Bauer’s Bubble Watch: 2/27/24

Posted byDJ BauerPosted inBubble WatchTags:, ,

Do you feel that? That’s the anticipation beginning to settle in.

That calendar might make your eyes do a double-take, and not just because it’s Leap Year. (Don’t forget about that on Thursday, by the way). No, it’s because conference tournament play is now officially less than a week away. Crazy, right? But it’s true—the ASUN kicks off this year’s postseason (as it does every year) in six days with their conference tourney picking up on Monday, March 4.

Less than a week! Postseason basketball! Goshdarnit I just can’t contain all this excitement!!

It’s also bittersweet, knowing that the end of it all is drawing nearer and nearer, and in a little over a month’s time, we’ll all be starting the long, cold wait-around for seven months, impatiently dreaming of the time it all happens all over again. But, man, does the payoff make the wait worth it.

With postseason play now in the periphery, Bubble Watch becomes all the more critical. As I wrote in yesterday’s Bauertology post, tournament spots are beginning to solidify and remaining room on the bubble is at a premium. Four more teams can now officially pack their bags for March, bringing our outlook totals to the numbers below:

  • Lock: 20 teams
  • Safe: 16 teams
  • Bubble: 22 teams (for 10 available spots)

It’s time for another edition of Bauer’s Bubble Watch, so get your résumé-crunchin’ specs on, and let’s hop to it.

ACC

Now that’s what I’d call a productive weekend for the ACC! The odds were a bit stacked against such a scenario, what with four of the conference’s six at-large contenders competing against each other, but they managed to work it out perfectly: Wake Forest snuck past Duke (no comment on the whole court storm situation) to finally, finally add a win that matches the supposed strength of their metrics, but didn’t beat the Blue Devils badly enough to hurt their hopes at a top-3 seed; meanwhile, North Carolina tallied a key Quad 1 road win to put itself back in prime position for a 1 seed without dealing enough damage to knock Virginia out of the current tournament picture. Beautiful work!

Elsewhere, Clemson is a lock. With the benefit of a much stronger non-conference schedule to fall back on and no losses to Louisville in sight, this year’s Tigers won’t fall victim to the same stumble that last season’s suffered. That won’t stop them from being a popular upset pick in the 5/12 or 6/11 game, but oh well! You can’t win ’em all.

That gives us three locks and three teams likely to stay in bubble range for a while. (I’m also keeping my eye on Syracuse, whose résumé metrics average of 42.5 is well into bid observation territory… but I just don’t see the committee handing an invite to a team ranked 85th in NET—one that’s been outscored this season. Let’s put a pin in the Orange for now.)

  • Lock: North Carolina, Duke, Clemson
  • Safe:
  • Bubble: Virginia, Wake Forest, Pittsburgh

Virginia: For as much of a reputation that Virginia had for stagnant offense during its height in the mid-to-late 2010s, those teams were never this putrid. The Cavaliers flat-out can’t put the ball in the cup with any sort of consistency, now ranking 188th in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency—worse than Air Force, UTSA, and even Louisville. Louisville! So when the Cavs have scored 134 combined points over their last three games and fallen back into the heart of bubble territory, it seems pretty obvious where the blame should be placed. Thankfully, there are some fairly porous defenses ahead in the likes of Boston College and Georgia Tech: opportunities to spark some life into this soulless offense once again. But if even those go wrong… well, you wouldn’t have to worry about yet another early UVA tournament exit. ‘Cause they won’t be there.

Wake Forest: Ah, sweet vindication! All year long, the underlying numbers have said that Wake Forest is a really good team, one fully deserving of a tournament spot, and all year along, the Demon Deacons failed to prove it against competition that matters. Well, no more! Saturday’s victory over Duke is a Quad 1A victory to its core—one that will likely stay there for the remainder of the year. Hooray! So Wake’s clearly in now, right? Well, yes, but also no. The Deacs should be on the good side of the bubble right now with a marquee win in hand and all metrics but SOR tracking 35th or higher. But let’s not forget: that was Wake’s first win guaranteed to stay in Quad 1 all season. Let’s also not forget that Wake is 3-9 in games played outside Winston-Salem with NET #88 Boston College serving as their best true road win, or that they rank 258th in non-conference strength of schedule. One win over Duke does not turn this into a bulletproof team sheet; we’re likely still looking at Last Four Byes/Last Four In at present hour. But given the hell that Wake Forest has been through this year, they’ll gladly take it.

