Well, that was rather refreshing.
What I’m referring to, of course, is this past Saturday’s top 16 bracket preview—the annual “midterm” for bracketologists that presents us a peek into the selection committee’s psyche, and allows us to see whether or not our hard work through the first three-and-a-half months of the season has paid off.
In recent years, the bracket preview has been much more of a hair-pulling exercise for bracketologists than not; just take a look at what I wrote about the preview in 2023. From inconsistent seedings, to poor explanations from the committee chair and more, this February tradition has often become more cumbersome than convenient.
Not so in 2025. For the first time in a long time, it seems like the selection committee knows what it’s doing. Maybe it was just a case of North Carolina athletic director and new committee chair Bubba Cunningham putting on the charm, but from my perspective, the knowledge displayed on Saturday far superseded that of previews past. Cunningham adequately explained the committee’s task of regional balance. He used shorthand lingo like “Q1” and “predictives.” He didn’t mispronounce the word “metrics.” He talked about the new metrics that the committee is looking at, like WAB (although he did say “Wins Against Bubble” instead of the proper “Wins Above Bubble”—that’s alright, baby steps!) Heck, he even cracked a joke about not being able to utter Duke’s name as UNC’s AD. The conversation was just that—conversational—not stiff as a board like preview shows before. It truly felt like there was an expert in the room, as he brushed aside the notion that a single game between Auburn and Alabama to be played later on Saturday might determine who the overall #1 is, correctly explaining that the committee’s analysis is based on an entire season, not one game. And that is such a breath of fresh air. In fact, it was so refreshing, that it almost makes it forgivable that Cunningham’s presence as committee chair will almost surely result in North Carolina receiving an undeserving bid come Selection Sunday. (I kid, I kid… mostly.)
And on top of what we saw live, the stuff that played out behind the scenes (ya know—what’s actually important) looked just as professional, too. Every single selection that the committee made for its top 16 was perfectly reasonable. The 16 teams I predicted would be in were indeed the same 16 that the committee chose. There were only two major differences from my bracket; Houston was a bit lower on the 2 line than I anticipated (that’s fine—I went off the Cougars’ elite predictive metrics, but prior to Saturday’s win at Arizona, Houston had just a single win in Quad 1A), and I had Texas Tech and Michigan as 3s, with Wisconsin and Arizona as 4s, and the committee has those flopped (also fine—recognize Wisconsin for having a very clean team sheet and Arizona for elite work in the Big 12, show less favor to Texas Tech for a poor non-conference schedule and Michigan for weird struggles in Quad 2). All completely rational! So rational, in fact, that each team’s bracket seed was exactly the same as the consensus found on the Bracket Matrix as of Saturday morning. (Who’s copying who, exactly?)
But this is a great sign because 1) It gives me reason to be optimistic that the disastrous seeding of last year’s full 68-team bracket is in the past, and 2) It lets me know that the work I’ve done thus far is pretty darn accurate, and if I just stay on that course throughout the remainder of Bauertology and Bubble Watch, it should be all alright in the end. I hope.
With that load lifted off my shoulders, we can delve into another edition of Bauer’s Bubble Watch. Here’s how the numbers break down this week in regard to how many teams land into our three categories:
Eight more locks to hand out this week; plenty more bubble cases to touch on. Week 2 of Bauer’s Bubble Watch 2025 is officially a go.
ACC
Louisville is a lock. No, I don’t think you heard me well enough. Louisville is a lock. Let me repeat that one more time. Louisville. Is. A. Lock. The same Louisville that won a combined 12 games over the last two seasons. The same Louisville that sagged as low as 305th in KenPom over that span. The one that is now 20-6 overall, 13-2 in the ACC, 10-3 outside of the Yum Center, and 11-6 against Quad 1 and 2 opposition, on its way to the big dance for the first time since 2019. That Louisville! Folks, this is not just a run-of-the-mill program turnaround. This is a triumph of the human spirit.
Elsewhere, welcome to March, Clemson! Somehow, a year removed from a run to the Elite Eight and no longer rostering the most important pieces in PJ Hall and Joseph Girard, a.k.a., the pieces critical in getting Clemson that far, this year’s Tigers might be even better. Win over likely 1 seed Duke? Check. Double-digit triumph over longtime bogeyman North Carolina? Check. Utter domination of sneaky Florida State in Tallahassee? Check. Lock to play in the 2025 NCAA Tournament? Uh, yeah. Check.
