina
5. Winthrop
6. High Point
7. Charleston Southern
8. Gardner-Webb
9. Presbyterian*
10. Campbell
11. Radford
Ivy League
1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Yale
4. Cornell
5. Pennsylvania
6. Columbia
7. Brown
8. Dartmouth
Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC)
1. Fairfield
2. Rider
3. Iona
4. Loyola (Maryland)
5. Saint Peter’s
6. Siena
7. Manhattan
8. Marist
9. Canisius
10. Niagara
Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC)
1. Morgan State
2. Hampton
3. Coppin State
4. Norfolk State
5. Bethune-Cookman
6. Howard
7. North Carolina A&T
8. North Carolina Central
9. Delaware State
10. Florida A&M
11. Maryland-Eastern Shore
12. South Carolina State
13. Savannah State
Northeast Conference (NEC)
1. Central Connecticut State
2. Long Island
3. Robert Morris
4. Wagner
5. Quinnipiac
6. Mount St. Mary’s
7. Bryant
8. Sacred Heart
9. St. Francis (New York)
10. St. Francis (Pennsylvania)
11. Monmouth
12. Fairleigh Dickinson
Ohio Valley Conference (OVC)
1. Austin Peay
2. Tennessee Tech
3. Murray State
4. Tennessee State
5. Morehead State
6. Southeast Missouri State
7. Tennessee-Martin
8. Eastern Kentucky
9. Eastern Illinois
10. Jacksonville State
11. Southern Illinois-Edwardsville
Patriot League
1. Bucknell
2. Lehigh
3. Holy Cross
4. Lafayette
5. Navy
6. Colgate
7. American
8. Army
Southland Conference (SLC)
East
1. Lamar
2. Southeastern Louisiana
3. Northwestern State
4. McNeese State
5. Central Arkansas
6. Nicholls State
West
1. Texas-Arlington
2. Texas-San Antonio
3. Stephen F. Austin
4. Texas State
5. Sam Houston State
6. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC)
1. Mississippi Valley State
2. Alabama State
3. Texas Southern
4. Jackson State
5. Alabama A&M
6. Grambling State*
7. Alcorn State
8. Arkansas-Pine Bluff
9. Prairie View A&M
10. Southern*
Summit League
1. Oral Roberts
2. Oakland
3. South Dakota State
4. IUPUI
5. IPFW
6. North Dakota State
7. Southern Utah
8. UMKC
9. South Dakota*
10. Western Illinois
Non-Automatic Qualifiers
Great West Conference (GWC)
1. Utah Valley
2. New Jersey Tech
3. North Dakota
4. Texas-Pan American
5. Houston Baptist
6. Chicago State
Independents
1. Longwood
2. Seattle
3. Cal State Bakersfield
Conference Champions
ACC: North Carolina
America East: Stony Brook
A-10: Xavier
A-Sun: Belmont
Big Ten: Ohio State
Big XII: Baylor
Big East: Connecticut
Big Sky: Weber State
Big South: UNC Asheville
Big West: Long Beach State
CAA: Virginia Commonwealth
C-USA: Memphis
GWC: Utah Valley (non-AQ)
Horizon: Butler
Independents: Longwood (non-AQ)
Ivy: Harvard
MAAC: Fairfield
MAC: Kent State
MEAC: Morgan State
MVC: Creighton
MWC: New Mexico
NEC: Central Connecticut State
OVC: Austin Peay
Pac-12: California
Patriot: Bucknell
SEC: Kentucky
SoCon: Davidson
SLC: Texas-Arlington
Summit: Oral Roberts
SBC: Florida Atlantic
SWAC: Mississippi Valley State
WAC: Nevada
WCC: Gonzaga
At-Large Tournament Teams
Duke
Florida State
Virginia
Miami
Virginia Tech
Temple
Saint Louis
Syracuse
Louisville
Pittsburgh
Marquette
Cincinnati
West Virginia
Villanova
Kansas
Missouri
Texas A&M
Michigan
Michigan State
Purdue
Wisconsin
Illinois
Marshall
Indiana State
UNLV
Arizona
Washington
UCLA
Vanderbilt
Alabama
Florida
Mississippi State
Mississippi
Saint Mary’s
Utah State
James Madison
Detroit
#1 Seeds
North Carolina
Duke
Connecticut
Kentucky
Sweet Sixteen
North Carolina
Duke
Xavier
Connecticut
Syracuse
Louisville
Pittsburgh
Baylor
Kansas
Ohio State
Memphis
California
Kentucky
Vanderbilt
Florida
Nevada
Elite Eight
North Carolina
Duke
Connecticut
Syracuse
Ohio State
Kentucky
Vanderbilt
Florida
Final Four
North Carolina
Syracuse
Ohio State
Kentucky
National Final
North Carolina
Kentucky
National Champion
North Carolina
Conference Player of the Year Awards
ACC: Harrison Barnes-North Carolina
America East: Darryl Partin-Boston University
A-10: Tu Holloway-Xavier
A-Sun: Markeith Cummings-Kennesaw State
Big Ten: Jared Sullinger-Ohio State
Big XII: Perry Jones-Baylor
Big East: Ashton Gibbs-Pittsburgh
Big Sky: Damian Lillard-Weber State
Big South: Stan Okoye-VMI
Big West: Orlando Johnson-UC Santa Barbara
CAA: Bradford Burgess-Virginia Commonwealth
C-USA: Arsalan Kazemi-Rice
GWC: Isiah Williams-Utah Valley
Horizon: Ray McCallum Jr.-Detroit
Independents: Antwan Carter-Longwood
Ivy: Greg Mangano-Yale
MAAC: Mike Glover-Iona
MAC: Justin Greene-Kent State
MEAC: Kyle O’Quinn-Norfolk State
MVC: Doug McDermott-Creighton
MWC: Drew Gordon-New Mexico
NEC: Ken Horton-Central Connecticut
OVC: Kevin Murphy-Tennessee Tech
Pac-12: Jorge Gutierrez-California
Patriot: CJ McCollum-Lehigh
SEC: Terrence Jones-Kentucky
SoCon: Omar Carter-Appalachian State
SLC: Patrick Richard-McNeese State
Summit: Reggie Hamilton-Oakland
SBC: Tony Mitchell-North Texas
SWAC: Jenirro Bush-Jackson State
WAC: Dario Hunt-Nevada
WCC: Kevin Foster-Santa Clara
National Awards
Player of the Year: Jared Sullinger-Ohio State
Defensive Player of the Year: John Henson-North Carolina
Freshman Player of the Year: Anthony Davis-Kentucky
Coach of the Year: John Calipari-Kentucky
1st Team All-American
Guard: Jordan Taylor-Wisconsin
Guard: Jeremy Lamb-Connecticut
Forward: Harrison Barnes-North Carolina
Forward: Terrence Jones-Kentucky
Center: Jared Sullinger-Ohio State
2nd Team All-American
Guard: Tu Holloway-Xavier
Guard: John Jenkins-Vanderbilt
Guard: Ashton Gibbs-Pittsburgh
Forward: John Henson-North Carolina
Forward: Perry Jones-Baylor
3rd Team All-American
Guard: Scoop Jardine-Syracuse
Guard: Austin Rivers-Duke
Forward: Draymond Green-Michigan State
Forward: Anthony Davis-Kentucky
Center: Jamychal Green-Alabama
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