Pittsburgh: I went into Saturday thinking there’d be no way in hell that Pittsburgh would stay on my Bubble Watch come Tuesday morning after the comprehensive schooling that they received from Wake Forest earlier in the week. But lo and behold, here they are after the Panthers doled out their own punishment to Virginia Tech amid the chaotic Saturday shuffle. With predictive numbers near the top 50 and wins at both Duke and Virginia on the résumé, I kind of have no choice but to keep Pitt here, even if their 344th-ranked non-con schedule and sub-60 results average make them a total long shot. But things do get much more interesting this week with trips to Clemson and Chestnut Hill on the docket. We should know a week from now whether or not this Pitt tournament case is for real.

BIG 12

Pop go the Bearcats—here come the Wildcats! Cincinnati finds the fires of its at-large case doused for now with four losses in the last five, solidified by last week’s disastrous Quad 3 home loss to Oklahoma State and Saturday letdown at TCU. But the bubble has been re-inflated (at least temporarily) for Kansas State thanks to its huge home victory over BYU and Monday’s OT survival vs. West Virginia. The hopes of a 10-bid Big 12 live another day! What a special achievement that would be… until next season’s realignment creates 16- and 18-team super-conferences, and suddenly 10 bids per league becomes the norm. Sigh.

  • Lock: Houston, Kansas, Baylor, Iowa State
  • Safe: BYU, Texas Tech, TCU, Oklahoma
  • Bubble: Texas, Kansas State

BYU: Would it kill BYU to be just a little more convincing? This is very obviously a good basketball team; that’s evident if you look at their #14 NET ranking, or their top-20 predictive metrics, or their win over top-of-the-conference staple Baylor last Tuesday night in year one as a Big 12 team. But then you see a 10-point loss at struggling Kansas State on Saturday in a game that never really felt that close beyond the first half, a result that now makes the Cougars 2-6 in true road contests with résumé metrics outside the top 30, and you just want a bit more. BYU should be on its way to a tournament lock here shortly, win or lose (a team in the NET top 15 is not getting left out, period), but you’d feel a lot better about it if they could do something BIG… something, like, winning at Kansas on Tuesday night. Just a tad more oomph, that’s all I’m askin’ for!

Texas Tech: One day the Red Raiders look like they’re on top of the world, obliterating Kansas by 29 points in their premier performance of the season, and the next they’re crashing down to earth with a 14-point defeat at the hands of non-contender UCF. Can’t explain that! Actually you can; this is still a pretty green team all things considered, with most of the scoring talent either being underclassmen or transfer portal products, all under a first-year coach, so you’re bound to get your head-scratchers from time to time. The important thing is that Texas Tech has never let it cascade, with that three-game dry spell at the end of January and start of February being the worst offense committed all season. Numbers are still in a good spot; just win your games this week and we should be good to go.

TCU: It’s been a loaded week for TCU with three games in seven days, though the results of those game (forgivable 1-point loss at Texas Tech, nice 18-point home win over Cincinnati, forgivable 8-point loss to rival Baylor) have the Horned Frogs in just about the exact same place they were a week ago: floating somewhere between 8 and 9 seed range with monstrous wins over Houston and Baylor propping them up, and an all-time terrible non-conference SOS yanking them down. That latter point is going to be crucial; TCU is still in an alright spot, but if things were to get hairy here—let’s say an 0-2 week with losses at the always difficult Marriott Center and a bad but sometimes sneaky West Virginia—that NCSOS number is really something you don’t want to be seeing down near the bubble. Just finish this season out strong and we won’t have to fret.

Oklahoma: I won’t call Javian McCollum’s stunner at the buzzer in Stillwater a season-saving win quite yet, but it absolutely has potential to be. A loss to Oklahoma State would not have been bad in isolation—just a Quad 2 defeat on the road to a rival. But in the grander scheme of things, it could have gotten dicey for Oklahoma quickly. That would have been the Sooners’ third straight L, as they stare down the barrel of a downright brutal remaining schedule, featuring at Iowa State, vs. Houston, and at Texas—a team they lost to in Norman by 15 earlier this year. Even if they did scoop up the expected home win over Cincinnati, would a 1-6 finish to put OU at 19-13 overall have them feeling cozy at all heading into Kansas City? Heck no. So hold onto that special moment, Sooner fans. It could be bigger than anticipated a few weeks from now.

Texas: I’m starting to worry about Texas, guys. It was just last week that the prevailing school of thought was that the Longhorns were in the same territory as Texas Tech, TCU, and Oklahoma above: good but not exceptional Big 12 teams that should be able ride the strength of the conference to an eventual at-large bid. But the conference may be a little too strong for the ‘Horns. Don’t look now, but Texas is just 6-9 against the first two Quadrants with a résumé metric average of 45: down in a much more bubbly zone and well below the three middle-of-the-pack dwellers mentioned before. The Longhorns haven’t put together a truly résumé-lifting performance since their win in Fort Worth on Feb. 3; upcoming contests in Lubbock and Waco could prove critical.

Kansas State: Surely Wildcat fans were sweating bullets on Monday night as West Virginia erased a 22-point second-half deficit with a chance to win it at the horn… but all that doubt vanished the instant that the Mountaineers failed to end it in regulation. Kansas State is now an astonishing 12-0 in overtime games under Jerome Tang, Monday’s nail-biter being the seventh such victory this season. That was a necessary result for the Wildcats to jump back into consideration, as was Saturday’s comfortable win over BYU. This is definitely still a profile on the outside, ranking 73rd in NET and sub-60 in both metric averages. But with three Quad 1 opportunities left on the slate, the path to the postseason is still there. Just take all three of those games into overtime, and you’re golden.

BIG EAST

The messy Big East bubble gets even messier. As I wrote last week, this could be the most fascinating section of the page all the way up until Selection Sunday, given the league’s three surefire selections and abundance of teams just chilling right along the tournament’s cut line. We are at least beginning to see a little separation among these bubble teams, but things aren’t really getting much easier to decipher with a new entry joining the fray, thanks to a 71-year-old Italian man and his sleek white suit. That’s Big East basketball, baby!

  • Lock: UConn, Marquette, Creighton
  • Safe:
  • Bubble: Seton Hall, Providence, Butler, Villanova, St. John’s

Seton Hall: If there’s one team in this Big East bubble bunch that looks like a fairly safe bet for March right now, it’s Seton Hall. I’m not going to put the Pirates all the way up in “safe” territory quite yet given their NET rank of 61, predictive average of 61.5, and two ugly Q3 losses in non-conference to Rutgers and USC, but it’s becoming difficult to imagine a world where those marks would keep them out. Shaheen Holloway has done a bang-up job in year two, pushing his Pirates to landmark victories over UConn, Marquette, and St. John’s and Butler twice, in conjunction with a 5-1 stretch since things started looking bleak in late January. It’s starting to look good, and a résumé-lifting road win over either of Creighton (Wednesday) or UConn (Saturday) this week would cement that sentiment even further.

Providence: Providence might actually do this thing. Overcoming the loss of your star player, with a first-year head coach, mind you, in what is probably the second or third toughest conference in America, doesn’t seem like it should be a feasible task. But the Friars have done it. Heck, they’re a controversial no-call at Butler away from being perfect since that no-show at Villanova on Feb. 4. They’re not just moseying along; they’re darn-near flourishing. There are still things to pick at on this team sheet, namely a 3-6 road record, the 242nd-ranked NCSOS, and every single metric landing in a very bubbly 37-56 range, preventing the Friars from really feeling any kind of safety at the moment. But if overcoming adversity is something that the selection committee decides to consider, I’d guarantee you that the Friars would be viewed upon favorably.

Butler: The Butler renaissance dream is fading fast. It’s been an undeniably fun season in year two of Thad Matta’s grand return with some unforgettable moments, including big-time leaps as a program in the form of wins at Creighton and Marquette: a clear indicator that the Bulldogs are done being a stepping stone in the Big East. But they also haven’t won a game in two-and-a-half weeks. It doesn’t matter how difficult their schedule is, there’s just too much red in that leftmost column of their Warren Nolan team sheet. And with every remaining Quad 1 opportunity now gone (Q2 St. John’s and Xavier, Q4 DePaul are all that are left), Butler has run out of time to amend that 3-11 Q1 record. Now ranked 62nd in the NET with every measure but SOR ranking 58th or worse, it’s going to be an uphill climb from here on out.

Villanova: The same is true for Villanova, having taken a small step forward with a win over Butler on Tuesday, only to immediately erase all momentum by getting squashed like a bug at UConn on Saturday. The Wildcats just haven’t been able to get started for any meaningful period of time since December; even this three-game win streak prior to the UConn loss was glued together by a gimme game over Georgetown. I think that Villanova’s at-large case is even more dire than Butler’s at this point, even if the Cats have the edge metrically speaking, given that the Bulldogs haven’t lost to an opponent worse than Quad 2, while Nova’s three Quad 3 defeats to Philly-area rivals Saint Joseph’s, Drexel, and Penn back in the first month of play continue to drag them down. Unlike Butler, there’s still time to fix what’s wrong: three straight Q1 challenges (at Providence, at Seton Hall, vs. Creighton) to end the season. It’s now or never, guys.

St. John’s: So calling all your players “physically weak” and “laterally slow” is the way to light a fire under ’em, huh? It looked like St. John’s bubble case was shut for good a little over a week ago as Rick Pitino torched his entire roster following their blown-lead home loss to Seton Hall, calling the whole ordeal the “most unenjoyable experience” of his lifetime. (Worse than the Louisville scandal, Rick? Really?) People understandably clowned on him, but, as it turns out, Slick Rick’s still a pretty darn good coach after all this time. The Red Storm team that blasted Creighton from wire-to-wire on Sunday looked miles better than any other effort produced over the last month of play, and that win, SJU’s second in Quad 1 after nine unsuccessful attempts, is enough to give their current profile a second look. Admittedly, there’s still a lot of work to do (a win at Butler on Wednesday is probably necessary), but if we get a repeat performance of what we saw this weekend, then the Johnnies are still in this thing yet. Perhaps Pitino should never take that white suit off again.

