Bracket Watch: A Preseason Projection of 2019’s Field of 68

With Selection Sunday just 19 short weeks away, we used our preseason rankings to build the first bracket of many this winter.

Selection Sunday for the 2019 NCAA men’s basketball tournament is 19 weeks away. That’s 19 weeks of the best basketball drama the country has to offer, from holiday tournaments to interconference challenges, to the night-in, night-out grind of conference play. Nineteen weeks of upsets, upstarts, and buzzer beaters. Nineteen weeks that will ultimately cut 353 teams down to 68, setting the stage for the single greatest sporting event that exists at any level.

It all has to start somewhere, and for us at SI.com, it starts with our preseason bracket. Using our comprehensive rankings that slotted every team in the country from No. 1 to No. 353, we built our first bracket of the 2018–19 season. Why put out a bracket so early? Well, is it really too early to start talking No. 1 seeds, last four in, and first four out? Exactly. We didn’t think so.

Teams in bold are projected to receive their conference’s automatic bids.

Ready for tip-off? Explore the rest of SI.com’s college basketball season preview to get everything you need for the next five months of hoops: conference previews, a women’s hoops primer and stories on the season’s most talked-about teams and characters.