Miami basketball breaking into bracketology upper echelon
The 66-64 win by the Miami basketball team over Virginia last week has the Miami basketball team pushing into the upper echelon of college basketball. Miami is the second highest-rated ACC team in the polls this week only behind Virginia. The Hurricanes are 14th in the AP Top 25 and 16th in the coaches’ poll.
After their game against Vermont was canceled on Wednesday, Miami will begin their 17-game stretch of ACC games to finish the regular season at Notre Dame on Friday afternoon. Despite the high ranking of the Miami basketball team, the Hurricanes are only ranked 46th in the NCAA Net Ratings.
Miami is garnering a lot of respect nationally from bracketologists. The Hurricanes hold the final six seed in the Bracket Matrix consensus bracketology seedings. Projections for Miami vary widely from a four through 10 seed. Three of the most veteran bracketologists illustrated the differences in the Miami projections.
Mike DeCourcy of Fox Sports projects Miami to have a four seed in the East and play 13th-seeded Iona and Rick Pitino. The resident bracketologist Joe Lunardi of ESPN has Miami as a seventh seed in the Midwest region versus 10th-seeded Michigan State. The Spartans beat Miami in the first round of the 2017 NCAA Tournament.
First look at our Bracket Forecast with @tsnmike 😎 pic.twitter.com/j538xTzVkn
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) December 27, 2022
Jerry Palm of CBS Sports projects Miami as a nine-seed in the East versus eighth-seed Penn State. Miami moved down one spot from ninth to 10th in the CBS Sports power rankings after not playing since the win over Virginia on December 19. Miami is 45th in the ESPN Basketball Power Index.
The Hurricanes’ strength of schedule is 104th nationally. That should improve as Miami plays its last 17 games of the regular season plus at least one game in the conference tournament against ACC teams. The strength of record for Miami is eighth nationally. The SOR measures how difficult it is for a team to reach its record.
According to TeamRankings.Com Miami has improved its NCAA Tournament chances the third most over the last three weeks. Miami currently has a 66.7 percent chance to receive an NCAA Tournament bid per Team Rankings. Three weeks ago Miami was at 41.4 percent a 25.2 percent improvement.
Miami has its highest ranking since 2017. dark. Next
Team Rankings projects that Miami is most likely to be a six seed at 10 percent. Miami has a 36.1 percent chance to advance to the second round and a 14 percent chance for the regional semifinals. Team rankings projects Miami to finish with 22.4 wins and 7.6 losses with an ACC
record of 13.4 – 6.6.