BIG TEN

Alright, panic time’s over. Wisconsin is a lock. Yeah, the Badgers have been supremely disjointed the entire span of February (and still didn’t look that great in last week’s win over Maryland), but as time continues to pass and tournament résumés start to solidify, Wisconsin’s profile still remains in the area of a comfortable 5 seed through thick and thin. A Q3 showdown against Rutgers in Madison on March 7 is the only thing remaining resembling a bad loss, and even if that one goes awry, it won’t be enough to spoil a team sheet that has remained unblemished in that area up to this point. Welcome to March, Badgers. (Don’t make me regret this decision.)

As for the rest of the Big Ten, the bubble is all clear! The three remaining non-locks looking for at-large bids all appear safe at the moment (though moods are certainly sunnier in Lincoln than they are in East Lansing), leaving us with a clean Big Ten section. Though it worth noting that Iowa was making a pretty interesting push there for bubble consideration, seeing as the Hawkeyes had been an afterthought for the first 80% of the season before suddenly jumping to the fringe with last Tuesday’s win at Michigan State. But a follow-up loss in Champaign puts the lid on that idea for now. We’ll check back in a week.

  • Lock: Purdue, Illinois, Wisconsin
  • Safe: Nebraska, Northwestern, Michigan State
  • Bubble:

Nebraska: What’s this? A road win? In conference play?? That’s legal??? Yes, indeed—Nebraska’s long-neglected woe of a single road victory from back on Dec. 17 has finally been addressed in the form of last Wednesday’s triumph in Bloomington. And it wasn’t just a ‘going-through-the-motions’ escape against a bumbling Indiana team; Nebraska looked genuinely good all throughout, aside from a late 20-3 Hoosiers run that the Cornhuskers quickly quelled with their own 14-1 outburst. Winning on the road is one thing; looking good while doing it is a game-changer. Throw in Sunday’s 73-55 stomping of Minnesota at Pinnacle Bank (Nebraska looking godly at home, nothing new there), and this is the best that the Huskers have felt about an eventual tournament bid all season. Shuck yeah!

Northwestern: Not much to add to Northwestern’s outlook, other than that Thursday’s final result, a 14-point home win over NET #120 Michigan, is a much more favorable result than what it looked like the Wildcats were headed for initially, a Q3 home loss to a team that hasn’t won outside of Ann Arbor in over two months. Crisis averted! With the heavy hitters of Purdue, Illinois, and Wisconsin all out of the way (and having successfully landed a blow on two of the three), Northwestern can now turn its attention to improving its seed by potentially snagging one or both of these remaining Q1 road contests against lesser foes: inconsistent Maryland and inconsistent Michigan State. A couple more wins outside of Evanston could really make the whole 330th-ranked NCSOS/December loss to Chicago State business a trivial detail.

Michigan State: You’re really testing the limits of those predictive metrics, Michigan State. As has been the case all season long, KenPom, BPI and the NET have been in love with MSU, a team that has routinely ranked in the top 25 in all three aforementioned measures, even if the results out on the court have often failed to match those marks. And still those numbers stand, firmly declaring the Spartans a top team in the land, even after letting Iowa and Ohio State each come to the Breslin Center and knock them off in the span of six days. The bubble is starting to feel like a reality once again after MSU had spent much of late January and early February repairing its broken reputation, and with that thought now in mind, a trip to Purdue up next on the schedule is a scary sight. But knowing how these Izzo teams function, they’ll probably win that game handily and become the first team to win in West Lafayette in over a year. Because of course they will.

MOUNTAIN WEST

Welcome to Week 2 of #6BidMWC Watch, where things are off to a bit of a rocky start. We’re at the same exact outlook numbers-wise as last week with one lock, three in “safe,” and two on the bubble (just Boise State and New Mexico trading places), but every loss that doesn’t follow the regimented diet, like a brutal Quad 4 defeat at home, *cough cough,* alongside previously touched-on bubblers from other conferences like Wake Forest and Seton Hall strengthening their cases, is no bueno for our friends out West. Things may need to start falling in a predetermined fashion for our six-bid dream to come true.

