Welcome to the conclusion of my Early Bracketology series, which features the final region, the Southwest. This region temporarily replaces the Midwest, which will be back in 2012.

If you missed the East, West, and Southeast, just click those links to see those teams' capsules.

After the jump, it's time to take a look at the final 17 teams in my preseason bracket, along with some closing stats and comments.

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Since the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee gave up the ill-conceived idea of naming regionals after cities in time for the 2007 Tournament, the four regions have been constant--East, South, Midwest, and West. That changes this year, as the South and Midwest take a one year break. In their place, we'll have the Southeast, with its regional in New Orleans, and Southwest, which wraps up in San Antonio. In my preseason projection, I have the winners of these two regions meeting in the National Semifinals.

After the jump, it's time to take a look at the region I project will hold the nation's second overall seed, the Southeast.

If you missed them, here are links to my East  Region and West Region capsules.

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Yesterday, I began this series with a look at the East Region, featuring my preseason number one overall seed, the Duke Blue Devils.

After the jump, it's time to take a look at the region I project will be opposite the East at the Final Four--the home of the No. 4 top seed--the West Region. Just a reminder, these teams are presented just as they are in an actual bracket: the No. 1 seed's pod is at the top, and the second seed's grouping is at the bottom.

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Even though it's an exercise in futility (as I illustrated in Monday's post), I've decided to post a preseason bracket for the second season in a row, split into a series of four posts, one for each region.

Personally, this exercise served two purposes. Firstly, it gave me the chance to work with the new 68-team bracket. Secondly, it serves as an abbreviated season preview, since I wasn't able to do a post for each conference this season, like I did in 2009-10. Unfortunately, as I've been battling the office bug du jour over the past few days, the team capsules will be shorter than originally anticipated.

This series of posts will serve as a preview for SB Nation Bracketology's new format, though I probably won't use team logos on a weekly basis, and I'll also have the weekly bracket in one post instead of four. Basically, my goal is to provide a quick capsule of what a team did in the past week, what's coming up in the next week, and in the case of the likely one-bid leagues, provide a quick status of the league races, as they develop.

Teams are presented in their individual pods, much like following an actual bracket. That means the top seed's pod will come first, followed by No. 4's, then third seed's, with the seed No, 2's group at the bottom of the entry.

When I present my first bracket of the actual season, after the Thanksgiving weekend tournaments and ACC/Big Ten Challenge--likely on Friday. December 3--I'll recap my rules for determining auto bids during the various stages of the season. Right now, they're just guesses.

Before I get into the teams, a couple of general trends I noticed.

• Thanks to both Western sites, Denver and Tucson, being Thursday/Saturday ones, the NCAA's goal to have each "First Four" doubleheader feature both an at-large and auto bid matchup is going to be difficult to meet, if they intend on keeping the integrity of the bracket intact. With three of the four top seeds in this projection playing on Friday, it's easy to send the auto bid teams somewhere. However, I have the Last Four In playing for spots on the 12 and 13 lines. Since the 4 seeds all play on Thursday/Saturday out West, logistical issues are possible.
• There is a First (Opening) Round game in each region. I did not assign days (Tuesday or Wednesday) to these, however.
• Three Midwestern sites, Chicago, Cleveland, and Tulsa, and the one in the Carolinas, Charlotte, slated for Friday/Sunday games, combined with the likely strength of the ACC, Big Ten, and Big 12 means most teams on the top 3 lines are likely to be playing on these two days.

After the jump, it's time to take a look at the home of the number one overall seed, the East Region.

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Yesterday, I took a look at how the Coaching Carousel played out at the end of last season. Today, it's time to highlight the coaches who, for one reason or another, may find themselves visiting Career Builder (or their friendly neighborhood search firm) after, or during, this campaign.

After the jump, it's time to fire up the hot seat, starting with the coaches who have bigger problems than the won-loss record.

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As has been the case since the dawn of time, or at least since college basketball became big business, it was a busy offseason for the coaching carousel. Starting with Glen Miller's firing at Penn on December 14 of 2009 and ending with Illinois-Chicago's hire of Howard Moore on August 20, 54 programs changed head coaches. Programs in America's largest city and the conference that most prominently bears our country's name were especially active in making changes.

After the jump, I'll take a quick look at some of the biggest hires and most interesting stories from the coaching offseason.

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With three more teams in the field and a new "First Round" in the 2011 NCAA Tournament, I figured it would be a good idea to review some of the procedures, new and old, that will go into the selection and seeding process for the first 68-team tournament.

Though a few things will change about the Tournament, particularly during the first week, most things will remain the same. More details follow after the jump.

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As a new week begins (two weeks until tip-off, everyone!), I'll present the second half of my two-part series on intriguing bracket teams after the jump.

Click here for Part 1.

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