The top of the bracket is crowding together. Alabama's loss at Tennessee on Wednesday night dropped the Crimson Tide down to the third overall seed, behind Purdue and Kansas on the top line of the bracket in Thursday's Bracketology update.
The loss was costly for Alabama, which was the No. 2 overall seed entering the game, because if it had won, it would have jumped the Boilermakers for the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament bracket projection.
Houston is up to fourth overall and the final No. 1 seed, getting a boost after Texas lost at Texas Tech on Monday night.
Bracketology top seeds
Check out Palm's latest bracket, full field of 68 and all the teams on the bubble on the Bracketology hub.
SEC sneaking teams in
The bottom of the bracket is owned by the SEC. Four of the eight teams from that conference in this updated bracket are among the last six teams in the field.
One of those, Texas A&M, makes its regular-season debut in the bracket. The Aggies have an odd resume. They have done well in the conference, although they have yet to play Alabama or Tennessee. Texas A&M also played a dreadful non-conference schedule and took two Quadrant 4 losses. The Aggies are the last team in the field in this update. It is going to take better wins than the one at Auburn, their best so far, to get to a position where they can feel comfortable on Selection Sunday.
Bracket gets official update Saturday
The NCAA Tournament selection committee will reveal its top 16 teams through Friday's games in the annual "NCAA March Madness Men's Bracket Preview" show Saturday at 12:30 p.m. ET on CBS.
That show is always enlightening because we get a snapshot of what the committee thinks of these teams so far, and we get a little information about what they like and do not like about the resumes of some of those teams. There are always a couple of surprises and bits of useful information. Also, that top 16 is no longer accurate as soon as the show is over and more games get started.
There will be a bracket update immediately after the committee reveals its top 16 seeds. That said, with Thursday's bracket update coming a day before the usual Friday update, several teams in Monday's bracket have not played this week yet. That just means there was not much in the way of dramatic movement. However, resumes are not static when a team does not play because its opponents will play, but you typically do not see a lot of movement among teams that were idle.