Wake Forest: Wake Forest with the ultimate “it’s so over/we’re so back” kind of week. Losing at home to Quad 3 Florida State, especially when the Demon Deacons had steered clear of any black spots outside of Q1, was backbreaking. It’s even more so when you consider the circumstances: Wake led by as much as 16 with under 10 to go, then panic set in as the Seminoles took their first lead since the midway mark of the first half with 15 seconds left, prompting Ty-Laur Johnson, for some godforsaken reason, to chuck a prayer from the logo with a full 12 seconds still on the clock AND the Deacs down by just one. Truly a contender for the single worst shot of the season! But it’s all good, because three days later, Wake went and won at SMU for their first Quad 1 victory since early November, a result that does much more good than the FSU loss does harm when provided with proper context. Still in the hunt for this thing after all! Just no more half-court heaves with 12 seconds left, please.
SMU: The 2025 NCAA Tournament bubble: where a team that is winless in Quad 1 is not just allowed to stay on the page after losing to a fellow bubble team at home by 11, but entirely welcomed! Expand the tournament, they say! Seriously—SMU, who has somehow stumbled to the 80% mark of the season without a singular Quadrant 1 victory, something that you’d expect would have just happened once or twice by dumb luck at this point, would almost certainly be in the field were it widened to 76 teams. That should be all the argument you need to be against expansion! As stated last week, the Mustangs’ metrics, all of which rank 50th or better, necessitate their inclusion as a bubble contender. But that zero in the most important quadrant simply must be amended by season’s end, and this Saturday’s matchup in Moody against Clemson is the lone opportunity to do so (at least, until the conference tourney). The underlying data says that SMU is most likely an NCAA Tournament team. Now is the time to prove it.
North Carolina: Thank goodness the rest of the bubble is sporting ugly Quad 1 records too, or North Carolina’s case would be dead and buried. A mark of 1-10 against top-level competition would ordinarily be grounds for immediate disqualification. But so long as UNC is able to supplement their shoddy quad records with tenable metrics (49 résumé average, 46 predictive average), the Heels are here to stay. Still, it’s a team sheet on the outside of the field looking in, and Tuesday’s 20-point loss at Clemson goes down in the books as a massive missed opportunity to inch back to the proper side of the cut line. The only Quad 1 game remaining between now and the ACC tournament is Duke’s visit to Chapel Hill on March 8, and that game is looking more and more like a must-win with every passing second. It’s a remarkably similar scenario to the 2023 Tar Heels, who, of course, did not knock off the Dukies in the Dean Dome, resulting in their eventual demise. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Pittsburgh: Look at the bright side: Pitt didn’t lose to last-place Miami at home, a game in which the Panthers trailed by eight in the first half before rallying to win by nine. Unfortunately, that’s about all there is to celebrate. With all metrics in the mid-50s and a record of 4-9 against Quad 1/2 opposition, Pitt is a fringe bubble case at best, and Tuesday’s complete no-show at SMU only reinforces that idea. It’s rare for a power conference team on the bubble to need to essentially be perfect down the stretch in order to give itself a shot, but given the state of the ACC in present year, those are the circumstances that Jeff Capel and crew are burdened with. Failing to take care of Syracuse and Notre Dame this week would likely cut the cord on Pitt’s life support.
BIG 12
That’ll do it for UCF. The Knights were a fun success story in the early goings, brushing aside what the inherent quality metrics had to say about their play to the tune of a 9-2 non-conference record and road wins over Texas Tech and Arizona State. But the regression monster has come, and it’s torn Johnny Dawkins’ group to shreds, the Knights now 0-6 since late January, with Saturday’s loss to previously winless Colorado serving as the official popping point.
You know whose résumé actually looks pretty decent in comparison to UCF now? TCU. With slightly more sightly résumé metrics and double the amount of Quad 1/2 wins, the Horned Frogs are starting to make themselves a case. I’m not quite ready to call them a bubble team yet, as a 6-11 Q1/2 record with no single metric scoring better than 57th is still pretty gross. But they’ll be worth another glance if they can make some magic happen against Texas Tech and Cincinnati this week.
