Bracketology roundup: Badgers survive scare, hang on to top-four seed projections

As the college basketball season heats up, FOX Sports Wisconsin will round up what experts are saying about the chances for Wisconsin to make the NCAA tournament in March. This is the sixth edition of the 2019 bracket roundup.

The Wisconsin Badgers have enough resume-boosting wins (Michigan, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, N.C. State) to carry them into the NCAA tournament.

At this point of the season, they just need to avoid any bad losses.

That’s exactly what happened Monday night when the Badgers fought off a pesky Illinois team 64-58 at the Kohl Center. It wasn’t pretty; the Badgers went back-and-forth with Illinois until a Brad Davison layup gave them the lead for good with under four minutes to play.

But a win is a win is a win.

Barring a major collapse over the five remaining regular-season games, the Badgers are indeed a lock for the tournament. This week, Wisconsin is unsurprisingly included in all 115 brackets tracked by Bracket Matrix.

So where will they be seeded?

The Athletic, Bleacher Report and ESPN’s Joe Lunardi project the Badgers to come in as a four seed and play Yale, Hofstra and Vermont. Howie Schwab of FOX Sports handed the Badgers a five seed and a matchup with TCU of the Big 12.

Team Rankings, a bracket we’ve been keeping an eye on all winter, has been cold on Wisconsin for most of the year. It ranked the Badgers as a six seed last week and moved them back to a No. 7 on Friday. The site gives the Badgers an eight percent chance to earn a top-four seed in the tournament, which seems low considering the other brackets.

The NET rankings say otherwise. Wisconsin comes in at No. 12 this week, behind Michigan (7), Michigan State (8) and Purdue (11) in the Big Ten.

Wisconsin can boost its resume in the final five games. Three of those games are on the road, and two are against legitimate conference foes — No. 21 Iowa and Ohio State, the latter of which is projected to be a nine seed by Bracket Matrix.

Here’s a look at which tournament seed 12 big-name brackets have assigned to the Badgers below and how that view has changed over the past seven days: