Welcome to March. This is March. It is March now. People: Have you heard the good news about March? Because it’s March now. It’s totally March. March is happening. This is March.
OK, so, yes, fine, we’re already grumpily, preemptively annoyed about the number of times people will (whether sincerely or ironically, though we prefer the latter) use some version of the same phrase this month, and we just had to get it out of our system. But you know what? That’s the only thing about March that makes us grumpy. That’s it. Everything else is perfect. March is freaking amazing. Seriously, what a great month! We look forward to it all year; it is the defining annual apex of our professional life; it dominates everything we do, in a totally positive, constantly thrilling sort of way. Somehow, even though we build up to it all year — and, considering the past couple of years, this one more than most — it never disappoints. It’s an absolute guarantee of global joy, the kind of joy that best friends and total strangers can share equally together. There is nothing else in the world quite like it.
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And now it’s here. And oddly enough, despite how much we look forward to it, it sort of crept up on us this year. For most of its annual run, Bubble Watch is as much about all things college basketball as it is about teams on the NCAA Tournament bubble, per se; in January and much of February, it’s meant to be more of a broadly informative (and hopefully fun) digest of (almost) every relevant team in college basketball than an analytically precise look at every team’s concrete NCAA Tournament status. It tries to do a few things at the same time, at least.
But now we’re here, in March (this is March) and suddenly things are very real. The first conference tournaments are already underway this week. Most power-conference teams have one or two regular-season games remaining. The possibility space for teams hoping to get in the tournament, or stay in it, is starting to close; after a season’s worth of results, there is only so much work you can do in one or two games. Outcomes are becoming fixed. The bubble is becoming the bubble. Now things get really fun.
Here’s where we stand less than two weeks from Selection Sunday.
Automatic bids from non-Bubble Watch (i.e. one-bid) leagues: 20
Locks: 28
Should be in: 10
Work to do: 18
That is, carry the one, 76 teams for 68 tournament spots — a tight knot of teams scrambling for the last few empty chairs before the music stops playing. We’ll update again Friday, after this week’s games, and then starting next Tuesday we’ll update live throughout the week, as results come in, so you know exactly where everyone stands at any given time.
Thanks for going on this ride with us. Let’s have a month, shall we?
Housekeeping:
• A lock is a lock. In other words, we are very careful calling teams locks, because we don’t want to say that and then have to reverse that stance; a lock, within reason, should be basically guaranteed to make the tournament.
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• Records (which, like the committee, do not comprise wins over non-Division I opponents) are always up to date. NET and SOS numbers are current as of Monday night. Special thanks to Warren Nolan and, new this year, Bracketologists.com, whose NET schedule view and tracking of canceled/postponed games is invaluable.
ACC
Watched Syracuse play twice in three days. Too much Syracuse. Would not recommend.
Really, though, it’s very strange to watch a Syracuse team be this bad defensively — that 2-3 zone, that occasionally transcendent scheme that has terrorized tournament opponents and worked for Jim Boeheim since before you were born, is suddenly just totally toothless. Duke did whatever it wanted on that end of the floor Saturday, to the tune of 97 points in 61 possessions, and the Orange offered zero noticeable resistance for 40 minutes of college hoops. It was wild to watch. Things were better at UNC Monday night, but only because the Orange — a good offensive team! — ramped up the scoring. Syracuse ranks 12th in the ACC in per-trip defense (1.08 points per possession allowed) and 221st (!!) in Division I. It wasn’t that long ago that the Orange were reliably one of the best, and most confounding, defensive teams in the country. Not so much now.
Lock: Duke
Should be in: Wake Forest, Notre Dame
Work to do: North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Miami
Wake Forest (22-8, 12-7; NET: 43, SOS: 94): Last week was not a great one for the Demon Deacons, who hammered Louisville Saturday but not before falling to Clemson 80-69 at Clemson Wednesday night. The Tigers are fine, a Quadrant 2 loss on the road, so it wasn’t a total disaster, but it is worth reaffirming the situation here — Wake Forest is in the field right now, but it is still not remotely safe. A home loss to NC State this Wednesday would be really, really bad. If it were coupled with an early ACC tourney exit, the Demon Deacons — whose resume still has just one Quad 1 win (at Virginia Tech), a 4-4 mark against Quadrant 2 and the 334th-ranked noncon schedule — could actually miss the field, depending on what happens elsewhere along the cut line. This has been a great, fun season, but Wake needs to be vigilant to make sure it ends with a deserved tournament bid.
