NCAA bracketology roundup: Do the Badgers deserve a No. 3 seed?

The 2021 calendar has finally flipped to February. That means March Madness is right around the corner.

As the college basketball season heats up, FOX Sports Wisconsin rounds up what experts are saying about which seed the Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team will be assigned in the NCAA tournament. This is the first edition of the 2020-21 bracket roundup.

The Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team hasn’t won a game in the NCAA tournament since the 2016-17 season.

Of course, the cancelation of the NCAA tournament last March didn’t help. Wisconsin was left out of the 2017-18 field and lost 72-54 to Oregon as a No. 5 seed in the first round of the 2018-19 tourney. In 2019-20, the Badgers were expected to make a deep run in the Big Dance, and ESPN even picked them to win the whole thing.

Eighteen games into the 2020-21 campaign, the Badgers look destined to do some damage in the NCAA tourney. Currently ranked 19th in the AP top-25 poll, the Badgers have beaten quality teams like Louisville, Michigan State and Minnesota en route to a 13-5 record (7-4 Big Ten).

According to the experts, the Badgers would be a No. 3 seed if the NCAA tournament began Monday. (Note: It does not.)

Bracket Matrix, a website dedicated to tracking bracketology from just about everywhere on the internet, ranging from experts in the field to random WordPress blogs, determined the 3-seed via an average of 80 brackets across the web.

Of the 80 brackets polled by Bracket Matrix, Sports Illustrated gave the Badgers their highest seed at No. 2, slotting them with a first-round matchup against 15-seed Cleveland State.

A blog titled “Cheese Predictions” strangely gifted the Badgers a No. 8 seed in the tournament, the team’s lowest seeding out there.

Other (more notable) outlets gave the Badgers a No. 3, 4, or 5 seed — the latter coming from @CBBonFOX and Haslametrics, a website which evaluates teams based on a laundry list of analytic stats.

Check out some of the week’s most notable brackets: