Sowing Seeds...

Four years ago my favorite YouTube channel, Secret Base (before the rebranding, but whatever) published a video about the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

Here's the video, part of Jon Bois's currently dormant Chart Party series:

I'll be honest, I didn't care much for this particular video when I first watched it. I felt like it was forced out because the sponsors demanded a video about March Madness. One point, however, stuck with me.

In the video, Jon suggested the NCAA should just re-seed the tournament between rounds, claiming that by not re-seeding some teams that should advance further end up getting eliminated earlier because they play better teams before - in his opinion - they should. While watching March Madness this year I revisited this idea. 

Considering the current format of the tournament, it would be a logistical nightmare to attempt to re-seed after every single round. I do think, however, there's a possibility that reseeding between weekends could be feasible. After all, teams that advance to the Sweet 16 already play in a different city than their first and second round games; likewise, the Final Four and Championship are in a different locale than the regional semis and finals.

With this in mind, I decided to see what a re-seeded tournament would look like based on what's happened so far in 2022. 

The methodology

I used two different mindsets in deciding how to re-seed this year's group of regional semifinalists. The first, probably more logistical approach, was to keep each set of four teams in the regions into which they were originally seeded on Selection Sunday. This means that, for instance, Purdue, UCLA, North Carolina and St. Peter's would all remain in the East region (the region that likely had the most unexpected first weekend results this year). 

Re-seeding within regions would provide little change from the current Sweet 16 matchups. In fact, just half of the regional matchups change at all if the teams get re-seeded this way.

To create more difference (and some incredibly interesting Sweet 16 pairings), I used the overall seeding at the start of the tournament to re-re-seed the field. In other words, the top four remaining seeds are now the top seeds in each region. With the top three seeds all remaining, there's not much change to begin with, but Villanova changes from the second seed in Kansas's region to the top seed in its own. 

The full re-seed sorts teams much more competitively in my opinion, and since it was Jon's suggestion, I'll go ahead and assume it does so in his opinion too. Following are the results of this experiment, by tournament region, as well as some thoughts to go along with the new seeds. Enjoy.

West Region

Drew Timme and Gonzaga remain the top overall seed. (Ezra Shaw // Getty)

In the only region with each of the top four seeds still in it, both Sweet 16 matchups remain the same. This isn't interesting.

The second re-seed brings St. Peter's and UCLA in from the East and Providence from the Midwest. This, of course, pits the best team in the tournament against the lowest-seed team left. That makes Gonzaga's road to the Final Four significantly easier, especially considering the Bulldogs' Elite Eight matchup will be against either Duke or Texas Tech. UCLA-Providence would be an intriguing matchup against teams both currently seeded fourth.

South Region

Christian Koloko dropped two double doubles - with season highs in blocks and assists against Wright State - to help Arizona advance to the second weekend. (Ronald Martinez // Getty)

Re-seeding within this region, unlike with the West, swaps the two matchups. In my opinion, it makes the South's Sweet 16 a little less interesting, but not much.

Like in the intra-regional re-seeding, Arizona and Michigan remain the 1-4 matchup in the South. That Purdue-Arkansas pairing looks incredibly appealing to me, though. As we'll continue to see, however, re-seeding the bracket this way would ensure that a maximum of one team from the Big 10 Conference would make it to the National Semis.

Midwest Region

Remy Martin and Kansas were the most dominant one-seed in the first weekend, winning by an average of 17 points per game. (Tony Gutierrez // Associated Press)

I think this is the most logical of the intra-regional re-seeds. Instead of Sweet 16 matchups between two teams with six or fewer losses and two that were on the bubble coming in, the potential Kansas-Providence game would not come until the regional final.

Once again Kansas would be facing Iowa State in an all-Big 12 Sweet 16 game. What's interesting is that the third Big 12 team in the bracket, Texas Tech, would also move into the same region. Texas Tech-Houston would be a phenomenal pairing in the championship as the bracket currently looks, so the two of them facing in the Sweet 16 would take away that potential.

East Region

The Boilermakers are taking advantage of an upset-ridden region to become the East's best remaining team. (Sara White // Purdue Exponent)

Just like the West, the East has no significant change if the bracket were to be re-seeded within the region.

Eric Dixon and Providence are the fourth-best remaining team in the Dance. (Gene J. Puskar // Associated Press)

The East Region likely provides the most exciting game in this whole experiment. Fitting in theme, all three remaining ACC teams would make their way to this region.

Additional thoughts

I honestly don't know how I feel about this whole thing. The whole point of the video that inspired it was that the tournament produces one winner and 63 losers; re-seeding between weeks won't change that.

The most significant thing that stands out to me is of the two conferences with three teams still in the tournament, all three teams from each conference are sorted in the same region. Both remaining teams from the Big Ten, which once again underperformed in the Tournament, were sorted into the same region too. 

While I think part of the intention of seeding teams in the first place was to avoid having teams from the same conference face each other until absolutely necessary (i.e. the Elite Eight and onward), I don't hate having a potential maximum of one team per conference making it to New Orleans.

I do think this specific re-seeding would make the Sweet 16 more enticing to viewers. I would particularly like seeing 2/3 matchups between North Carolina and Duke, Texas Tech and Houston, and Purdue and Arkansas. 

Does this end up making things less intriguing down the stretch? Possibly. But I don't think the final three rounds of the Tournament would be any less competitive. In fact, it could make things more competitive the closer we get to the championship.

One last thing to dwell on is the whole situation about bracket challenges. If the tourney re-seeded between weekends, how would that affect the way we would pick brackets? I know for most people, that's the only reason this Tournament is fun in the first place. 

I think ultimately what could work is if these challenges worked in a three-part process. In the week between Selection Sunday and the first round, fans would make their first round of picks. This round would stop with 16 teams left. After the first re-seeding, they'd make picks for the Regional Semis and Finals. The final set of picks would be for the Final Four and Championship after the second re-seeding.

I almost guarantee this may be too much work for the casual basketball fan. The intricacies of having to make three separate sets of predictions may make more people apprehensive to play these silly betting games and office pools than they already are (I am in two bracket groups with people I actually know. One has four members. One has two). 

However, of those who do fill out brackets, I imagine many stop caring after one round if, like this year, a 15-seed with almost zero prior postseason experience knocks out the most historically dominant basketball team of all time on the very first night of the tournament. Doing three sets of predictions may ultimately lead more casual fans to pay attention to more games because they have more chances of winning those aforementioned bets and pools.

Anyway, those are just a few random thoughts during the middle of March Madness. Am I just scratching the surface with this whole re-seeding craziness, or should I never revisit it again? Who's to say.

If you read through this whole thing, do me a favor and visit my twitter page because I've been talking A LOT about this tournament over there and no one is paying me a bit of attention. Super big thanks to the folks over at Secret Base for always being there with incredible video content. Follow them too, you'll enjoy their stuff a lot more than you will mine.