When I first heard about the AAC Basketball Tournament for 2025, that bracket thing just confused me, man. Seriously, it looked like someone dropped a plate of spaghetti on a page. So, I grabbed my notebook, fired up the laptop, and said, “Right, time to figure this mess out step by step, like I actually have to play in it.”
Starting Simple: The Seed Setup
Okay, first things first. I needed to see who was actually playing. I jotted down all eight AAC teams for 2025 – Memphis, FAU, UAB, Charlotte, North Texas, Rice, Temple, Tulsa. Easy enough. I marked down where they finished the regular season, like who won the most games. That gives them their “seed,” basically their ranking from 1 (best) to 8 (worst). So Memphis might be Seed 1, FAU Seed 2, and so on down to Tulsa Seed 8. Important step one, know who’s playing and how they rank.
Drawing The Damn Lines
This is where it got visual. I drew a big rectangle on paper. I put four spots at the top and four at the bottom. The top row is the top seeds: Seeds 1, 4, 5, and 8. The bottom row is Seeds 2, 3, 6, and 7. Why this weird mix? Honestly, that’s just how brackets are built, you gotta split the top and bottom of the rankings across sections. I drew lines connecting them:
- On the top side: Seed 1 vs. Seed 8, and Seed 4 vs. Seed 5.
- On the bottom side: Seed 2 vs. Seed 7, and Seed 3 vs. Seed 6.
These are the first-round games, the quarterfinals. You get four winners out of these games.
Connecting The Dots
Next, I drew more lines. From the top quarterfinals, the winner of 1v8 plays the winner of 4v5. Simple. Then on the bottom, winner of 2v7 plays winner of 3v6. These two games are the semifinals. Only two teams left standing after these.
The Big Finale
Finally, I drew one last line connecting the two semifinal winners. Boom! That’s the championship game. Winner grabs the AAC trophy.
My Big “Aha!” Moment
The coolest part? How losing teams just disappear. Losers in the first round? Done, go home. Loser in the semifinals? Done, you finish third or fourth place depending on the bracket rules, but you’re out of the running for the title. Only the winners keep moving forward down the lines I drew. It’s brutal, but makes sense. Win or go home. Plain and simple.
So, after drawing circles, scribbling out losers, and connecting the winners on my messy notebook page, it clicked. The bracket isn’t magic, it’s just a roadmap. Seeds tell you the matchups, and then you follow the winners one game at a time. Honestly? Way less complicated than trying to assemble flat-pack furniture.