Welcome back to another edition of Men’s Bracketology: 2025.  As we enter February, we had some massive matchups in the NCHA to potentially separate contenders from pretenders.  We also saw some massive upsets in different conferences across the country.  How much moving and shaking will we see in this week’s projections?  Keep reading to find out!

Here are last week’s projections for reference.

Current Projections as of 2/4/25

 

Automatic Qualifiers (NPI Rank)

• CNE: Curry (4)
• MAC: Wilkes (20)
• MASCAC: Plymouth State (17
• MIAC: Gustavus (26)
• NCHA: Aurora (3)
• NEHC: Hobart (1)
• NESCAC: Hamilton (6)
• SUNYAC: Cortland (13)
• UCHC: Utica (2)
• WIAC: UW-Superior (14)

At-Large (NPI Rank)

• Geneseo (5)
• St. Norbert (7)
• Trine (8)
• UNE (9)

First Four Out (NPI Rank)

• Adrian (10)
• Trinity (11)
• UW-Stevens Point (12)
• Oswego (15)

Discussion

• New Team in Field:
  • Out in the NCHA, one of the top rivalries in the sport took place in Adrian, Michigan.  Unfortunately for the home team, and most non-Norbert fans, the games were not the most competitive.  St. Norbert put a beatdown on the Bulldogs in back-to-back games, pushing the Green Knights back into our projected field once again, from the first team out, to the third-to-last team in.
    • As if the poor game results weren’t enough for Adrian, the Bulldogs are the team who falls out of the projected field after the busy weekend.  Talk about adding insult to injury.
• New Automatic Bid Leader:
  • We’ll stay in the NCHA, as Adrian-SNC wasn’t the only Top 10 series this past weekend.  Trine and Aurora battled in Geneva, Illinois, and the Spartans defended home ice twice, winning both games over the Thunder.  With this result, Aurora moves into first place in the NCHA and takes the lead for the projected auto-bid.
  • The Thunder still remain in the field as an at-large, currently.
• Seed Line Shifts:
  • Aurora’s massive sweep of fellow championship contender Trine, pushes them ahead of Curry for the #3 seed.
  • Trine’s loss, paired with Hamilton’s massive road victory over a bubble team in Trinity moves the Continentals up to the 6 line.
  • SNC’s big sweep pushes them from outside the field all the way up to the 7 seed.
  • Trine ends up falling from the 4 seed to the 8 seed following the two tough road losses to Aurora.
• While a few automatic bid teams improved their NPI ranking, nobody flip-flopped, as the bottom teams in the field keep their seeds from last week’s preview.
• The cut line for this projection is #10 being the first spot out.  This gives us 5 auto-bid schools in the projected field ranked lower than the first team out, #10 Adrian.
• Multi-bid Leagues:
  • NCHA: (3)
  • CNE: (2)
  • UCHC (2)

Seeding

1. Hobart
2. Utica
3. Aurora
4. Curry
5. Geneseo
6. Hamilton
7. St. Norbert
8. Trine
9. UNE
10. Cortland
11. UW-Superior
12. Plymouth State
13. Wilkes
14. Gustavus

Projected Bracket

First Round

10) Cortland @ 8) Trine

12) Plymouth State @ 5) Geneseo

13) Wilkes @ 4) Curry

9) UNE @ 6) Hamilton

11) UW-Superior @ 7) St. Norbert

14) Gustavus @ 3) Aurora

Quarterfinals

10) Cortland/8) Trine @ 1) Hobart

12) Plymouth St./5) Geneseo vs. 13) Wilkes/4) Curry

9) UNE/6) Hamilton @ 2) Utica

11) UWS/7) SNC vs. 14) GAC/3) Aurora

Geographical Breakdown

• Thick black lines indicate first round travel matchups.
• Purple shapes indicate which quadrant of the bracket is which

Rationale

The 9E/5W Split

With all of the NCHA teams beating up on each other, I’m a bit surprised we’re still at the 9/5 split.  But with Adrian as the first team out, don’t completely rule out a 9/5 or even a 8/6 split come selection Sunday.  We’ll see though, as I still lean towards a 10/4 split.  In this instance, one west team will have to play in an east pod.

The Byes

There are a couple of sticky situations when building this bracket, but the 1 and 2 seeds rightfully get the byes in this projection, as #1 Hobart and #2 Utica rest up for the first weekend.

Selecting the West Pod

As I mentioned above, one west team is forced to play east, just like we’ve seen in the last 2 editions of Bracketology.  What makes this edition much easier, is that with no Adrian in the picture, that leaves Trine as the only “west” school within driving distance of a couple of east teams in the field.

