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.

Per WCFCourier.com, Colorado, Indiana, and New Mexico will be part of the major bracket at this event, after they each host two mid- or low-majors.

The Racers' logo is now on the tournament website. The Thanksgiving weekend event is now back to the full complement of eight teams.

This page now includes info on the Chicago Invitational Challenge, Las Vegas Classic (Christmas-time tournament), South Padre Invitational, and the Legends Classic.

Northeastern will be the 7th team heading to Honolulu to join host Hawai'i in this tournament.

Well, seven of the eight teams were. Not on the list are two teams mentioned in previous media reports, Georgia, and NC State. Sidney Lowe had committed the Wolfpack to this tournament, according to this Andy Katz blog post, but they aren't in the field, at least not yet.