2025 NCAA Tournament Bracket Watch: Big Ten and SEC are both loaded, but only one with top talent - The Athletic

This season’s lone guesses-only version of Bracket Watch was in late to my editor for a familiar reason: The math wasn’t mathing.

That’s a common affliction of the sportswriter, and this one kept going through each automatic bid and not figuring out why the total was 31 instead of the necessary 32. It’s 32 auto bids and 36 at-large bids, right? Which league of slightly less prominence and a claim to one bid was missing? Got the Big Sky … got the Ivy … got the MEAC … got the Southland …

The answer, of course, is that the Pac-12 is down to the Cougs, the Beavs and the shots (on media day turned happy hour). That will change in 2026-27 when Gonzaga, Boise State and four others join and return the league to the eight teams necessary for an automatic bid. And that’s a good reason for a quick review of other things that are different heading into the 2024-25 season.

GO DEEPER

After a quarter-century as the WCC's top dog, what awaits Gonzaga in the Pac-12?

Tony Bennett retired from Virginia, suddenly. John Calipari has moved from Kentucky to Arkansas, loading up with DJ Wagner (Kentucky), Johnell Davis (Florida Atlantic) and Jonas Aidoo (Tennessee) in the process. Duke’s Jeremy Roach is at Baylor, Arizona’s Oumar Ballo is at Indiana and Wisconsin’s AJ Storr is at Kansas.

Advertisement

UConn is different, but again scary and title-worthy. Kansas may have things figured out on the shooting front. Alabama looks like the most talented team in the country. Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah are now in the Big 12, which makes Sean Elliott, James Harden, Chauncey Billups and Keith Van Horn Big 12 legends (though Elliott played when it was the Big 8, and by the way, Billups actually did play in the Big 12).

Those Cougs and Beavs are getting an early taste of Gonzaga while competing in the WCC, as Stanford and Cal go bicoastal with their ACC membership. Thanks, football! UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington make the Big Ten a tidy 18 schools while Texas and Oklahoma bring the SEC to 16.

Those two leagues, not surprisingly, lead the preseason Bracket Watch with 10 bids apiece. They’re the rich kids of the bunch, bringing lobster rolls to the lunch table while everyone else chews on Salisbury steak. But they are far from basketball equals right now.

The Big Ten’s first entry on the seed list is Zach Edey-less Purdue at No. 15. Indiana has the most talent on paper, but right now it appears likely the league will extend its national championship drought — which dates to Tom Izzo and Michigan State winning it in the year 2000.

Five SEC teams are seeded higher than Purdue, and you can make a case for all five — Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas A&M — as title hopefuls. And though the Big 12 comes up a bid short with nine, it has the highest concentration of contenders. Kansas, Houston, Iowa State, Baylor and newbie Arizona all land in the top dozen.

Next time on Bracket Watch, after a few weeks of the season, we’ll have actual data to put together a field, and some of these preseason impressions will already be looking shaky. That doesn’t mean you have to wait until then to start complaining about them. See you in the comments!

(Photos of Mark Sears, Alex Karaban: Bob Donnan, Brian Fluharty / Imagn Images)

Subscribe to The Athletic for in-depth coverage of your favorite players, teams, leagues and clubs. Try a week on us.

Joe Rexrode is a senior writer for The Athletic covering college football. He previously worked at The Tennessean, Detroit Free Press and Lansing State Journal, and covered the Pyeongchang, Rio and London Olympics for USA Today. Follow Joe on Twitter @joerexrode