#8 Trine is within driving distance of #1 Hobart and #5 Geneseo, whereas the other four west teams aren’t even close to being within driving distance of anyone in the East region.  So, we’ll put #3 Aurora, #7 St. Norbert, #11 UW-Superior and #14 Gustavus in the west pod.

Trine’s Placement

Here is the trickiest part in this setup, in my opinion.  Trine is within driving distance of #5 Geneseo and #1 Hobart.  With Hobart getting the bye, this makes for a super-easy Trine vs. Geneseo play-in game to face Hobart, right?  Nice and easy, and it costs the NCAA nothing travel-wise.

However, with the seeding of these schools, I feel that the #1 seed getting the winner of #8 and #5 in the second round is a brutal reward for that top spot.  Not only that, but if we went down that path, the #2 seed gets a much easier draw according to seeds.  So, although this makes the most financial sense, I think the NCAA would be willing to pay a little extra to protect #1.  This isn’t a crazy dollar amount we’re talking about either.  Let me explain:

I think Trine as the 8 seed, probably gets a home game as well, given they are in the top half of the Round 1 teams.  Trine playing into Hobart makes sense on its own, but they need an “easier” or lower-seeded opponent than #5 Geneseo.  It came down to #10 Cortland and #13 Wilkes.  No, these teams are not within the 500-mile “drivable distance.”  However, they are 50 and 25 miles over the limit, respectively.  If flights are too big of a pain, we’ve also seen teams turn them down just to save on hassle.

After working through two scenarios with Trine hosting Cortland and Wilkes, the fairer of the two options was the Red Dragons flying (or maybe driving) 550 miles west to Angola, Indiana to face Trine.  The winner of that one gets Hobart at the Cooler.  Again, this creates a theoretical flight, but I think this is a reasonable one, and I’ve seen the NCAA create flights in similar instances, so I would lean towards this scenario.

Setting the Rest of the First Round Matchups

As I stated in the previous two sections:

• In the west pod, we have #11 UW-Superior heading across the state to #7 Norbert, and #14 Gustavus heading south to #3 Aurora.
• In the Hobart pod, we have #10 Cortland presumably flying to #8 Trine.

With the rest of the field, we will just pair off the highest and lowest ranked teams to make the matchups as fair as possible.

Remaining Teams: (#2 Utica earns a bye)

• #4 Curry
• #5 Geneseo
• #6 Hamilton
• #9 UNE
• #12 Plymouth State
• #13 Wilkes

This ends up being quite simple, as we will have #13 Wilkes going to #4 Curry, #12 PSU going to #5 Geneseo, and #9 UNE going to #6 Hamilton.  The only potential travel issue we have amongst these is UNE and Geneseo being just over the 500 mile limit, which is no problem here.

Quarterfinal Assignments

The west pod is already ready to go, and we know Hobart gets the Cortland/Trine winner.

In terms of Utica’s opponent, we will take the middle two teams matching up.  So, we have the #9 UNE/#6 Hamilton winner heading to #2 Utica to take on the Pioneers.

The other four teams will make up the final pod with the #13 Wilkes/#3 Curry winner taking on the #12 Plymouth/#5 Geneseo winner. The winners would face off at the highest eligible seed to host, with Curry having the inside track.

Frozen Four Placement

Different from the last few weeks, the west pod will be moving away from Hobart’s side of the bracket.  Because Aurora jumped Curry for the #3 seed, Aurora and the west pod will go alongside Utica’s pod.  This leaves the pod featuring #4 Curry and #5 Geneseo on the same side as #1 Hobart.

Dollars & “Sense”

Here’s what flights the NCAA is ponying up for in this bracket projection.

First Two Rounds:

• First Round: 1 flight from Cortland to Trine (if they take it)
• Second Round: None

Then, with a west host for the Frozen Four, it all comes down to who is hosting.

Frozen Four:

-If Aurora/St. Norbert hosts:

• 2 flights from top right and bottom left quadrants of bracket
• additional flight if Hobart/Cortland advances from top left quadrant

-If Trine hosts:

• 2 flights from right side of bracket
  • This assumes neither Aurora/SNC advanced if Trine is indeed hosting, so the other west rep is either UWS/GAC
• additional flight if Curry/Plymouth St/Wilkes advances from bottom left quadrant

-If UW-Superior/Gustavus hosts:

• 3 flights from all other quadrants of bracket

Depending on results, this bracket results in anywhere from 3-4 flights.

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading the fifth installment of Men’s Bracketology!  As we enter the month of February, keep checking back, as I will try to inform fans as much as possible on who your team should be rooting for in order to make the tournament and set themselves up best.  Leave questions and comments below!