We didn’t remember it this way, but Providence actually got off to an OK start in the fall of 2016. The Friars were 10-2 as of Dec. 20, with a win over Rhode Island and losses to Ohio State on the road and Virginia on a neutral court. We didn’t remember that part. We just remembered what came next: Providence losing eight of its next 12 games, including to Boston College, DePaul and St. John’s, and falling to 14-11 overall and 4-8 in the Big East. At that stage, Providence’s NCAA Tournament outlook was dire — at which point the Friars promptly went on a six-game run to end the season, beating Butler, Xavier, Creighton, and Marquette in the process, totally salvaging their year and their NCAA Tournament bid.
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They were a No. 11 seed. They lost to USC in the First Four. No matter. The legend of Ed Cooley’s Providence — of a team uniquely capable of making a late, dramatic, hugely enjoyable bubble run, despite all prior evidence to the contrary — was born.
It was cemented three seasons later. On Nov. 13, 2019, Providence lost at Northwestern. Ten days later, it lost at home to Penn, and then to Long Beach State, and then to Charleston. The Friars were 4-4, with four terrible losses on their resume. On Dec. 17, when they lost 83-51 to Florida, they were 6-6, their odds of making the NCAA Tournament so low as to be borderline nonexistent. Naturally, Cooley’s team won its next four, survived a swoon in the middle of Big East play, and went on to win eight of its last 10 games, including its last six, to end up 19-12, 12-6, and easily set to be included in the doomed 2020 NCAA Tournament that never was.
This year, of course, Providence is 21-2, which has left us asking the question for months: Who, if not Providence, will this year’s Providence be?
Lades and gentlemen of bubbledom: Say hello to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.
Yes, Rutgers is on actually, truly on the Bubble Watch this week, the product of a late-season at-large comeback not unlike the one we saw the Friars pull off in 2019-20, which is to say like almost none other. In November, Rutgers was a nightmare; it lost three straight to DePaul, Lafayette at home, and UMass. On Dec. 3, it lost at Illinois 86-51. The next game? A thrilling home win over Purdue. Rutgers’ turnaround hasn’t been quite as clear cut, at least not yet; the Scarlet Knights have dropped league games to just-OK teams Minnesota, Maryland, Northwestern and Penn State. But they’ve also now beaten Purdue, Michigan, Iowa and, in the past two weeks, Michigan State, Ohio State and, on Saturday, Wisconsin. Most of their comeback has been built around the elite strength of Rutgers’ home-court environment, but their ability to take down the Badgers in Madison last week sealed their emergence on this page.
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It is, truly, out of left field. We will fully admit we never expected to be writing about the 2021-22 Scarlet Knights in this space; we left them buried back under the rubble of that Nov. 22 home loss to Lafayette, assuming they would never resurface again. That they are here is a testament to the superiority of college basketball’s regular season, when every game counts, but only so much, and no single result in isolation can be enough to torpedo a season. There is always a road back, always a way — however unlikely — to get back in the bubble picture.
And there are few joys in this column like watching a team that was totally gone from the discussion — like way gone, like don’t-make-me-laugh gone – get back into it. It’s part of why the Watch has such a soft spot for Providence traditionally. Fortunately, in a year when Providence just wins every time it takes the floor, someone else has stepped boldly into the breach. Thanks, Rutgers. Good luck at Illinois Wednesday.
• 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.
• 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.
• If you don’t see a team you think should be on the page, there’s a chance we actually just forgot them. It does happen. Inquire within.
ACC
You know when you, as a referee, can probably be fairly certain you’ve had a bit of a rough night? When Tony Bennett is cursing at you. Tony Bennett, famously, does not curse. But he did Monday night, plain as day, after Kihei Clark was called for a flagrant foul when a Virginia Tech player sort of fell near him while Clark tried to grab the ball. Having watched a lot of Virginia basketball in the past decade or so, we can’t recall another time we saw Bennett actually use a swear word, at a ref or otherwise, and the withering stare Bennett served up for the remainder of the game (especially when Bennett got an out-of-bounds call in the corner correct that the ref missed, only to overturn it after Bennett angrily told him to go check the monitor) was as much anger as we’ve ever seen him express on the court. Tony Bennett: Not a yeller! One of those times as a ref where you have to take a step back and wonder if maybe you are the one who’s wrong after all.
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Anyway, Monday night’s game in Blacksburg was fun, if not particularly well-played — a game between two NIT teams, perhaps. Not to rain on anyone’s parade; Tech should enjoy that win, and Virginia should enjoy the fact that it has gotten back in the fringe of the bubble conversation at all. But the Cavaliers, despite last week’s win at Duke, still have a 3-4 record against Quadrant 3, which is really bad. The Hokies still haven’t beaten anyone in Quadrant 1. Neither of these teams is really in the mix right now. Maybe one or both of them will get there — losing at Virginia Tech hardly ruins Virginia’s chances, for example. But neither is on the page as of now.
