Photo by Pat Coleman, D3sports.com

Because of the unusual way the NCAA Tournament fields are being announced this year (women's teams Sunday night, women's brackets Monday morning, men's brackets and teams together Monday at noon ET), we're changing up the way we do our projections as well.

Traditionally we've projected both fields and brackets for Sunday morning, but with the men taking an extra 14 hours to release their teams, heck, we can wait a while longer. But the women have that one first-round game on Wednesday, while the men don't have any games until Thursday, so it's a little more of a matter of urgency.

Every year we sit down as our own D3hoops.com ad hoc selection committee, examine the NCAA's selection criteria and the teams and project what we think the bracket will look like, as well as who's in it. And this year presented us with some new difficulties. We wanted to separate the two unbeaten teams that are in the same region and keep them apart until the Final Four. We had more than 10 Northeast teams and ended up spreading that region's selections across three brackets, leaving us with more East teams than we knew quite what to do with either.

And no, unlike one radio broadcast crew suggested Sunday night, D3hoops.com does not select the actual NCAA Tournament brackets. Thanks, we would love to have the honor. There are 21 Pool C bids, the true at-large selections, after the three teams that aren't in conferences with automatic bids get selected in Pool B.

We'll project the men's later on Sunday. Here's our projected NCAA Tournament Field of 63.