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Notre Dame (20-8, 14-4; NET: 46, SOS: 66): The Irish are very close to the finish line. It is a strange season in which you can amass 14 ACC victories and just one against a potential tournament and/or Quadrant 1 opponent (at Miami), but ND got something neither Wake nor UNC did in the nonconference: a marquee victory over a top team, in this case Kentucky. Throw in the really solid work in league play, the capacity to beat teams you should beat pretty much every time you take the court, and Notre Dame has found itself with a solid resume that should pretty comfortably get it in the field provided nothing goes horribly awry against Florida State and Pittsburgh (the latter at home) this week.
North Carolina (22-8, 14-5; NET: 40, SOS: 62): Considering the take on Syracuse above, you will not be surprised, dear reader, to learn that we weren’t exactly impressed with North Carolina’s win over Syracuse Monday night. Caleb Love woke up and the Tar Heels stretched a lead in overtime, so it looks like a casual nine-point win on paper, but we watched it, and we saw it for what it really was: a 40-minute strugglefest at home against a team that doesn’t play defense. Even when the Tar Heels are winning, we find it hard to get enthused. It’s strange to have that feeling about a program with this pedigree, let alone one with a 14-5 record in the ACC, but that’s what both the ACC and UNC are this year — pale imitations of their usual selves. As for UNC’s at-large chances, well, we’ll see. The fundamental calculus here hasn’t really changed. It’s March, and Carolina still hasn’t beaten a definite tournament team. It remains on the bubble, if narrowly on the right side of it, and shouldn’t hurt itself too much if it ends up losing at Duke Saturday.
Virginia Tech (18-11, 10-8; NET: 41, SOS: 85): Let’s throw the Hokies back on the page, eh? They’ve been absent for a few weeks now, but they’ve been gradually making their case, in so far as you can win eight of your last nine games in this year’s ACC without actually beating anyone of note. That trend changed somewhat Saturday, when Tech scored the last five points of the game to totally shock Miami late in Coral Gables. (The game probability chart on that one is pretty hilarious.) It was Tech’s first Quadrant 1 win of the year and, even if it came against a shaky bubble team, it at least gives Tech something to show for its impressive metrics (BPI has this team ranked 22nd!) and solid work the last few weeks. The record splits here – 1-5 Quadrant 1, 4-4 Quadrant 2, 6-2 Quadrant 3 – still don’t feel tournament-worthy, but Tech has at least put itself back in the mix.
Miami (20-9, 12-6; NET: 62, SOS: 76): The Hurricanes are not sprinting to the finish. Indeed, they’ve lost their past two home games to Virginia and Virginia Tech; the former, being a loss to the No. 81-ranked team in the NET, landed in Quadrant 3. Not great. Fortunately, Miami beat Duke at Duke, which is holding this whole team sheet together, because it’s Miami’s work at the high end (4-1 Quadrant 1, including that massive road win, with an 8-2 road record backing it up) that it will hope impresses the committee enough to ignore a losing record in Quadrant 2 and three losses in Quadrant 3. Wednesday night at Boston College is quietly huge.
Big 12
Farewell to Kansas State, which had, in fairly traditional Kansas State fashion — which is to say with a record flirting around .500, a few quality wins in Big 12 play, and very little to show for itself in the noncon — gotten itself into consideration the last couple of weeks. This is how Kansas State’s resume almost always looks. It’s uncanny. After four straight losses, including a 74-73 heartbreaker to Iowa State Saturday and Monday night’s road defeat at Texas Tech, the Wildcats still have no truly “bad” losses — they just have way too many losses, period.
Meanwhile, let’s lock Iowa State. We strongly considered holding off, because the Cyclones could still end up with a 7-11 record in league play, which would make them a relative outlier historically, but come on: Is a team with nine Quadrant 1 wins, no remotely bad losses and no way of picking up a bad loss between now and Selection Sunday, really going to miss the NCAA Tournament? No. For a minute there — and by “minute,” we mean “the first half of the month of February” — it looked like Iowa State, having exploded out of the gate in November and December, might collapse all the way off the bubble altogether. The Cyclones have since totally recovered from their four-game losing streak earlier last month with a four-game winning streak to close it, including road wins at TCU and Kansas State. This team is dancing — and a great example of why the whole “you should be .500 in your league to get a bid” thing is nonsense. Iowa State is a good team playing in a great league. It’s in regardless.
Locks: Baylor, Kansas, Texas Tech, Texas, Iowa State
Work to do: Oklahoma, TCU
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Oklahoma (15-14, 5-11; NET: 48, SOS: 4): If you want to see why it’s impossible to imagine Iowa State not making the tournament, even if it eventually ends up with 11 league losses, look no further than Oklahoma, which hung on to the bubble fringe with an overtime Bedlam win Saturday — and which already has 11 losses to Big 12 competition. We can see Oklahoma getting more consideration than some bracket types are giving it right now, because in a world where conference record actually isn’t a thing (and it isn’t supposed to be) Oklahoma’s resume at least has some redeeming qualities. But in reality, there are just too many losses here period to justify inclusion in the bracket right now, even if only one of them (home versus Butler) qualifies as “bad,” and beating Texas Tech and Arkansas is more than many bubble teams can say they’ve accomplished. A very weird resume. A loss to West Virginia Tuesday night and we can officially stop thinking about it.
TCU (18-9, 7-8; NET: 49, SOS: 27): Huge, huge win for TCU Saturday. The Horned Frogs had been sliding for weeks, but upending Texas Tech in Fort Worth gives TCU a significant boost that it maybe didn’t quite have from only beating a (then-reeling) LSU team in its own gym. When LSU and its weirdly resilient NET number is your only high-level win, that’s a slight problem. Tech, on the other hand, is actually one of the best teams in the country, not just on paper, and beating the Red Raiders is genuinely meaningful. Next up: Two games in three days against Kansas. Fun!
Big East
Interesting times continue at Georgetown, where a home loss to UConn dropped the Hoyas to 6-22 on the season and 0-17 in the Big East and, not for nothing, set an all-time school record of 18 consecutive losses. It has felt for a while now like this must be the last embers of Patrick Ewing’s tenure at the program, and there have been reasonably widespread calls for the program’s beloved figure to make it easier on everyone and step down of his own volition — clearing an amicable path for the Georgetown “family” to move forward. But is Ewing willing to do that? “Of course, I want to be back here,” Ewing said after the UConn game. “But in this position and this job, whatever happens will happen. I’m hoping that I’ll be back and doing something that I love at a place that I love and getting us back to being the king of the hill.” It’s always possible that Ewing is just saying this because he feels like that’s what he has to say. But if he is being totally sincere — if he’s determined to not go out on a season this atrocious — then it could make life intriguing, if not downright difficult, for Georgetown’s administration, a portion of which has always been loath to rock the boat anyway. We shall see.
Locks: Villanova, Connecticut, Providence
Should be in: Seton Hall, Marquette
Work to do: Xavier, Creighton
Seton Hall (17-9, 9-8; NET: 32, SOS: 21): Props to Seton Hall for pulling it together. There was a point in January when that promising nonconference start — 9-1 with wins over Michigan (when people thought Michigan was good) and Texas (when people thought Texas was better than good) — looked like it was a false start, like it was rapidly turning into a disappointing league season. Seton Hall started 3-6 in the Big East, with losses to DePaul and St. John’s (and a sweep to Marquette), and we wondered if the Pirates really were a tournament team after all. Since Feb. 1, they’re 6-2, with Saturday’s massive 82-66 win at Xavier looking like it will be enough to get them in the tournament. Finishing strong never hurts.
Marquette (18-10, 10-7; NET: 36, SOS: 17): Having survived a dicey afternoon against Butler Saturday — Butler led for most of the contest in Milwaukee before Marquette snapped out of it midway through the second half and finished the game on a 21-9 run — the Golden Eagles are all but locked. Were they to lose out (to DePaul and St. John’s) and then lose again at the start of the Big East tournament, they’d be 18-13 with three more bad losses, and there’d maybe be some slight jeopardy heading into Selection Sunday. But barring a total collapse, and after a 50 percent tournament hit rate in six years at Texas, Shaka Smart’s first team at Marquette is going to the NCAA Tournament. Fancy that.
Xavier (17-11, 7-10; NET: 36, SOS: 25): February was not a productive month for the Musketeers, and boy oh boy is that phrasing it gently. Since Feb. 2’s two-point home win over Butler, the Musketeers are 1-7. They’ve lost their last four. They have had some really unfortunate, and borderline unlucky, results in that mix — they lost by two at Seton Hall, and let us never forget last week’s completely bugnuts three-overtime loss to The Team That Will Not Die (known to you as Providence). But Saturday’s 82-66 home defeat to Seton Hall was concerning. Maybe Travis Steele’s guys were just existentially exhausted after the trip to Rhode Island, which, well, fair enough: That game exhausted us, and all we did was sit at our desk and watch it on our PC monitor. And Xavier’s resume is probably still robust enough to get it in the tournament, especially when you ignore the temporal reality of recent struggles and simply look at the team sheet, especially compared to some of what’s on the bubble. But what if this continues to go wrong? What if Xavier loses its last two, at St. John’s and to Georgetown? XU already lost to the Red Storm in Cincinnati by 13 on Feb. 16. What if Georgetown (which has pushed a couple of teams lately) gets over the hump just at the end of the season? After doing so much good work earlier in the year, Xavier’s nightmare scenario isn’t that farfetched. There is work to do to avoid it.
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Creighton (19-9, 11-6; NET: 67, SOS: 40): On Saturday, Creighton managed something very few teams have pulled off this season: It played a game against Providence that was not close. Unfortunately for the Bluejays, the blowout went in the wrong direction, a 72-51 offensive no-show that must have been a nice, refreshing change for the Friars fans, anyway. Weirdly, this Creighton team has that sort of game in it — this is a very good defensive group that struggles to score the ball and turns it over constantly, which is to say a total reversal of pretty much everything Creighton’s best teams under Greg McDermott have always done. Of course, it was especially noticeable Saturday, in Creighton’s first game without guard Ryan Nembhard, who will miss the rest of the season with a wrist injury he suffered at St. John’s last week. The freshman guard had struggled at various points this season, but his recent efficiency had been a big key in the Bluejays’ February success. If his loss makes Creighton look like a considerably worse team, that’s something the committee could take into account. To stave off that suspicion, the Bluejays need to win at least one of their two home games — against UConn and Seton Hall — this week.
Big Ten
Say what you want about Fran McCaffery — he is always one-and-a-half bad calls away from becoming totally unstuck from reality and suddenly screaming “I DRIVE A DODGE STRATUS!” at no one in particular — the guy can absolutely coach. Iowa is not a traditionally easy place to win. Steve Alford went to three NCAA Tournaments in eight years; Todd Lickliter never got off the ground. But McCaffery has built a reliable winner in the past half-decade. This season alone, after one of the best years in program history, he has replaced a totemic national player of the year (Luka Garza) with former three-star prospect Keegan Murray, who in a year’s time has gone from “oh, interesting freshman” to “is this guy the best player in the country?!” The Hawkeyes have more or less maintained last season’s level — free-scoring and defense-agnostic, as all good McCaffery teams should be — and will enter the NCAA Tournament without last season’s No. 2 seed but with every other chance of making the deep tournament run that the 2020-21 campaign deserved.
Locks: Purdue, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio State, Wisconsin
Should be in: Michigan State
Work to do: Michigan, Indiana, Rutgers
Michigan State (19-9, 10-7; NET: 33, SOS: 16): Much as we would like to throw caution to the wind, get in tune with the spirit of celebration and follow up on Michigan State’s massive Tyson Walker-fueled win over Purdue Saturday (and Tom Izzo tying Bob Knight for all-time wins at a Big Ten school, which is a quietly super impressive record to match) by locking the Spartans, we can’t. As good as Saturday was, it came in defiance of the MSU-related trends the last month, which has seen Izzo’s team lose five of seven and seen its NET (from a height of 11 earlier in the year) sag all the way down to the low 30s, just four spots above bubbly Michigan. Were the Spartans to lose out, they would be 19-12 overall, 10-10 in the Big Ten, with a 4-8 Q1 record and two losses in Quadrant 3. That would be … anxiety-inducing, let’s say. Better to be safe. One more win will do the job.
Michigan (15-12, 9-8; NET: 37, SOS: 9): Having tweeted one semi-viral quote from Michigan forward Hunter Dickinson during Big Ten media day in the fall, we now no longer require any reminder when Illinois is playing Michigan in men’s collegiate basketball — the sudden rush of Illinois fans in our Twitter mentions is a sure sign that somewhere, whether in Champaign or Ann Arbor or parts unknown, the Illini are playing against Dickinson and the Wolverines. (True story: We were out running errands with the kids Sunday afternoon, opened up Twitter quickly, saw the mentions before we saw the final score, and still knew instantly Illinois had won the game. Pretty handy, honestly.) Anyway, Illinois’ 2021-22 ownage of newfound rival Michigan spelled more bubble trouble for the losing team; it would have been a really big boost following a nice home win over fellow bubbler Rutgers Feb. 23. But hope remains. Michigan State and Iowa are both coming to the Crisler Center this week, followed by Sunday’s trip to Ohio State. If the Wolverines go 2-1 from those three — if they can actually string together some solid defensive possessions, which is a big if — they should end up in the bracket after all.
Indiana (18-10, 9-9; NET: 44, SOS: 47): At first glance, you might think Indiana’s five-point win at Minnesota Sunday evening was your prototypical hard-fought road win in league play. It’s hard to blow out Big Ten teams in their own gyms; Wisconsin barely escaped the Gophers earlier in the week. But nope! Indiana led by 27 points in the second half Sunday. It played great, totally throttled Minnesota, and then — inexplicably — gave up 39 points in the final 10 minutes of the game, letting Minnesota get to within three points in the final minute. It was kind of a disaster! The result is all that really matters, of course, and in fact it was Indiana’s second straight win — a nice little bounce back against Maryland and Minnesota after a brutal five-game losing streak put the previously safe Hoosiers firmly on the bubble. Rutgers comes to Assembly Hall Wednesday. If Indiana wins that game, we’ll be pretty confident in the Hoosiers’ at-large status regardless of what happens when they travel to Purdue Saturday afternoon, a trip that would become something of a free hit. If Indiana loses Wednesday, though? Hold on to your butts.
Rutgers (16-12, 10-8; NET: 83, SOS: 32): Not going to lie: We’re kind of sad about Rutgers. A previous week’s Bubble Watch introduction was devoted entirely to the surging Scarlet Knights, who, in this year of unstoppable Providence ascendancy, picked up the “start terribly, lose a few awful games, then come out of nowhere to get on the bubble in the heart of February” baton and sprinted like mad with it. Four straight wins over Michigan State, Ohio State, Wisconsin (at Wisconsin) and Illinois from Feb. 5 to Feb. 16 got Rutgers out of the cellar and up on to the page, and at that pace of resume improvement, we assumed we’d have them locked up by now. Instead, Rutgers has lost three in a row. All three (at Purdue, at Michigan, versus Wisconsin) are forgivable losses in isolation, but combined they have the effect of almost totally stalling this team’s climb toward the bracket. Rutgers has to win at Assembly Hall Wednesday — has to — to get this thing moving in the right direction again. Bummer.
Pac-12
Congratulations to USC, the Pac-12’s third lock. The Trojans have a pretty strange resume for a power conference team: 25 wins, but just four of them in Quadrant 1, just one over a definite NCAA Tournament team (UCLA, though the neutral-court win over San Diego State should hold up in this category, too) with the vast majority of their victories coming in Quadrants 2 and 3. That’s mostly the Pac-12’s fault; USC has played Arizona and UCLA just once each (it has both teams this week) and as you may have noticed the rest of the Pac-12 is, um, what’s the word? Bad? Right. Bad. Throw in the Trojans’ ugly nonconference schedule rank (306th) and it ended up taking a bit longer to lock USC than many Trojans fans would have wanted, but it was the kind of resume that can get fragile in a hurry. One or two bad losses and suddenly things look different and you’ve got an LSU situation on your hands. No thanks. But USC kept winning, so none of this mattered anyway. That works too!
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Locks: Arizona, UCLA, USC
Work to do: Oregon
Oregon (17-11, 11-7; NET: 58, SOS: 44): As such, the Pac-12 bubble situation is reduced to one team and one team only: Dana Altman’s Oregon Ducks. Last week’s post-Arizona-thriller admission that his team doesn’t always play that hard held true for another week, a week in which the Ducks proved that if they’re locked in they can hold their own with anyone in their league. They upset UCLA, 68-63, Thursday night, completing a regular-season sweep of last season’s Final Four sensations, and then very nearly did the same against USC two days later. These past three games — including two one-possession losses and a massive upset win — are helpful, yes, and scary for anyone that might catch Oregon on the No. 12 line if the Ducks end up in the bracket after all. But it’s also an indictment of Oregon’s early-season work. What on Earth was this team doing losing to Cal at home by 14 points? How did this team lose two games to Arizona State, including an 81-57 blowout on Feb. 17? If you can play well enough to nearly beat Arizona, UCLA and USC in three straight games, why can’t you do that all the time? Without three baffling Quadrant 3 home defeats, this team would be safely in the field right now, maybe even locked. Instead, it is sweating things out on the bubble. Every game matters.
SEC
A hearty congratulations to the Alabama Crimson Tide, the SEC’s sixth lock of the 2021-22 Bubble Watch campaign. We still remember the wonder and awe we felt when as we watched this team run Gonzaga off the floor in Seattle Dec. 4 which — when it wasn’t being interrupted constantly by the broadcaster’s constant, hilariously ill-advised courtside draft analysis (because you, the slack-jawed viewer, can’t get excited for a college basketball game unless you know exactly where everyone on the floor is projected to be drafted, and why, at all times) — holds up as one of the most impressive performances of the season.
It also reflected the ultimate oddness that would eventually define this team’s season. A group capable of playing like that against Gonzaga, and beating Houston a week later, was also capable of losing to Iona, getting blown out at Memphis, and going head-empty at Missouri and Georgia. When the Tide are good, they’re extremely good. When they’re bad, you can see it right away. This (and that uptempo attacking style) makes them very fun to watch. It also makes them probably the last team in the world you should bet money on in the next month. Just stay the hell away.
Meanwhile, we are still keeping an eye on Mississippi State. There’s not enough there right now — just four Quad 1 and 2 wins and 10 losses combined, with two Quad 3 defeats to boot, won’t get you in the field — but a slightly wobbly Auburn does come to Starkvegas Wednesday night. Insert chin-stroking emoji here.
Locks: Kentucky, Tennessee, Auburn, LSU, Alabama, Arkansas
Work to do: Florida
Florida (18-11, 8-8; NET: 51, SOS: 48): After Feb. 19’s rousing win over Auburn, Florida more or less stayed the course last week, losing a well-played home game to an uber-hot Arkansas and rebounding with a necessary but not super helpful 12-point road win at Georgia. The Arkansas performance Tuesday was pretty encouraging, even if the Gators couldn’t hold on down the stretch, because there might an argument to be made that this team is different with Colin Castleton on the floor. Castleton was excellent in the Auburn win, and even better against Arkansas: 29 points, 10-of-16 shooting, 9-of-10 from the stripe, plus six rebounds. Having him makes Florida look like a tournament team again, at least to us. For the committee to feel similarly, the Gators need to win at Vanderbilt Tuesday and either beat Kentucky Saturday or give it a real eye-test try — and then finish the job at some point in the SEC tournament. Uphill battle, but we can at least see the case.
Others
It’s hard enough for anyone to earn an at-large bid, but there is a special peril to aiming for the field as a true mid-major. And, like playing a From Software game, Bubble Watch’s enjoyment of the accomplishment scales with the difficulty. Murray State is a fantastic example. The Racers are great, but the past two Saturdays, they’ve also found themselves in road dogfights with teams ranked outside the top 250 in the NET. This happens all the time in league play, even in a league like the Ohio Valley, where conference foes, even with a huge gulf in ability, know each other incredibly well and exploit those familiarities at every turn. Meanwhile, every game carries huge stakes. It is incredibly, incredibly hard to run that gauntlet, to make it through the OVC or a league like it without suffering a single debilitating loss that might give the committee reason to question your bubble status. (Just ask Belmont, no longer on the page. Or Iona, who fell twice in five days in the MAAC and doesn’t really look like it has an at-large-level resume as a result.) Murray State did it: 18-0 in the Valley, 24th in the NET, 100 percent going to the NCAA Tournament whether it wins its conference tourney or no. Pretty awesome stuff.
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Life is not quite such a slog for Saint Mary’s every year — the Gaels always have at least two cracks at Gonzaga, and this year the top half of the WCC is just plain good — but Saturday’s defensively masterful home win over the Zags, who last lost the first week of December, was nonetheless a huge deal in its own right. It’s a heck of a way to earn a lock, anyway.
Colorado State is also a lock after wins over Wyoming and Utah State. The Rams, in large part thanks to David Roddy, are one of the best watches in the sport, and if you take out their two losses to UNLV — Colorado State seems to have a weird thing with UNLV — Niko Medved’s team has lost just twice this year. (No, things don’t actually work that way, but still: The UNLV thing is weird.) Anyway, with one game left against Boise State, no way CSU misses out now.
Last but not least, farewell to Dayton. The Flyers — who lost three straight Quadrant 4 home games in one week in November and have had a pretty solid season otherwise — did a lot of good work in league play only to pick up a fourth Q4 defeat Saturday at La Salle (with Toumani Camara injured). Just like that, the dream is over, the Flyers off the page. (The silver lining: That team is really young and playing good ball. If it stays together, look out.)
And so the others section finally, mercifully got slightly smaller. It only took the entire season. Sheesh.
Locks: Gonzaga, Houston, Saint Mary’s, Murray State, Colorado State
Should be in: Boise State, San Francisco, San Diego State, Wyoming
Work to do: Loyola Chicago, North Texas, Memphis, Davidson, SMU, BYU, VCU
Boise State (22-6, 14-2; NET: 29, SOS: 89): The Broncos are very close to joining Colorado State in the Elysian fields of lockdom. The only thing holding them back (and you can maybe debate whether this should hold them back at the moment, but we’re being careful for now) is an extra game in the regular season, home against Nevada Tuesday night. A loss there, a loss to CSU in the finale and a loss at the first opportunity in the MWC tournament might make this interesting. Failing that, though, the Broncos are going to dance.
San Francisco (22-8, 10-6; NET: 28, SOS: 80): The Dons look like they’ll be in the tournament. You could probably assume as much just looking at their NET number. For all that the committee talks about the NET (and the RPI before it) being a mere sorting tool and one number among many, blah blah blah, teams just very rarely miss the tournament with a top-30 NET. It certainly gets you in far more often than not, even if, like San Francisco, you have a home loss to Portland and your three Quadrant 1 wins comprise Davidson, BYU and Santa Clara — hardly a murderer’s row.
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San Diego State (19-7, 11-4; NET: 30, SOS: 74): Want to hear a scary thought? San Diego State … but with offense. Shudder. Yet that’s what showed up at Wyoming Monday night. The Aztecs scored 1.11 points per possession at Arena-Auditorium, where the Cowboys hadn’t lost all season, and got 30 points on 10-of-20 shooting (including 5-of-9 from 3) from senior guard Matt Bradley, who was brilliant. Just after the game, Bradley noted his team’s offense and rightfully so. This might be the best defensive team in the country. If it is also making shots, it’s going to give a lot of people problems in the bracket — which, coincidentally, we now think the Aztecs have an extremely good chance of being a part of. SDSU still hasn’t lost a game outside the top quadrant, and now has another high-quality win to back up its impressive numbers and elite defensive performance. Monday was huge.
Wyoming (22-6, 12-4; NET: 39, SOS: 101): The Cowboys couldn’t manage to hold off San Diego State in Laramie Monday night, losing their first home game of the season. We’re more inclined to give the Aztecs credit than the Cowboys blame; San Diego State scoring the ball efficiently is kind of unfair. All the same, Wyoming is still in fine tournament shape. There are a couple of Quadrant 3 losses here but nothing else that suggests Jeff Linder’s team will have any issue getting a bid.