  • Lock: San Diego State
  • Safe: Utah State, Colorado State, Boise State
  • Bubble: Nevada, New Mexico

Utah State: One team that we won’t have to worry about screwing up #6BidMWC: Utah State! With last Tuesday’s handy 68-63 win over prior lock San Diego State now in hand, the Aggies are right on the cusp of joining the Aztecs in guarantee heaven. There are a handful of tiny reasons to put the brakes on the USU lock for now, namely a KenPom score that remains fairly nonplussed (40th) and a fairly underwhelming non-con in which the Aggies went 10-1 (great!) against a grand total of zero at-large teams (not great). But if the Mountain West’s strength is to be believed—and it should—then Utah State’s conference-leading 10-4 margin will fare them well. Just don’t fumble the bag against Fresno State or Air Force this week, and we can make this thing official.

Colorado State: Colorado State is in the same great-but-not-amazing shape as Utah State was before, but for almost entirely inverse reasons. While the Aggies’ non-conference résumé leaves much to be desired, it’s the very thing that headlines the Rams’ profile: an 85th-ranked NCSOS, featuring wins over Colorado, Washington, and, most importantly, a 69-48 drubbing of Creighton right at the top of the team sheet. Where CSU falters is their performance on the road, in which they are just 3-7 with no wins better than NET #181 Northern Colorado—a stark contrast from Utah State’s 6-4 away game output with Q1/Q2 victories over Boise State, UNLV, and Santa Clara. The Rams’ road struggles showed up again on Saturday in Las Vegas, their second-straight such defeat, but they’ll return back to the warmth of Fort Collins this week with a résumé-building opportunity against Q2 Nevada and a layup against Q4 Wyoming. Go 2-0, and we’re good to go.

Boise State: For as good as Boise State seems to be, the predictive metrics have been pretty cool on them all year long. Even after a humongous win at The Pit on Jan. 31, KenPom still had the Broncos down at just 54th. So what’s the solution to this problem? Just kill everyone you see, of course! And Boise’s done just that for the last week-and-a-half, taming Fresno State 90-66, spearing San Jose State 82-50, and lassoing Wyoming 92-72. Now both their KenPom and NET rank are as high as they’ve been all season at 42nd and 31st, respectively. Keep that trend up when the going gets a little tougher here shortly (vs. New Mexico, vs. Nevada, at San Diego State to end the regular season) and the Broncos will be making their third straight tournament appearance for the first time ever.

Nevada: Take away a pair of losses to New Mexico, and Nevada has been arguably the best team in the Mountain West since late January. The Wolf Pack have four Quad 1/2 wins since Jan. 27, three over fellow at-large contenders (Colorado State, Utah State, San Diego State) and two on the road (Utah State, UNLV), and the three remaining Quad 4 contests have all been blowouts of 18 points or more. Really great stuff! Of course, you can’t just ignore that UNM sweep, which included an 89-55 beatdown that Nevada still has yet to completely metrically recover from. That’s why the Pack still roam in bubbly waters (37.5 résumé average, 50.0 quality average), but the pretty sights on their team sheet (5-4 in Quad 1, 6-3 on the road) should have them right at the upper end of the bubble. Can they keep it up at Colorado State on Tuesday, their biggest trial in a month?

New Mexico: For as rockin’ of an arena as The Pit is, you’d think New Mexico would play a little better at home, no? Three of their seven defeats this season have come in Albuquerque, the latest of which was Saturday’s debacle against NET #267 Air Force, i.e. the résumé-building equivalent of taking a hydrogen bomb to the face, suddenly putting the Lobos in the undesirable spot of being the most likely team to jeopardize our six-bid MWC hopes. But it just helps to reinforce the fact that this Mountain West is ridiculously strong for its normal standards when UNM can take a knockout blow like that and remain standing (most projections still have the Lobos in the field). Still, there’s clearly work to do now; an encore performance cannot happen against NET #222 Fresno State on March 6, and at least one of the two tough remaining road tests (Boise State on March 2, Utah State on March 9) would like to go the Lobos’ ways. Let’s finish this #6BidMWC thing out strong, guys.

PAC-12

The reality of the Pac-12 earning a #1 seed in the tournament, another bid down in the 5-8 range, and absolutely nothing else is starting to look more and more likely. I lamented the upcoming implosion of this conference in last week’s write-up; this time around it’s more like a cry for help. You guys have given us so much wackiness to appreciate over the years—can you do it one more time in the conference tournament please? Leave with us a sweet taste in our mouth instead of the memory of a bitter final season? Something like an Arizona State Pac-12 tournament title run would really hit the spot.

  • Lock: Arizona
  • Safe: Washington State
  • Bubble: Colorado, Utah

Washington State: Ain’t that just the most Wazzu thing in the world? Pulling off the season sweep of 1 seed contender Arizona with a ridiculous four-point play in the waning seconds, in the McKale Center of all places… only to turn right around and lose by 12 at NET #127 Arizona State a couple days later? That’s the Cougin’ It we know and love! But it’s all good; a loss at ASU is only Quad 2, and now the Cougars return to the comfort of home for the rest of the regular season, just needing to clean up an easy remaining slate against already-eliminated USC, UCLA, and Washington. Take care of business here, and Washington State will be dancing for the first time since 2008. Party in Pullman!

