With eight regular season games left to play, Alabama Basketball is a 99.9% lock to make the NCAA Tournament. There is little or no chance that the Selection Committee punishes the Crimson Tide for playing five games with Charles Bediako.
Except for having a healthy roster, nothing matters more to Big Dance success than seeding. The difference between a three-seed and a seven-seed is significant. Going back to 1985, 7-seeds average .89 wins, 3-seeds average 1.84 wins. The difference is more pronounced between 2-seeds, which average 2.34 wins, and 10-seeds at .60 wins. Reaching the Elite Eight has been 25.6% for 3-seeds, compared to 6.3% for 7-seeds.
In current Bracketology, Alabama Basketball is a projected 5-seed. Alabama basketball fans should find no reason to complain. In individual games, the Crimson Tide can be very good and absolutely bad.
Bracketology is fun, but it is important to remember that no source has ever produced a high level of accuracy season after season. Joe Lunardi does a great job presenting frequent updates. Lesser-known bracketologists often out-predict Lundardi and other national media sources. The Bracket Project's Bracket Matrix is valuable because it averages over 100 participating bracket sources every season.
The sources I will frequently cite this season are Lunardi, the Bracket Matrix, Bauertology, and Bart Torvik's T-Ranketology. Three of the four currently have Alabama Basketball as a 5-seed. Torvik states his calculations are predictive of how teams would be ranked on Selection Sunday. DJ Bauer has Alabama as a 4-seed in the East Regional, playing in Portland against UNC-Wilmington, with the winner taking on the winner of 5-seed Texas Tech vs. 12-seed Liberty. The Duke Blue Devils are projected as the East's 1-seed.
In the Bracket Matrix, Florida is a 3-seed, and Vanderbilt is a 4-seed. Alabama and Tennessee are 5-seeds; Arkansas is a 6-seed, Kentucky a 7-seed, Auburn an 8-seed, Texas A&M and Georgia are 9-seeds. The Missouri Tigers are a Bubble team. Joe Lunardi has Texas in the field, with Missouri included in his First Four Out.