Loyola Chicago (21-7, 13-5; NET: 31, SOS: 115): For another reminder of how hard it can be to pick your way through a mid-major league, check out Loyola, which took its fifth loss in Missouri Valley play Saturday in overtime at Northern Iowa. It’s a testament to the Ramblers’ work in the nonconference (including their hastily arranged neutral-court win over San Francisco, which proved crucial) that they are even still in consideration here; most years, five losses in the Valley would end the discussion. Four of these losses are Quadrant 2 (home versus a good Drake team is the exception), making them at least tenable, but heading in to their Arch Madness fixture against Bradley the Ramblers are a bubble team in a way they simply weren’t a month ago.
North Texas (20-4, 15-1; NET: 38, SOS: 141): We sort of assumed North Texas would be gone by now; this is the kind of team sheet that screams “this mid-major team will absolutely not make it to the end of Bubble Watch.” It took until Feb. 19 for North Texas to get its first Quadrant 1 win (at UAB), but the Mean Green’s continued refusal to lose in Conference USA means they’ve stuck around by sheer force of win quantity. If they survive trips to UTSA and UTEP this week, they’ll enter the conference tournament with a good chance of an at-large bid, too.
Memphis (17-9, 11-5; NET: 42, SOS: 75): So … Memphis is actually just good now? The Tigers throttled Wichita State (not good, but not terrible either) at the FedEx Forum Sunday, 81-57, the eighth win in their last nine games. Say whatever you want about Penny Hardaway, but he has recovered the mess of this season’s first half and turned his team all the way around — these guys are playing extremely hard, and for each other, in a way that would have seemed ridiculous in December or January. This is still a bubble team, of course; the Tigers’ win at Houston Feb. 12 moved the needle, but most of the rest of this recent run has kept them in the hunt rather than really elevating them into sure-bid territory. There are still real flaws on this resume. But still — Memphis is playing well! The Tigers might actually do this thing! No kidding.
Davidson (23-4, 14-2; NET: 45, SOS: 154): The Wildcats would almost certainly be in the tournament if it was selected right now, but they have a tricky final week to the year. On Saturday is a road trip to Dayton, which (as mentioned) is just a good team, but first comes a home game against George Mason Wednesday night. A loss to the Josh Oduro Show would not be advisable for a good team with a just-OK resume (though that late-scheduled win over Alabama has come in extremely handy all year long).
SMU (20-7, 11-4; NET: 47, SOS: 102): For a good long while there, it looked like the 2021-22 American Athletic Conference might be a one-bid league. That slightly embarrassing scenario no longer looks particularly likely. Both Memphis and SMU are probably on the right side of the bubble these days, thanks in part to both teams’ wins over Houston in early February. The Mustangs just lost at Houston Sunday, but that’s neither here nor there, really. The big question is whether they can handle their business in two home games this week, versus Cincinnati and Tulane. Do that, and they’re probably — just — getting in.
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BYU (19-9, 9-6; NET: 50, SOS: 63): After losing four crucial games from Jan. 27 to Feb. 5 (including at Pacific, gulp) BYU’s form improved in the last couple weeks of the season, in that it won a few games rather than losing them. But those four wins came over Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine, and both road games were very much up for grabs until the final whistle. Which is to say: BYU’s “strong” finish didn’t help it get back on the right side of the bubble, at least not for us. The Cougars need to beat at least one good team at the WCC tournament — at minimum.
VCU (20-7, 13-3; NET: 53, SOS: 93): It feels fitting to end the latest edition of Bubble Watch with perhaps the platonic ideal of a bubble team this season, a team that appears to be as much on last-in/first-out cut line as much as any other under consideration. The Rams keep winning of late, but doing so in the Atlantic 10 means mostly racking up Quadrant 3 wins, which sort of add up over time but don’t do a whole lot for the committee, we imagine. The NET and schedule number here is perfectly bubbly. The three Quadrant 1 wins (at Davidson, Dayton and Vanderbilt) are, too — just one, at Davidson, qualifies as a win over a tournament team. But there are impressive qualities here, too, including a 9-1 road record that might tip things in VCU’s favor relative to some of the other teams on the bubble. We’ll see, but in the meantime, VCU has to finish strong versus St. Bonaventure and (at) Saint Louis this week.
(Top photo: Darren Yamashita / USA Today)