Lock: Duke
Work to do: North Carolina, Wake Forest, Notre Dame, Miami
North Carolina (18-7, 10-4; NET: 37, SOS: 50): How about Florida State’s collapse? Sheesh! It wasn’t that long ago that the Seminoles were on this page; now they’re getting blown out by a North Carolina team that still hasn’t beaten anyone good and has gotten blown out by every good team it has played. Saturday’s loss at the Smith Center was FSU’s sixth in a row. (A streak which came after FSU won six in a row. What a weird year.) Anyway, FSU’s complete abandonment speaks to the difficulty facing a team like North Carolina this year; having lost all of its important nonconference games, there aren’t enough good teams in the ACC against whom a team like UNC can improve its resume. As such, you get a team sheet that remains very color-coded visually: All of the losses are in Q1, all of the Q1 games are losses, and everything else is a win. That means this team still has just four Quadrant 1 or 2 wins, all of which are in Quadrant 2. It still looks tidy when you lay it out in grid format; it is still a very bubbly document, and one the Tar Heels need to improve on soon.
Wake Forest (20-6, 10-5; NET: 40, SOS: 104): Wake Forest was on the should be in line last week, but we’re downgrading the Demon Deacons after Saturday’s home loss to Miami. There’s no shame in losing to Miami at your own place. It happened to Duke; it happens. But the defeat did add another Quadrant 2 loss to the mix here, and Wake is now just 4-3 against Q2 and 1-3 against Q1. For all of its good work this year, it hasn’t consistently beaten high-level teams, and has racked up a huge share of its wins against bad teams — hence the pretty soft schedule numbers, particularly in the nonconference (332nd). A win at Duke Tuesday night would help us feel a lot more confident here, but failing that Wake has a pretty manageable remaining schedule with Notre Dame (home), Clemson (away) and Louisville and NC State (both home). The Demon Deacons are good enough to get the job done here, but we are mildly concerned about the shape of this resume if things go awry these next couple of weeks.
Notre Dame (17-7, 11-3; NET: 56, SOS: 51): Notre Dame just keeps winning. The Irish might have put up the worst offensive performance of their season (and maybe Mike Brey’s entire life) against Duke on Jan. 31 (final score: 57-43, in 66 possessions), but otherwise they’ve been excellent in ACC play, now 11-3 and sitting at the top of the conference standings alongside Duke. Of course, because this ACC is the way it is, ND has been racking up those league wins against Quadrant 3 teams more often than not, but you can only play the schedule in front of you (in your conference, anyway). Besides, the Irish do still have that home win at Kentucky on their resume, too. The rest of this schedule has more of the same on it, save a trip to Wake Forest, but if the Irish handle their business as they have been they should end up in the field pretty straightforwardly after all. Really nice league campaign.
Miami (18-7, 10-4; NET: 68, SOS: 62): Proving you can win on the road is always a handy characteristic to have; the NCAA Tournament selection committee tends to seem to care about it, even if no actual tournament games are played in true road venues. Miami has certainly proven that. It won at Duke, obviously, but almost as impressively held on for a huge win at Wake Saturday, and its win at Virginia Tech is still in Quadrant 1. The numbers here are still a little weak for a bubble team, but impressive showings down the stretch could change that. In any case, we’d have the Hurricanes in the field as of now, albeit as a double-digit seed; maintaining their position against a shaky finishing schedule should be the priority here.
Big 12
A very special shout-out to Bruce Weber for rocking the slightly oversized purple T-shirt and khakis combination on the sideline Monday night. On a night of quality sartorial choices throughout the Big 12 — including both Kansas and Oklahoma State’s uniforms, the Jayhawks going with some sort of very old-school throwback and OSU rocking black jerseys with black piping, which always looks awesome — Weber’s “grandpa up early on Saturday to walk in the mall” look was truly something, the highlight of the evening.
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Locks: Baylor, Kansas, Texas Tech
Should be in: Texas
Work to do: Oklahoma, Iowa State, TCU, Kansas State, West Virginia
Texas (18-7, 7-5; NET: 15, SOS: 28): Texas lost 80-63 at Baylor Saturday, which, we have to say, is pretty much the exact result we expected when we saw that Texas was playing at Baylor. The Longhorns have a funny way of not being able to take a real, tangible step forward this season, of being unable to really surprise us or make a genuine leap. They’re … fine. Pretty good. Capable of beating Kansas in their own place, with a bit of fortune down the stretch. Not capable of going in and really changing the narrative against Baylor. That’s OK — this team will get to the tournament, and then it will see what it can do from there, and you never know. But right now Texas is just sort of … chugging along.
Oklahoma (14-11, 4-8; NET: 36, SOS: 7): Speaking of a team that very nearly did change the narrative about itself, Oklahoma was a bucket away from a road win in Allen Fieldhouse Saturday, which would have paired incredibly well with last Wednesday’s 70-55 win over Texas Tech. The Sooners are a couple buckets away from several more wins in Big 12 play, including two narrow losses to Kansas, and they really need to start turning some of these defeats into wins. This is a solid NET number and a great schedule, but there are only so many losses a team sheet can sustain.
Iowa State (16-9, 3-9; NET: 43, SOS: 15): All of a sudden, Iowa State is in trouble. Since starting 12-0, the Cyclones are 4-9, and have now lost their last four games — including blowout losses at Texas and West Virginia, and then Saturday’s 75-69 overtime loss to Kansas State in Hilton Coliseum. Not great. What was once one of the nation’s best defenses now ranks just No. 8 in Big 12 play. Paired with the offensive struggles that have always been present here (if Izaiah Brockington isn’t scoring it, we don’t know who will), the Cyclones regularly find themselves stuck in the mud. They travel to TCU Tuesday night. They could really use a big road win. Life in the Big 12 won’t get any more forgiving between now and the end of the regular season.
TCU (16-6, 5-5; NET: 54, SOS: 41): TCU lost by 13 at Texas Tech Saturday, in which there is zero shame. This team still has just six losses total, none of which are remotely bad — a Feb. 5 home loss to Kansas State is the worst thing on this resume, with the exception of a mediocre NET number and a nonconference schedule ranked 274th in the country. The Horned Frogs are probably going to pick a few more Ls up between now and March 5; they have Baylor, Texas and Kansas away yet to play, plus Texas Tech and Kansas in Fort Worth. But right now, despite an offense that really struggles to shoot it from deep, TCU’s team sheet is pretty solid.
Kansas State (14-11, 6-7; NET: 64, SOS: 3): Pretty big win Monday night. Not only did Weber pull off the laundry-day look like a champ, but the Wildcats got a solid home win over a bubble contender in their own league, one they probably still needed to leapfrog on the s-curve coming in to Monday night. It would be nice for the Wildcats if Iowa State (and Iowa State’s NET) stopped falling off a cliff, but their wins over Texas Tech and Texas serve them well, and being in the Big 12 means having plenty of opportunities to improve on a 5-9 record against Quadrant 1 — beginning Saturday at Oklahoma State.
West Virginia (14-11, 3-9; NET: 70, SOS: 9): West Virginia’s race is just about run. We’re keeping the Mountaineers on the page for now, because they were still close enough to the cut line after Saturday’s loss at Oklahoma State that we’re not totally excising them yet. There are still no bad losses on this resume. There are also still a lot of wins out there that West Virginia could grab, lots of opportunities to turn this thing around. Heck, Kansas comes to Morgantown Saturday. That’s a great place to start. But it will take a pretty big, and pretty immediate, turnaround for us to keep West Virginia here much beyond then.
Big East
Georgetown lost again Monday night. That’s now 0-13 in the Big East this season, with reasonable odds of finishing 0-18 in the league by the time this season is over. KenPom.com gives the Hoyas a 36 percent chance to beat DePaul in D.C. Feb. 24. The rest of the time, the Hoyas will take the floor as deep, deep underdogs; in no game are they given more than a 14 percent chance of winning.
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This got us thinking: One of the craziest things about the Patrick Ewing era is not how bad this season is, although it is really bad, but how we’ve managed to get this deep into this tenure without Georgetown ever being a factor on this page. Like, very rarely has Georgetown even been on the Bubble Watch in the last five years. Even when they haven’t been 0-13 bad – and usually they’ve just been mediocre – they’ve almost never merited any serious consideration for an at-large bid. Maybe they snuck on for a week or two here or there, but never anything sustained or meaningful. Which, like, look at some of the teams on this page. It’s one thing to not get to the tournament, but to never be in position for even remote at-large consideration? In five years? Tough.
Locks: Villanova, Providence
Should be in: Connecticut, Xavier, Marquette, Seton Hall
Work to do: Creighton
Connecticut (17-7, 8-5; NET: 18, SOS: 37): Nothing feels easy for UConn, does it? Is it just us, or is it true that every time we check on a Huskies game, they’re in the midst of some sort of brutal physical battle that involves getting the ball as close to the rim as possible, muscling some dudes out of the way, missing, and then repeating this process as necessary? Does UConn ever truly flow? Anyway, aesthetic concerns aside, this remains a tough, solid team, albeit one that can get bogged down in games like the one it played Sunday — a 63-60 survival in 73 possessions at St. John’s, albeit one that came 48 hours after a difficult road trip to Xavier, a game the Huskies lost. They’re perfect for the classic Big East, in other words, and the resume is solid, but three losses in five games have taken a little of the shine off, though not so much that we think getting in to the field will be an issue. Just maybe not the most watchable bunch for the neutral, that’s all.
Xavier (17-7, 7-6; NET: 20, SOS: 29): Save that one home loss at DePaul, Xavier’s resume is pretty pristine. No, the Musketeers didn’t secure either of their chances against Villanova, and their best road win in league play came at Creighton, but their ability to rack up solid home victories (a la Friday’s over UConn) has served them very well. A 6-6 record in Quadrant 1 with just one questionable loss elsewhere, with these NET and schedule numbers in tow, makes you very likely to get in the tournament. After three years of bubble drama, this Xavier is well on its way.
Marquette (16-9, 8-6; NET: 30, SOS: 2): Marquette’s enjoyable and profoundly strange season marches on as it began — with periods of excellence followed by baffling drops in level. The same team that came from nowhere early in the season to knock off Illinois was also capable of losing four in a row and five of six from Dec. 4 to Jan. 1 … and then going on a run of seven straight wins, and eight in nine, including two huge dubs over Villanova. That same team just went to Butler and gave up 85 points in 69 possessions to a team with the 206th-most efficient offense in the country. What sense are we to make of this? Anyway, Marquette fans will hope that last game is more of a one-off, although the Golden Eagles were slightly suspect defensively against UConn last Tuesday (a much better team than Butler, obviously, but still). Marquette keeps us guessing, anyway. Georgetown comes to town Wednesday. Might be the time to correct some things and rebuild some confidence on the defensive side of the ball.
Seton Hall (14-8, 6-7; NET: 34, SOS: 18): At the risk of sounding extremely corny, we respect Seton Hall’s ability to stay in the fight. For a minute there, it seemed like the Pirates were about to fade away; their excellent 11-3 start was followed by four losses in five, including a loss at DePaul, with the lone win coming at St. John’s immediately before a home loss to the same opponent. Considering Michigan’s struggles (Seton Hall’s win over the Wolverines was its major reputation-maker early in the season), it was fair to wonder whether we had all been a little too excited about SHU in the first place. But the Pirates have hung in. They beat Creighton and Xavier in back-to-back games in the first week of February, and they came close at Villanova Saturday, proving even in defeat this group might have a little more gas in the tank than we thought a couple of weeks ago.
Creighton (16-8, 8-5; NET: 71, SOS: 40): Creighton managed to avoid either of two potential losses to the reeling Georgetown Hoyas Saturday and Monday, avoiding the fate that sudden bubble team San Francisco (who lost to Portland in the second of two consecutive matchups) suffered out in the West Coast Conference. Good news for Creighton, because this resume really can’t afford another bad loss – just the one, to Arizona State early in the season, is fine. The rest of the team sheet is pretty solid, in our view; there’s a big win over Villanova, wins at UConn and Marquette, and a neutral court win over fellow bubble team BYU, in case that comparison ends up needing to be made. A tricky game at DePaul awaits Thursday, but there are good wins with high upside on this schedule in the next couple of weeks.
Big Ten
Probably the less said about the end to Purdue’s narrow win over Maryland Sunday the better, but we did notice that result and some ref decisions accelerating criticism of the officials online Monday — to the point that some people (and not just defensive ref Twitter, which got mad at us for posting a video of a charge call a few weeks back) are now saying maybe everyone needs to lighten up and remember that the refs are human beings who make mistakes. It’s interesting. We generally agree with that sentiment, and yet we can’t help but feel like the increased criticism of referees is also kind of warranted. Frankly, far too often, it feels like the officials’ quality is vastly below that of the players they’re officiating and the coaches coaching. Top college basketball feels like a high-level, high-stakes competition, and some of the referees involved — especially when compared to the hyperprofessionalized and very regimented cadre of NBA refs — feel a step or two below the level.
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Is that their fault? Not really. College refs are overworked and underpaid; the diffuse way they are assigned and regulated makes their jobs even harder than they already are, and calling basketball games is hard enough as it is. But we do sort of get where the frustration among fans is coming from. The whole thing feels like it could be better — especially this year, when the game has gotten vastly more physical and more anecdotally hard-fought than at any point in the past half-decade.
Locks: Purdue, Illinois, Wisconsin
Should be in: Ohio State, Iowa, Michigan State
Work to do: Michigan, Indiana, Rutgers
Ohio State (15-6, 8-4; NET: 17, SOS: 20): We feel like we’re basically just taking any opportunity to scream this to as many people will listen at this point but, hey, so what: Holy moly is E.J. Liddell good! His performance against Michigan Saturday was absolutely clinical, save for some uncharacteristically so-so 3-point shooting, which Liddell nonetheless made up for with an ice-cold game-clinching corner 3 in crunchtime. (Get a hand up, Hunter!) He finished with 28 points, five rebounds, three blocks and a massive rivalry win for a team well on its way to the NCAA Tournament. What a player he’s become.
Iowa (17-7, 7-6; NET: 19, SOS: 61): That’s a bit more like it, Iowa. The Hawkeyes had been merely so-so offensively in their 4-6 start to Big Ten play this season, in a way that we’ve not been accustomed to, and that felt out of character for a Keegan Murray-led team with (theoretically, anyway) some good 3-point shooters in the mix. Jordan Bohannon, in particular, needed to get it going. What did he do? Shot 10-of-16 from 3 in last Thursday’s 110-87 win at Maryland. No big deal. Iowa followed that up with a 98-75 win over Nebraska (in 80 possessions). Iowa still plays fast, still doesn’t turn the ball over, still gets good looks all the time. It just needs to shoot the ball a bit better to throw some gas on this fire. Last week’s competition wasn’t the best the league has to offer, but these were positive signs all the same.
Michigan State (18-6, 9-4; NET: 24, SOS: 24): The Spartans are still turning the ball over too much, and still not forcing turnovers often enough to nudge the math back in their favor even remotely, but when these factors don’t matter in a game — when an opponent turns it over at roughly the same rate as MSU — then Michigan State almost always wins. If it wasn’t for the turnover woes, this team would be elite, but it’s still pretty good as-is, as it proved again in Saturday’s comfortable 76-61 home win over Indiana, in which the Spartans committed “only” 15 turnovers in 71 possessions.
Michigan (13-10, 7-6; NET: 35, SOS: 16): Michigan’s numbers continue to look pretty impressive on paper, even if the result-based metrics (like strength of record, which ranks them 52nd) are not quite as impressed. Those numbers got a huge boost with last week’s 82-58 win over Purdue, naturally, which was a genuinely impressive win, and set up the Wolverines for a massive home game against Ohio State Saturday — wherein they got the E.J. Liddell treatment instead. Still, taking one of those two home games is a pretty good return for a team so squarely on the bubble. Up next are trips to Iowa and Wisconsin, both of which will be tough, sure, but neither of which are unwinnable. The Wolverines need to start stringing multiple good results together.
Indiana (16-8, 7-7; NET: 41, SOS: 49): We moved Indiana up to “should be in” last week, at which point Indiana fans declared us naive. “Should be in” right before trips to Northwestern and Michigan State? For the Indiana Hoosiers? Foolish behavior. And they were totally right. After back to back losses — the former a game in which five IU players were benched for a violation of team rules and wing Trey Galloway had to run point all night, the latter a good old-fashioned whooping in East Lansing — the Hoosiers are back down in the world of work to do. This is still totally a tournament-worthy resume, so we shouldn’t go too far in the direction of impending doom, but embittered Indiana fans are now fully concerned about the worst-case scenario manifesting itself down the stretch. A win over Wisconsin at home Tuesday night would go a long way toward assuaging their anxieties.
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Rutgers (15-9, 9-5; NET: 81, SOS: 47): As promised above, Rutgers is actually on the Bubble Watch page today, which is just wild and awesome to us. Does that mean we’d have them in the tournament right now? Not so much. This is still a relative long-shot play, but the Scarlet Knights’ schedule is such that it’s totally plausible, too. They have Illinois in Jersey Mike’s Arena Wednesday night, the same place where they’ve racked up all these quality wins all season, and then they get road cracks at Purdue and Michigan Sunday and next Wednesday, respectively — followed by another game against Wisconsin, this time at home. There is just one non-quality opponent on this team sheet the rest of the way (Penn State at home). A 3-3 record down the stretch might just get them in the tournament after all.
Pac-12
Folks have been asking for Washington State to get on the page for the last couple of weeks now. It’s looking like the Cougars missed their window. Wazzu missed its chance to knock of Arizona Thursday night — speaking of which, the Wildcats are absolutely rolling through this league right now, good grief – and then lost to Arizona State, 58-55, at home Saturday, followed by Monday night’s defeat at Oregon. It’s going to be tough for Washington State to recover from that, and we doubt we’ll Stanford get back on this page shortly, either. The Pac-12 is looking like a four-bid league now.
Locks: Arizona, UCLA
Should be in: USC
Work to do: Oregon
USC (21-4, 10-4; NET: 28, SOS: 114): Saturday’s win over UCLA qualifies as a fairly massive one, the product of a brilliant 27-point performance by Drew Peterson, every which one of those points USC needed to get the win over the line. (Peterson also had 12 rebounds and five blocks; he’s a nice player, but where on earth did THAT come from?) Anyway, despite some slightly soft numbers, particularly a really bad nonconference schedule, USC has been plugging along in the should be in category for most of this year’s Bubble Watch run. The Trojans haven’t slipped up much; another win or two (Washington and Washington State are up next) should seal the deal.
Oregon (15-8, 9-4; NET: 62, SOS: 67): Note to bubble teams: don’t lose to Cal on your own floor! Really inadvisable stuff from Oregon Saturday, especially considering it joins the Ducks’ two other notable Quadrant 3 losses this season — Arizona State and Colorado — as having taken place at Matthew Knight Arena. Here’s our question: If that floor isn’t granting you some sort of home-court distraction advantage, maybe it’s time to install a slightly more classical, slightly less visually painful design? No? Just a thought. Anyway, Oregon remains very firmly on the bubble, with its wins at UCLA and USC propping the Ducks up but hardly overtaking that trio of bad defeats in Eugene.
SEC
Congratulations to our — that’s right, our — LSU Tigers for winning two straight after six losses in seven games. There were a lot of haters and doubters out there, a lot of people who didn’t believe. Not us! Never in doubt, baby!
(Is it really dumb for us to say this one day before Georgia plays at LSU? Yes. So, so dumb. But we’ve made our bed and now we’re going to lie in it, and that means being brashly overconfident about LSU from here on out. The only way out is through, etc. and so forth.)
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Meanwhile, the SEC has another lock in place today, with Tennessee joining the ranks of its tournament-guaranteed brethren. It’s perhaps no surprise that UT’s lock move comes after a sustained period of offensive improvement, one in which the defense-obsessed Vols finally started putting up good per-trip numbers against their league foes, which they’ve now maintained for the better part of the last month. Since a blowout loss at Kentucky Jan. 15, Tennessee is 7-1, with the only loss coming in an offensive mess of a game at Texas (52-51 in 57 trips). When this team is scoring, it’s winning.
Locks: Kentucky, Auburn, Tennessee, LSU
Should be in: Alabama, Arkansas
Work to do: Florida, Mississippi State
Alabama (16-9, 6-6; NET: 22, SOS: 1): If the manner of Alabama’s 68-67 win over Arkansas last weekend made it feel momentous — Alabama gutting one out despite shooting the ball pretty badly, and despite Arkansas’s dramatic dash to make the game competitive late — it will have a fairly minimal impact on the Tide’s actual resume. Really, not much has changed. This remains a really good team sheet save the losses to Missouri and Georgia, which are just plain awful, but not enough to hurt a team with wins over Gonzaga, Baylor, and Houston. Alabama would have to really collapse to avoid making the tournament now. A ho-hum win over Mississippi State Wednesday night would just about seal the deal.
Arkansas (19-6, 8-4; NET: 33, SOS: 78): Over the summer, Eric Musselman told us that part of the reason he liked the transfer portal was that he enjoyed putting a team together and figuring it out over the course of a season; it was like a challenging puzzle stretched out over months. He appears to have gotten pretty close to solving these Hogs. Arkansas didn’t win at Alabama Saturday, but it did come awfully close, its first defeat since Jan. 8 coming by one point against a good team on the road, as much a sign of Arkansas’s improvement as last Tuesday’s raucous home win over Auburn. Arkansas was a full-on bubble team not long ago. All of a sudden, this team looks closer to a shoo-in.
Florida (16-9, 6-6; NET: 49, SOS: 48): It’s possible we were slightly harsh on Florida in last week’s blurb. We didn’t note, for example, that so much of the Gators’ lifeless, formless slide toward bubble irrelevance has come without star center Colin Castleton, who returned to the court Feb. 5. Unfortunately, that didn’t make much of a difference against the likes of Oscar Tshiebwe last Saturday; Tshiebwe finished with 27 points and 19 rebounds, because he is totally ridiculous and unfair. But despite our exhaustion with UF’s relative mediocrity and persistent lack of clear hoops identity, you do have to give the Gators credit for holding the line in Castleton’s absence, winning four of the six games he missed. We didn’t really expect them to win at Kentucky; no harm there. If the big man can stay healthy and productive, Florida at least has a player you can rally around, and a chance to at least end the season with some slightly more interesting basketball — including chances to win at home against Auburn, Arkansas and Kentucky.
Mississippi State (14-10, 5-6; NET: 53, SOS: 45): If you were an SEC bubble team, and there was one team you would want to play right now, it’s LSU in Baton Rouge. The Tigers have been drifting badly, and yet they still boast a top-20 NET and are an impressive win to add to your team sheet, especially on the road; the Tigers have lost to Arkansas and Ole Miss at home in recent weeks. If Mississippi State fails to make the tournament this season, it will perhaps regret not taking this chance more than almost any other — save, potentially, when it played Kentucky to a tie after regulation and couldn’t secure the overtime win at Rupp Arena. Add either or both of those wins to this resume and you’ve probably got a tourney team. At the moment, with a 1-7 record against Quadrant 1, 2-1 against Quadrant 2 and two losses in Quadrant 3, there are a lot of near-misses here but not a lot of tangible reasons to put this team in the field.
Others
Of course, we killed the American’s longstanding separate section just in time for SMU and Memphis (which has now won its fifth game in a row!) to beat Houston and start truly building (or, in Memphis’s case, rebuilding) their NCAA Tournament at-large profile. Perfect timing, guys. Oh, well. No going back. The Mountain West has more teams in the bubble picture anyway, and it’s also a better, more fun league this season by a considerable margin, and you don’t hear the Mountain West people complaining every week. Good people, they are. Compliant.
