{"id":258026,"date":"2025-08-30T01:53:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T01:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/258026\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T01:53:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T01:53:13","slug":"mick-cronins-bruins-earn-high-seed-in-latest-espn-march-madness-projections-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/258026\/","title":{"rendered":"Mick Cronin\u2019s Bruins earn high seed in latest ESPN March Madness projections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mick Cronin\u2019s Bruins earn high seed in latest ESPN March Madness projections<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a><\/p>\n

College football season is just getting started, which means the 2026 March Madness tournaments are still months away, but ESPN college basketball analyst Joe Lunardi doesn\u2019t rest.<\/p>\n

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Lunardi\u2019s latest 2026 Men\u2019s Bracketology, released Tuesday, predicted Mick Cronin\u2019s UCLA Bruins<\/a> to take a No. 4 seed in the South Region. The Bruins were ranked No. 15 on ESPN\u2019s most recent men\u2019s college basketball early top 25 list<\/a>, released Aug. 5.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd UCLA, Illinois and Michigan State could legitimately play in April,\u201d Lunardi wrote in the bracketology\u2019s short introduction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Bruins are one of 11 Big Ten Conference teams in Lunardi\u2019s latest tournament prediction. Other 4-seeds in the Aug. 26 bracket were Arkansas, Illinois and Auburn. A No. 7 seeded UCLA fell in the second round of last year\u2019s March Madness Tournament to No. 2 Tennessee, 67-58.<\/p>\n

Full college basketball schedules for this season have yet to be announced, but UCLA currently has 11 non-conference games on the books, with just one road contest against Gonzaga Dec. 13. The Bruins will host Eastern Washington, Pepperdine, West Georgia, Arizona, Sacramento State, Presbyterian, California Berkeley, Arizona State, Cal Poly and UC Riverside.<\/p>\n

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In addition to those 11 contests, UCLA is expected to play 20 Big Ten games, per Monday\u2019s press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcf2 Follow The Sporting News on WhatsApp<\/a><\/p>\n

Cronin\u2019s squad posted a 23-11 (13-7 Big Ten) record last season. The Bruins finished fourth in the conference behind Michigan State, Maryland, Michigan and Purdue, though they had the same Big Ten record as both Purdue and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mick Cronin\u2019s Bruins earn high seed in latest ESPN March Madness projections originally appeared on The Sporting News…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,43455,9626,12465,7456,1995,27393,231,772,1544,4262],"class_list":{"0":"post-258026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-college-football-season","11":"tag-espn-college-basketball","12":"tag-joe-lunardi","13":"tag-march-madness","14":"tag-michigan-state","15":"tag-mick-cronin","16":"tag-ncaa","17":"tag-ncaa-basketball","18":"tag-ncaab","19":"tag-ucla-bruins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115115222834087586","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}