Final Bracketology of 2022 Wrap-Up
By: Ethan Hennessy
By: Ethan Hennessy
Another season is in the books! This year was challenging but successful. It was the second year in a row I got a completely correct CBI field! I was quite proud of myself for that one because I pieced it all together at 7:40 PM EST on Sunday over an hour before the NIT Selection Show. My correct CBI field hinged on Drake not being selected by the NIT which fortunate for me they were not. On the Basketball Classic side, it was the latest the bracket was ever released (5:30 PM on Monday) and I really had to work to figure out the teams because the committee it seemed like struggled to get teams. In the end, I missed one team for the Basketball Classic. I had Western Illinois in the field up until late Sunday night when I received information they would not be participating. Based on that I took them out, and when it was announced mid-day Monday that they would be playing at UTEP in the first round of the Basketball Classic they were not listed on my website therefore I give myself a miss on that one. However, I still had my best accuracy for that tournament to date over the five years I have been doing this!
Entering 2022 I had a career 87% accuracy rate (111/128). Adding on the 36/37 from this year that brings my new career total to 89% (147/165).
Yearly breakdown
2018: 75% (27/36)
2019: 93% (39/42)
*2020: 88% minimum *It was later determined three days from Selection Sunday (at the time of the cancelations) I had already correctly predicted 37 of the would-be 42 teams confirmed in the fields.
2021: 100% (8/8) Perfect CBI
2022: 97% (36/37) Perfect CBI
Thank you for following along on the journey! It was incredible to see the popularity of this bracketology I had over 5,900 views on Selection Sunday alone and over 14,000 in March. Finally, a thank you to the coaches, sources, administrators, and other journalists who helped me with tips and piecing everything together. Not everybody is willing to talk but to those of you that were (you know who you are) I appreciate it, and what I do would be much harder without you, so thank you! The final fields of both tournaments can be found below.
College Basketball Invitational (16 Teams Daytona Beach Florida March 19-23)
- Northern Colorado (20-15 Big Sky)
- UNC Asheville (16-14 Big South)
- UNC Wilmington (23-9 CAA)
- Middle Tennessee State (23-10 CUSA)
- Rice (16-16 CUSA)
- Florida Atlantic (19-14 CUSA)
- Fort Wayne (21-11 Horizon)
- Ohio (24-9 MAC)
- Drake (24-10 MVC)
- Boston (21-12 Patriot)
- VMI (16-15 SoCon)
- UNC Greensboro (17-14 SoCon)
- Troy (20-11 Sun Belt)
- California Baptist (18-14 WAC)
- Abilene Christian (22-9 WAC)
- Stephen F Austin (22-9 WAC)
Basketball Classic (32 Teams Campus Sites)
Confirmed Matchups
USC Upstate at App State
Detroit at FGCU
Merrimack at UMBC
UMES at Coastal Carolina
Kent State at Southern Utah
SELA at South Alabama
Eastern Washington at Fresno State
New Orleans at Portland
Western Illinois at UTEP
Morgan State at Youngstown State
Wofford (first round bye)
Happening Hoops 
1 Comment
Thanks for all your hard work on this. It was a lot of fun to look through your teams and figure out where teams would end up.
Teams I wish we could see some more:
– Hofstra (won 21 games, beat Arkansas in an almost road game, lost at Houston in OT and at Maryland by 2)
– Manhattan (15-15 and look great 15 times and terrible 15 times; hard to figure out; blew lots of big leads, particularly at home; Jose Perez is a great payer, but got an early double tech in a game they had under control and ended up losing)
– St. John’s (probably most responsible for keeping Xavier out of NCAA Tournament; looked much better late in conference season than early)
– Stony Brook (had a strong season with a bump in the middle when banned from conference tourney)
– Temple (Dunn and Strickland are fun to watch; looked impressive when they were on their game like win over SMU; missed a chance to make a statement, when Villanova game got cancelled by COVID)
– Bellarmine (seem to have declined out of spite; too bad we don’t get to see what they can do)
– Liberty (no real statement win on the resume, but a solid 22-win season)
– Jacksonville (21 wins; won 7 of the last 9 and 10 of their last 13)
– Weber State (dealt with injuries down the stretch; 18-5 start but ended up 21-12)
– Montana (really came apart down the stretch, but I like them anyway)
– Winthrop (won 10 of their last 11)
– Louisiana Tech (there had to be somewhere to go for this 24-win team)
– Northern Kentucky (won 14 of their last 17 games and got to the Horizon final to turn around a 6-9 record)
– Oakland (lost 4 of their last 6, 7 of their last 11, but still had 20 wins)
– Monmouth (had a 4-game skid in December-January; lost by only 5 at St. John’s and played Iona tight twice; 21 wins)
– Kent State (went to MAC final with 14-game winning streak but doomed by tasteless social media post)
– Wagner (had to play at Seton Hall without two high-scoring starters because of COVID; better team than they showed in NEC final; would like to see them put that 21-6 record against a quality opponent)
– Morehead State (thought they looked solid in Ohio Valley tournament, beating Belmont and hanging tough with Murray State; 23 wins)
– Navy (showed a lot of guts in road win at Army; Patriot semifinal win against Boston U was a classic; 21 wins)
– Furman (pushed Chattanooga to the limit in SoCon final; very solid team with 22 wins)
– North Dakota State (solidly the second best team in the Summit League; 23 wins)
– Troy (inconsistent down the stretch; bad loss to Louisiana in Sun Belt tournament; 20 wins)
– Seattle (WAC regular-season co-champs; 23 wins)
– Stephen F. Austin (WAC regular-season co-champs; 22 wins)
– Grand Canyon (won 5 of last 6, 9 of last 12; played New Mexico State tough in WAC tournament; 23 wins)
Several teams on this list are better than many of the teams actually playing in the postseason. How do we convince them that we’d like to see them play next year?
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