Colorado: Colorado needed a shot in the arm like that badly. The Buffaloes were a fringe bubble case at best a week ago, as an overtime escape at USC stopped the bleeding of a 1-4 slump since Jan. 27 but didn’t do anything to reverse course on their suddenly sagging team sheet numbers. Enter a 24-point crushing of Rocky Mountain rival Utah and a return to the metrics’ top 50, and we’ve got something to work with again. It’s still difficult to see the Buffs in the field at this point, what with their 1-5 record in Quad 1 and lone victory over a current tournament team (vs. Washington State). Unfortunately, the schedule ahead doesn’t offer much hope either with three of the four remaining games landing in Quad 3. Circle those calendars for March 6: a Quad 1 contest in Eugene is all that Colorado has left for quality. You feel like that one has to be a win.

Utah: Being Colorado’s travel partner, Utah faces the exact same upcoming schedule (vs. Stanford/Cal, at Oregon/Oregon State) and the same dire circumstances. Saturday was the opportunity for the Utes to get things back on track, build on the previous weekend’s wild road win at UCLA, and spruce up that nasty 2-6 road record. Instead, Utah spent the entire 40 minutes looking like the inferior Pac-12 bubble choice, leaving itself on the outside looking in once again. Assuming that they don’t continue to malfunction in the remaining Q3 contests, the Utes should be able to hang around the bubble ’til the bitter end with their so-so metrics and an alright Quadrant output (3-7 in Q1, 5-3 in Q2), but the chance to really leave an impact prior to Pac-12 tournament play has come and gone. Disappointing, to say the least.

SEC

You see, Kentucky? You see why you shouldn’t complain when you’ve got it pretty good in reality? As soon as I sung the praises of this program in last week’s Watch, Big Blue Nation got all ornery again as their beloved Wildcats fell at the buzzer in Baton Rouge on Wednesday night. Not a big deal! That’s a one-point loss in a Quad 2 game to a team that just happened to have its best performance since early January. But no, the sky is falling again! Someone save us from this wretched hell! Well, wouldn’t you know it? Arguably the country’s most talented offensive team puts up arguably the most impressive offensive performance of the season three days later, dumping 117 freakin’ points on projected 3 seed Alabama. (And they took their foot off the gas with eight minutes left. They could have made it 150 if they really wanted to.) So, yeah. No more whining allowed for Kentucky. They’re a lock.

  • Lock: Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Kentucky
  • Safe: Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi State
  • Bubble: Ole Miss, Texas A&M

Florida: Had Florida been able to pull out Wednesday’s thriller in Tuscaloosa, they’d have been locked, sealed, signed, delivered, and sent to the bank in this week’s Watch. But the Gators fell in OT, so we hold off for one more week with that 4-8 Q1 number not looking particularly pretty. But I’m just sweating the small stuff; those eight losses are the only eight losses that Florida has suffered all year, and a pair of résumé game-changers (OT win at Kentucky, 16-point mauling of Auburn) will stick on this team sheet until the very end. There’s nothing to worry about, so long as Todd Golden and company don’t flub up their golden spot this week against Missouri and South Carolina. We should be good to go in Gainesville a week from now.

South Carolina: There’s always that creeping worry in the back of your mind when you’re dealing with a team like South Carolina that puts up a gaudy win total and yet remains a total stranger in the eyes of the predictive metrics, as if regression is just waiting in the wings to get its grubby hands ahold of a new victim and drag them back to a gloomier reality. Thank goodness that ain’t happenin’! I had my worries when the Gamecocks got stomped at Auburn then promptly lost at home to LSU, heading into a homestretch in which KenPom had them favored in just one of five remaining games. But Lamont Paris and company fought off regression for yet another day, claiming a Quad 1 road win over Ole Miss to keep this team sheet looking great, in spite of what the efficiency numbers say. One more week of good work, guys! That’s all you need to be guaranteed.

Mississippi State: So much for those road woes! Since starting the season 0-6 in contests played neither in Starkville nor on a neutral court (where Mississippi State seemingly turns into the ’96 Bulls, as I touched on last week), the Bulldogs are a perfect 2-0. Woohoo! OK, so it’s not the most impressive 2-0 road record ever, those two victories coming over Missouri and LSU… would be a lot more exciting if they were to, say, knock off Auburn in Neville this coming Saturday. But you know what? It’s improvement nonetheless. It also shores up what was basically the only really spotty patch on the Bulldogs’ team sheet (aside from a Q4 loss to Southern, but that won’t be a huge issue since the selection committee should excuse Tolu Smith’s absence from that one) which now ranks top-32 in every metric, including the NET itself. Throw in those Q1A wins over SEC locks Tennessee and Auburn, and Mississippi State’s tournament case looks as good as it ever has.

