{"id":434755,"date":"2026-01-29T19:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T19:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/434755\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T19:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T19:16:13","slug":"ncaa-hockey-bracketology-january-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/434755\/","title":{"rendered":"NCAA Hockey Bracketology: January 29"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Penn State picked up its two biggest wins of its seven-game winning streak, a road sweep of top 10 Wisconsin. The Nittany Lions jumped up to No. 4 in the NPI with the wins, and as of this morning, PSU is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.collegehockeynews.com\/ratings\/npi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">in a tie<\/a> for the No. 3 spot with North Dakota. As we turn the calendar to February next week, the tournament picture continues to tighten up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">As of this morning, the NCAA Tournament picture looks like this, based on NPI and conference standings. Please note that projected conference tournament winners are in italics and are based on current in-conference point percentage:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Locks (5): Michigan, Michigan State, North Dakota, Penn State, Western Michigan<br \/>Safe (5): Minnesota-Duluth, Quinnipiac, Providence, Cornell, Wisconsin<br \/>Bubble In (5): St. Thomas, Dartmouth, Denver, Boston College, UConn<br \/>Automatic Qualifiers (1): Bentley<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Bubble Out (5): Augustana, St. Cloud State, Minnesota State, Harvard, Bowling Green<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">My projected bracket looks like this:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Some things to note here:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">No. 2 Michigan State at No. 4 Penn State- Friday (6pm on Big Ten Plus) and Saturday (1pm on BTN)<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">No. 1 Michigan at Ohio State- Friday (6:30pm on Big Ten Plus) and Saturday (5pm on Big Ten Plus)<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">No. 6 Minnesota-Duluth at No. 13 Denver- Friday at 9pm, Saturday at 8pm<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">No. 24 Michigan Tech at No. 11 St. Thomas- Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 8pm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn State picked up its two biggest wins of its seven-game winning streak, a road sweep of top&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,2149],"class_list":{"0":"post-434755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-penn-state-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115979995964883295","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}