We here at NAIA Hoops Report are pumped to welcome Red Banner Roundball on board to the site. Red Banner Roundball has a passion for putting together projections for the NAIA National Tournament. He has been doing it for years and now that the NAIA is 1 Division we have teamed up with them to help bring you a NAIA Bracketology Report. Red Banner will act as our “Joey Brackets” per say as we continue to look for ways to bring you the best NAIA Hoops Coverage around!
We will start this article by saying that this is meant to be a fun article and by no means do we expect to be 100% accurate with the projections. We have done a lot of research on auto bids, ARC’s, RPI’s and SoS’s and to be quite honest with you, it is difficult to understand it all. A lot of the coaches don’t even seem to really know what the National Tournament will look like, or what guidelines will be used. Some believe that the RPI and SoS will be more heavily looked at in seeding then the National Rankings themselves. Others believe the ARC rankings that come out next week will be a more true picture of how seeding will go. All in all, there seems to be a lot still unknown about the NAIA National Tournament. We will see how it all plays out, and should have a true picture of what ARC’s are going to look like on the Men’s side at some point this week. Until then mind as well still have some fun with it!!!
The Bracket
The Pods are based off of a few things:
1. We based the ARC’s off of what we know was released from the Women’s side last week. We are assuming the men’s ARC’s will be the same, if not we will adjust them next week.
2. We made it so that no conference would have two teams facing one another to make it to the Sweet 16 in Kansas City. With that, some of the ARC’s overlap with one team going to a completely different Pod not aligned with their Pods.
3. Records for bracket were used prior to Thursday’s games.
4. From what we know, it sounds like it’s possible that the Final 16 teams will be reseeded headed into Kansas City!
5. We used ARC, RPI and SoS data in order to take our best guess at how these games would play out!
6. Can’t emphasize enough that the information in this article is put together strictly off of what we have been told. Nothing has been officially released yet on if what we are hearing is correct or not!
ARC Rankings
GREAT LAKES
Mid-South Conference
River States Conference
MIDWEST
Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference
NORTH/CENTRAL
North Star Athletic Conference
SOUTHEAST
Southern States Athletic Conference
The Sun Conference
SOUTHWEST
Red River Athletic Conference
Sooner Athletic Conference
WEST
Based off of how the Women’s ARC’s played out we went ahead and based the Men’s off of the same breakdown. Hard to imagine the guys doing anything different, as these make the most sense location wise. If this is the case we have some big time power ARC’s on the Men’s side.
The one to watch will be the Great Lakes. You have two of the best leagues in the NAIA in the same Pod with the Crossroads and Mid-South. Plus some intriguing teams from the River States and WHAC. This will make for some really interesting matchups inside both Pods.
The Southwest is also one to watch out for. How they split up teams from the RRAC and the Sooner will be interesting! We could be seeing some matchups between two ranked teams with a chance to go to Kansas City on the line.
All of the ARC’s have intrigue to them in several different ways. As much as it sucks to have a regional tourney for each Pod instead of basing it off of seeding, it does make for some really fun potential matchups within the Pods still.
Bid Breakdown
Again, this is all speculative from the information that we were able to gather. A lot could change next week as we continue to get new information in on what the National Tournament will look like. As for now, this is what we will role with. The one change to this is that the River States has announced that with no regular season conference games counting that they will do a randomized league tournament with both teams who make the Championship game getting the automatic bids to the National Tournament.
As goes it, this is how we came up with the 48 National Tournament Qualifiers. Again, this is meant to be fun and for a more in-depth look at how the National Tournament could shape up!
This doesn’t take into account the games that took place after Wednesday. We will have a new updated bracket and break down next Sunday! For now have fun and enjoy!