Ole Miss: Elsewhere in the Magnolia State, things are not so pristine. Ole Miss may still be the owner of a somewhat confusingly strong results metric average (35.0, as of writing), but the Rebels are starting to approach Syracuse territory elsewhere; they’re 74th in the NET and KenPom, 86th in BPI, and just 4-8 in Quadrant 1/2 games. The efficiency numbers say that this really isn’t a good basketball team, and the most recent span of play (1-5 since February began, the only victory being a 3-point squeaker over still-winless-in-SEC Missouri) seems to concur. Whatever happens down the stretch here, Ole Miss appears to be running the course of making some history in one way or another: either missing the tournament with unusually strong résumé numbers, or making the tournament with unusually weak predictive numbers. I’d bet on the former being the more likely option.

Texas A&M: At this rate, Buzz Williams won’t have to spend his evenings laboring over a 17-page manifesto on why Texas A&M should be in the tournament, because if they get left out, no one is going to call them a snub. That’s what happens when your Quad 3 record is 2-4, and your stagnant offense can’t compete with Alabama’s high-flying talent in a 100-75 throttling or routinely make a bucket against Tennessee’s stingy defense in an 86-51 walloping. Heck, you couldn’t even beat Arkansas! You had two opportunities against a soggy group of Razorbacks, and you lost them both! I can’t stick the needle into Texas A&M’s bubble quite yet, as their six Quad 1 victories and rugged 23rd-ranked NCSOS deserve some level of consideration, but this team has not played good basketball in well over two weeks. Things have got to change fast.

OTHERS

Quite a busy week for the Others category, replete with triumphs (yay!), disappointments (aw), and intrigue (ooh).

Let’s get the sad stuff out of the way first: Grand Canyon is no longer on the page. The Lopes had been an at-large contender since day one of the 2023-24 season, a truly astounding feat for a team from the WAC. It was a clean team sheet with a Q1 win over San Diego State and no losses below Q2 keeping GCU buoyant, but after suffering their two worst losses of the season (Tarleton State, Abilene Christian), back-to-back in the span of three days, there’s sadly no saving them now. WAC tournament autobid-or-bust appears to be the only way.

Now for a much cheerier topic: Dayton is a lock! Weird to do it after a week in which the Flyers’ only result was a 4-point loss at George Mason, but think about it this way: Dayton entered last week as a projected 5 seed, suffered a setback to a solid but not great Atlantic 10 foe, and enters this week as a… projected 5 seed. There’s just not enough time left for the Flyers to shoot themselves in the foot badly enough to miss the tournament. Not that I would bet on that happening anyway; they’re 11-3 in the A10 for a reason. Would I feel better about this lock if they had won at GMU? Of course. But I’m not sweating it either way, and neither should you.

And finally: the intrigue! Although I’ve decided to stick the fork in Grand Canyon, I’ve also decided to resurrect Memphis, Princeton, and James Madison, all of which may be long shots but are at least worth giving the once-over after this past week of play. You never know!

  • Lock: Dayton
  • Safe: Saint Mary’s, Florida Atlantic
  • Bubble: Gonzaga, Indiana State, Drake, Memphis, Princeton, James Madison

Saint Mary’s: I know that it hasn’t exactly been the most challenging schedule for Saint Mary’s, what with 75% of this 15-game winning streak being built against Q3 and Q4 teams, but a perfect mark in both conference play and true road contests this late into the season remains an extremely impressive feat. That alone has the Gaels awfully close to lock territory, though I’m going to play it safe for a team that still ranks fairly modestly in the results metrics (41st in KPI, 47th in SOR), i.e. the two numbers on the team sheet that most often correlate with which teams are selected for the big dance. But that won’t be an issue if they close this thing out; at Pepperdine and a huge home rematch against Gonzaga are all that remain. Can the Gaels achieve double perfection?

Florida Atlantic: I know I said that a strong neutral-court performance in non-conference play and the respect gained from last year’s Final Four run would give Florida Atlantic a lot of leeway this year, but that’s not an excuse to start losing games to lesser conference opponents left and right. Not counting SMU and their bizarrely high NET rating, the Owls are just 2-3 against opponents ranked 75th or worse since Feb. 8. Houston, UCF, and Cincinnati are all gone, guys; this ain’t the same American where you can get away with stuff like that. Not when that non-con I praised so much last week has soured to the point that only Arizona remains in that uppermost Quadrant. Let’s stop playing with fire and start taking care of business down the stretch here, huh, fellas?

