Wisconsin Basketball: Bracketology Projections

It’s just over halfway through the season and NCAA Tournament projections have begun. What are the experts predicting for the Wisconsin Basketball program come March?

The way the season started, you’d be forgiven if you thought the Wisconsin Badgers wouldn’t be partaking in March Madness for the second time in three years. Though they pulled off an exciting win verse Marquette, their other four early games against tougher opponents – St. Mary’s, Richmond, New Mexico, and N.C. State – all resulted in losses and left them 4-4 after eight games.

Things have turned around since then, however. Wisconsin would rattle off wins in seven of their next nine games and currently sit with an 11-6 overall record. That includes a 4-2 record in the Big Ten, tying them for second place, and wins over ranked opponents in three of their last four games.

Though currently unranked in the AP and Coaches’ Top 25 polls, the Badgers are 23rd in the most recent NET rankings, which were introduced last year. During the 2018-19 season, N.C. State with a NET ranking of 33, was the team with the highest NET ranking not to make the NCAA Tournament. Is all of that enough to make the experts think that Wisconsin will be back in the tournament later this spring? Let’s take a look.

Joe Lunardi – ESPN

Lunardi has the Badgers as a No. 6 seed out of the Midwest region, playing the No. 11 Liberty Flames in the Round of 64 as of January 17th. He had Wisconsin as a No. 7 seed in his last two updates. Lunardi has a whopping 12 Big Ten teams making the tournament.

Jerry Palm – CBS Sports

Palm has the Badgers as a No. 7 seed in the East region, playing the No. 10 seed Texas Tech Red Raiders. He had Wisconsin listed as one of his First Four Out in last week’s update, but two wins over ranked Big Ten opponents in a week is bound to improve your status quickly.

Dave Ommen – NBC Sports

Ommen has the Badgers listed as one of his last four in. On top of that, he has them playing in one of the play-in games, against the Virginia Cavaliers for a No. 11 seed. The winner would then go on to play the No. 6 Creighton Bluejays in the South region. However, his projections haven’t been updated since January 10th so he’ll likely have Wisconsin with a much more respectable seed in the near future.

Team Rankings

This site does their projections a little different. Instead of projecting out a bracket, they use an algorithm to predict a final record and seed, but no actual matchup. They have the Badgers projected for an 18-13 final record and a No. 11 seed. That would pit them against one of their predicted No. 6 seeds of Kentucky, Maryland, Northern Iowa, or Houston. Since the committee avoids conference matchups in the Round of 64, you can cross Maryland off of that list.

Stay tuned for further bracketology updates as the season winds down as we will add more projections as they become available.