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Anyway, this section keeps on growing, though the good news, as ever, is that its growth is not just due to us rolling in other conferences, but also in the number of mid-major teams that are playing great, potentially at-large-worthy hoops this season. If ever you get existentially bored of the Floridas of the world, just turn on Murray State or Wyoming or Colorado State or Davidson. There’s some fantastic basketball out there, and we’re really excited for some of these teams to get in the bracket and see what they can pull off.
Locks: Gonzaga, Houston
Should be in: Saint Mary’s, Wyoming, Murray State, Loyola Chicago, Colorado State, Boise State
Work to do: San Francisco, North Texas, Memphis, SMU, Belmont, San Diego State, BYU, Davidson
Saint Mary’s (19-6, 8-3; NET: 21, SOS: 69): So Saint Mary’s lost by 16 at Gonzaga. What else is new? This is just what happens when basically any team, let alone very solid teams like Saint Mary’s — teams whose per-possession performance suggests they’re at least top-30 good, if not maybe top-20 — goes to play at Gonzaga. You hold your L and keep it moving. A loss in Spokane doesn’t diminish the Gaels’ profile in any meaningful way.
Wyoming (20-3, 10-1; NET: 25, SOS: 95): The Cowboys can’t stop winning these days, even when all but two of their players combine for just 26 points in a 64-possession game at San Jose State — fortunately, Hunter Maldonado and Graham Ike exist, and they have the rest of it covered. That duo scored a combined 48 points at the Provident Credit Union Center Saturday night; Ike added 18 rebounds. Since losing big to Arizona Dec. 8, Wyoming is 13-2, with both losses coming by three points apiece — all of which they’re managing against this unusually excellent edition of the Mountain West. It’s a hell of a thing.
Murray State (21-2, 14-0; NET: 26, SOS: 212): A Memphis turnaround would be manna from heaven for Murray State, who beat the Tigers Dec. 10 and have since seen the status of that win mostly corrode — at least until Memphis started to put things together in the last couple of weeks. If that win turns out to be even more impressive than it already is (a top-50 road win is nothing to laugh at anyway) then the Racers will get marginally more breathing room as they get to the final stages of the regular season — where they’re looking to stay unbeaten in league play to avoid what would, save their remaining game against Belmont Feb. 24, universally be considered bad losses. Surviving Saturday’s trip to Morehead State, a 57-52 win, was absolutely massive.
Loyola Chicago (18-5, 10-3; NET: 27, SOS: 107): Confession: When we first saw that Loyola had lost at Bradley, we assumed the Ramblers had taken a particularly bad defeat. Not so much, it turns out. Bradley’s low-90s NET number makes that a Quadrant 2 defeat, not unlike plenty suffered by teams with far less quality on their resume than this team. Despite the difficulties of navigating the Valley — which can deal you tough losses in the best of times, and which is a hard league even if the teams in it don’t have healthy NET numbers beside their names — Loyola remains in a good place to get a bid.
Colorado State (19-3, 10-3; NET: 31, SOS: 100): Despite being a good team playing in a good league, the margins are pretty narrow for Colorado State — if the Rams lost their last five games, are we 100 percent sure they’d get in? Not entirely. This is why Sunday’s win at Boise State was so massive, a genuine Quadrant 1 victory in a league where the NET distribution means you typically have to go on the road to get one of those. Colorado State narrowly missed out on one in a thriller at Wyoming Jan. 31. It got one back Sunday, ahead of what could be a tricky week (at New Mexico, at UNLV) before finishing up with Wyoming, Utah State and Boise State in the last three games of the regular season.
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Boise State (18-6, 10-2; NET: 39, SOS: 86): After putting together one of the longest winning streaks in the country — few teams not named Auburn managed to go as long or as deep into the season between losses — the Broncos have since lost two of their last four. Those losses have come to the two other conference title contenders in the league, Wyoming and Colorado State, which has marginally set Boise back in the championship chase but hasn’t hurt its at-large standing much, if at all.
San Francisco (20-6, 8-4; NET: 32, SOS: 98): One thing that makes this season sort of unique for bubble purposes — or at least could, if the committee took this factor into consideration, which we’re pretty sure it won’t — is the frequency with which teams have to play opponents twice in quick succession. It’s hard to beat the same team twice in two days, or three, and it’s not something college basketball teams have traditionally ever been asked to do. We bring this up (again) because it’s much more common this year, with make-up games so prevalent, and it had at least something to do with San Francisco’s loss to Portland last Tuesday, a team the Dons had to play twice in three days. Is it the determining factor? No, and really USF should be beating Portland regardless. The loss was devastating, sending San Francisco from a pretty solid spot in our field down to the actual bubble in the exchange.
North Texas (16-4, 11-1; NET: 42, SOS: 156): For much of the season, North Texas’s NET number has been hovering somewhere in the 50s. In the last week, though, it has shot up into the low 40s, at which point we were kind of forced to stop ignoring North Texas. The Nov. 15 loss to Buffalo is the only real blemish on this resume; otherwise, the Mean Green have been very consistent this season, and for a team without many Quadrant 1 or 2 chances — six total thus far — their 3-3 record is pretty respectable therein. Of course, you already know the drill here: North Texas has to keep winning, can’t afford slip-ups in Conference USA basically anywhere, and has a razor-thin margin for error.
Memphis (14-8, 8-4; NET: 44, SOS: 68): Hey, Memphis is back! The onetime bubble hopeful and always entertaining sideshow has maybe, just maybe, started to find itself again, with a five-game win streak that culminated in Saturday’s huge road win at Houston. The Tigers are still turning the ball over way too much, but they’re doing just about everything else better than they had been, and there’s a sense that things have normalized somewhat in terms of rotation, roles, and everyone being on the same page. For all of the talk about Memphis being a basket case, the Tigers did only pick up two genuinely bad losses during their worst period, one at East Carolina and one at Georgia, which is nothing you won’t see on other would-be at-large teams on this page. Really, though, Memphis’s case is about trajectory. If the last three weeks is who this team really is, it should be able to accumulate enough to get in the field come early March. Stay tuned.
SMU (18-5, 9-2; NET: 45, SOS: 124): Having more or less cemented its dominance over the American Athletic Conference yet again, Houston is now doing the sporting thing and letting the bubble hopefuls in its league get a resume-affirming win. It did so for Memphis in Houston Saturday; it did the same for SMU in Dallas on Feb. 9. SMU has a weird Q4 neutral-court loss to Loyola Marymount on its team sheet, and a neutral-court loss to Missouri, without which it would like a pretty likely NCAA Tournament team. But with the Houston win and the improvement in the team’s NET, this resume suddenly looks much more palatable.
Belmont (21-5, 12-2; NET: 47, SOS: 163): It would be trite to say Belmont’s season comes down to Feb. 24’s game at Murray State, because that’s not definitely true. The Bruins could, in theory, win their other three regular-season games, lose to Murray State, and still have a pretty decent at-large case to make, depending on how the Ohio Valley Conference tournament goes. But if Belmont does win its other three games and wins at Murray State Feb. 24, then the Bruins are almost definitely in the field. So yes, that game is very big, even if there is another path available.
San Diego State (15-6, 7-3; NET: 50, SOS: 88): San Diego State’s neutral-court win over Saint Mary’s has only gained in esteem since the Aztecs earned it, and it now forms the lynchpin of an otherwise bubbly resume that could use a few more quality victories like it. On the other hand, SDSU hasn’t lost a remotely bad fixture all year; its only loss outside of Quadrant 1 came at home to Boise State in that 42-37 thriller Jan. 22 that we still can’t quite get over. It’s a pretty clean resume; it just needs a bit more quality, and the Aztecs now have a three-game stretch against Utah State, Fresno State and Boise State to find it.
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BYU (17-8, 7-5; NET: 51, SOS: 57): Talk about your all-time escapes. On Thursday night, BYU needed a massive second-half comeback and all of overtime to get out of Loyola Marymount without taking a devastating loss — which would have been the Cougars’ fifth in a row, in a stretch that already included a road loss at Pacific. Instead, though, BYU survived, just as it did against Pepperdine two nights later, winning there 91-85. These are not particularly convincing performances, but “unconvincing performance in a win” is vastly better than the alternative. BYU is still in this thing, even if the Cougars look like they could fade away any minute.
UAB (17-6, 9-3; NET: 52, SOS: 189): The Blazers very nearly didn’t make the page. Frankly, we just couldn’t decide entirely what to do with them, and when in doubt, in situations like this, we tend to keep the team on the page. But it’s not pretty here. The loss to Old Dominion Sunday added another really bad defeat to a resume that already had two of them (at Rice, at Marshall), on a resume that doesn’t really have a ton going for it in the first place. Road wins at North Texas and Saint Louis are nice, we guess, but there’s not a lot here. Others might still have UAB in and around the bubble places; we’re not really seeing it at his point.
Davidson (20-4, 11-2; NET: 61, SOS: 150): Davidson handled business against Duquesne Monday night, its 11th win in Atlantic 10 play, and a pretty solid turnaround from a somewhat disappointing loss at Rhode Island Saturday afternoon. The good news: A trip to Rhode Island (NET: 119) constitutes a Quadrant 2 game, so it’s not the resume-killing loss it might have seemed when you first saw the score flash by on the ticker Saturday night. It was also just Davidson’s fourth loss of the season. We think the Wildcats would still be fine if the tournament came around today; they will need to be careful from here.