ESPN Men's Basketball

If your sympathies lie with Cinderella, you are not going to like the look of Joe Lunardi's latest edition of Bracketology. As league play begins in earnest, the projected NCAA bracket is decidedly big-conference dominated, with only four at-large bids given to teams outside of the "Big Six" of the ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-10 and Big East.

The reasons are simple: Fewer opportunities for mid-major victories over big-conference teams and not enough wins in those chances. As ESPN.com's Kyle Whelliston noted in his Mid-Majority blog there were nearly 300 fewer games scheduled between "mids" and "majors" this season, a 20-percent drop. When the mids did match up with bigger schools, the wins weren't there, as programs hyped as potential giant killers came up short.

Take Siena, a tournament team that knocked off Vanderbilt last year and returned all its starters. The Saints couldn't snag a win against Tennessee nor Oklahoma State nor even Wichita State at the Old Spice Classic. They also lost at Pittsburgh and Kansas. Now their best RPI win is against Boise State (RPI 50) and they will face just two RPI 100 teams for the rest of the season -- conference foes Niagara (RPI 82) and Fairfield (90) -- which means Siena's tournament hopes will be pinned to an automatic bid.

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