For the first time since 2019, Michigan State fans will be breathing easy on Selection Sunday. Instead of being close to the bubble, the Spartans will be seeded close to the very top of the bracket.

But how much will the results of the Big Ten Tournament impact Michigan State's seed? And where will the Spartans be placed on the bracket? Who are the most likely opponents on the path to Tom Izzo's potential ninth Final Four?

I attempted to answer these questions by using a new metric that I recently created. It is designed to project the seed list generated by the NCAA Tournament Committee. In essence, my metric accomplishes what the NET should be good for, but unfortunately is not.

Without going into detail, my metric is a blending (technically a linear combination) of one predictive metric (Kenpom) and one results-based metric (my strength of resume metric). I then "tuned" the amount that the two numbers are blended by using the seeds lists published by the Selection Committee in past tournaments as a reference.

The resulting value is a helpful tool to get an initial sense of where teams are likely to be seeded. Figure 1 shows the current seed list for my projected top-24 teams (seeds No. 1 to No. 6) in the upcoming 2025 NCAA Tournament.

I colored coded each group of four teams to visually separate the seed groupings.

Note that the seed list shown above is a good approximation of the seed list generated by the Bracket Matrix website as of Thursday morning.

The top-seven teams are identical, St. John's and Texas Tech differ by one spot, and the only other difference in the top016 is that my ranking has Iowa State four spots lower that the average of the current set of brackets.

What is unique about this analysis is that my seeding metric gives a magnitude instead of simply a ranking. Therefore, it is easy to see where there are large gaps separating teams and where the margins between teams are thin.

In addition to the current seeding metric value for each team, I added error bars for the top-11 teams that are an estimate of the best-case and worst-case scenario for each team pending the results of each conference tournament.

For example, for Michigan State, the lower end of the error bar represents the scenario where the Spartans lose to Indiana on Friday in the first game of the Big Ten Tournament. The higher end of the error bar represents the situation where the Spartans were to beat Oregon, Wisconsin and Maryland on the way to a Big Ten Tournament title. A similar analysis was done for the other 10 teams.

Figure 1 gives a lot of information. First, the four projected No. 1 seeds (Auburn, Duke, Houston and Florida) have a clear lead on the rest of the field. Auburn is the clear-cut No. 1 overall seed no matter what happens in the SEC Tournament.

The SEC, Big 12 and ACC Tournaments could potentially shuffle the relative positions of the four projected No. 1 seeds, but this analysis suggest the only team that might have the opportunity to jump up from the No. 2 seed line is Alabama. The Crimson Tide would need to win the SEC Tournament and have either Houston or Florida flame out early in their respective conference tournaments.

As for the No. 2 seed line, Alabama and Tennessee are the clear top-two teams, Michigan State is the clear third team, and I have Texas Tech as a distant fourth. The Red Raiders have almost an identical score to the top-three teams on my No. 3 seed line: St. Johns, Kentucky and Texas A&M. There is then a step down to the last team on the No. 3 seed line, Wisconsin, followed by a steady decline.

If my analysis is at least a decent approximation of reality, the results of Big Ten Tournament will have no impact on Michigan State's seed. Not only do the Spartans appear to be locked onto the No. 2 seed line, based on my analysis, but MSU is locked into the third-best No. 2 seed, no matter what happens in Indianapolis this weekend.

However, I would not rule out the possibility that the committee could elevate Michigan State to a No. 1 seed if the Spartans make the Big Ten Tournament title game and if one or more of the projected No. 1 seeds falters badly in the next few days. Historically, the committee has been known to reward conference champions. But my data does not support the idea that MSU can get to the No. 1 seed line.