Blogging the Bracket, College Basketball Bracketology

Just as I was wrapping up a post building my own brackets for these events, I see ESPN released a whole bunch of early season event fields today. I've used my lunch hour to update the Early Season Events page. And I'll have to rework my post to something more retrospective next week. Lots of interesting nuggets in these brackets, most notably that ESPN has included non-bracketed games for its events on the printable brackets.

UNC Asheville slides in to replace Southern Mississippi, who was listed in previous lineups. N.C. State will be a heavy favorite in this one, but watch out for Tennessee. I've updated the Early Season Events page with this info and a few other minor nuggets that have popped up over the past few days.

Belmont is the only NCAA Tournament team in the 2012 field, while Oral Roberts is the lone of the seven Division I teams that made the NIT. Of the other five, just Loyola Marymount closed the 2011-12 campaign with a winning record. Once again, Alaska-Anchorage was unable to secure a Power Six conference team for its tournament, with UC Riverside, Charlotte, Northeastern, and Texas State rounding out the field.

Per Pacific's release about its participation in the Anaheim Classic of all places. The Minutemen's inclusion would keep an A-10 team in the field after Xavier's move to the Southern California event.