Gonzaga: The week of reckoning is here for Gonzaga. Ever since the Bulldogs became a bubble case back in December, three dates have been circled on their calendar: at Kentucky on Feb. 10, at San Francisco on Feb. 29, at Saint Mary’s on March 2. They’ve already checked one of those boxes, arguably the single most important result any team has accomplished this entire season—a true non-conference road win over a Q1A opponent—but that lone Quad 1 victory hasn’t been enough to push the Zags’ otherwise impressive efficiency numbers above the First Four in most projections. It’s these final two games against the WCC’s third-best and best team that will most likely decide whether or not Gonzaga’s tournament streak stays alive. 2-0, and we’re there. 1-1, and we’re in the conversation. 0-2… time to get to work in the WCC tournament.

Indiana State: Good on Indiana State for not laying down and dying. Just about everyone had abandoned the Sycamores as a potential at-large option after their mid-February skid to Illinois State (horrendous) and Southern Illinois (not great), but we here at Bauer’s Bubble Watch see things differently. Just compare Indiana State’s profile to Wake Forest, a team that 90+% of bracketologists are forecasting into the field—both have a 39.5 results metric average, both have five to six Q1/Q2 wins depending on the day of the week… it’s not all that dissimilar. Surely Wake would have the edge with a better top win (Duke) and no Q4 pock marks in sight, but the Sycamores are far better on the road (8-4) and even played a tougher non-conference schedule (174th). The case can be made, even without a lights-out victory on the team sheet. We’ve just gotta keep this thing humming, hopefully through Arch Madness and beyond.

Drake: What’s the big idea, Northern Iowa? Didn’t anyone tell you that we’re trying to get a two-bid Valley here? Drake’s defeat in Cedar Falls on Saturday hurts, not because it was a bad loss or anything (at UNI is Quad 2), but because any sort of missed opportunity—such as the opportunity for another Q2 road win—is going to sting, given how limited those chances are in a mid-major league. I still think the Bulldogs have a better-than-alright shot at an at-large with their 2-1 Q1 record, 3-3 Q2 record, metrics hovering right around cut line territory, and extremely useful win in Henderson over Nevada from back in December, but they also don’t have the collection of quality wins to compete with the power conference teams who do. You’ve got to capitalize when the moment is there; Sunday’s chance for another Q2 win and a sweep of Bradley is huge.

Memphis: Seems a bid odd to bring the air pump back out to re-inflate a team that has been as fully dysfunctional as Memphis, but there’s actually a case to be made for these Tigers. Last week’s stomping of Charlotte and inspired home victory over tournament likely FAU was the first time in a long, long time (probably since Caleb Mills’ season-ending injury) that Memphis actually looked like a ball club capable of playing at its talent level. This two-game stretch alone has brought the Tigers’ performance metrics right back up into consideration (49th in KPI, 54th in SOR), and don’t forget about those non-conference wins over Clemson, Texas A&M, Virginia, and VCU, all of which rank Quad 2 or higher. The margin of error is extremely slim down the line, and completing the sweep of FAU on March 9, this time in Boca Raton, may be a necessity. But their outlook has gotten a lot more interesting rather expeditiously.

Princeton: The Ivy League has never received an at-large, and I wouldn’t bet on Princeton being the first, especially with a goose egg in the Quad 1 wins column. But, believe it or not, the rest of this team sheet is surprisingly strong. The Tigers may get some brownie points with the committee for really challenging themselves in non-con play, partaking in eight such contests outside of Jadwin Gym and winning all but one of them. There also isn’t a bad loss in sight, and their metric averages (41.0 résumé, 57.0 predictive) are right there, too. Of course, there’s still the problem of their best win being against NET #98 Rutgers, a team well off the bubble radar, so the preferred course of action should be to win the Ivy League tournament title and erase all doubt. But don’t be shocked if Princeton ends up a lot closer to the at-large pool than many are estimating.

James Madison: This might be stretching the limits of the bubble, but it is worth mentioning that the Dukes, 25-3 overall with an opening-night win in East Lansing still in pocket, do have the most wins away from home of any team in the nation with 12. When you factor that in, I think there’s a legitimate argument to be made here: 2-2 in Quad 1/2 with a road win over an at-large team, one slip-up to Southern Miss that his since risen from Q4 to Q3, and predictive numbers that are not far removed from consideration range. The only thing I really think that’s holding James Madison back is that nasty KPI rank of 96th, which is just so unbelievably far from their SOR of 40th. This is where a third data point could really help, as Bart Torvik’s résumé metric, Wins Above Bubble (WAB), ranks JMU 37th. If that were on the team sheet instead of KPI, James Madison might be in the tournament altogether! But alas, that’s not the way it is, and the vision of an at-large bid in Harrisonburg is probably still a pipe dream. But let’s dream a little longer anyway.

Leave a comment