Baylor: I remain nonplussed by the 2024-25 Baylor Bears. Maybe it’s just the longtime college basketball watcher in me, but I keep thinking that Baylor is going to flip a switch one of these days, transforming into one of the Big 12’s more formidable outfits and taking down better-or-equal foes to coast to a solid seed, as we’ve so often seen from Scott Drew teams of recent. But it just hasn’t happened. The Bears have alternated wins and losses for three weeks now, with the two most recent results—a decent performance at Houston that spiraled out of control late, and an overtime escape at home against a frisky West Virginia team—basically summating Baylor’s entire season: OK, but unspectacular. That’s also an apt description for their team sheet, which resides at just 5-8 in Quad 1 with all six of their contests against NET top-10 teams landing in the L column, though there is enough padding elsewhere to keep Baylor in the realm of an 8 or 9 seed. Like, yeah, they’re fine, and they’ll probably keep up the trend by losing to Arizona on Monday and winning at Colorado on Saturday. But you just want to see something more from one of college basketball’s most respectable programs.
West Virginia: Uh, West Virginia? You know you gotta start winning basketball games again here soon, right? The work that the Mountaineers did early on was sensational; neutral and road wins over Gonzaga, Arizona, and Kansas are better than just about anything else the bubble has to offer. But that’s not enough to get WVU out of the woods—not when their only two wins since Jan. 18 have been against teams on the outside looking in, dipping the Mountaineers’ metrics into the worrisome 40s alongside a relatively poor 7-10 Quad 1/2 record. Gut says that the Mountaineers can’t possibly inflict enough self-harm to make the selection committee second-guess those elite-level victories carrying this team sheet, but… there’s no need to test that hypothesis, guys! Find a way to split these final six to get to 18-13, and all will be well with the world.
BYU: One beneficiary of West Virginia’s sudden tumble: the BYU Cougars! Kevin Young and company caught the Mountaineers napping in Morgantown on Tuesday, adding some much-needed bulk to a profile that was always pretty good-looking on the quality sided but lagged behind greatly in résumé weight. Now, with Saturday’s subsequent win over Kansas State pushing BYU’s results metric average south of 50 for the first time this calendar year, the Cougars are starting to find themselves in more brackets than out. The lack of success at the top does still need to be addressed before Selection Sunday, though, and they’ll have plenty of chances: vs. Kansas on Tuesday, at Arizona on Saturday, at Iowa State on March 4.
Cincinnati: Very unassuming week for Cincinnati, in which what you expected to happen—win over Utah, loss to Iowa State—did indeed happen, leaving the Bearcats at basically the same juncture they were a week ago: an at-large long shot direly in need of a big win or two down the stretch to transform this résumé into something genuinely worth considering. And UCF’s breakdown isn’t helping matters; with the Knights teetering around the Quad 1 threshold (currently NET #75), Cincy’s Feb. 5 win in Orlando is in grave danger of no longer being Q1, which would leave the Bearcats with a goose egg in the most important area of the team sheet. Seven additional Quad 2 wins and acceptable quality metrics are all that’s going toward keeping Cincinnati’s bubble inflated—and only barely. A Q1 opportunity that will stick there until season’s end presents itself with a visit to Morgantown on Wednesday. Now’s as good a time as ever to take advantage.
Kansas State: Welcome to the Watch, Kansas State. We’ve been expecting you. Full disclaimer: I don’t really think a team that’s 13-12 overall and has a résumé average north of 60 belongs in the bubble conversation. But I simply cannot pass on the opportunity to touch on what the Wildcats have done as of late. Entering the weekend of Jan. 25, Kansas State was so unbelievably dead that the vultures had already licked clean the bones of a 7-11 team that had placed as low as 132nd in NET, with a late-season surge toward the tournament looking entirely impossible. Thing is, the impossible happens in college basketball much more frequently than you’d expect. Rattling off six straight victories with four of them landing firmly in Quad 1 is the stuff of legends. And if not for Saturday’s sudden stinker in Provo, their spot on this page would be fully justified. But, hey, three Quad 1A wins is a lot better than what much of the bubble is working with. Find a way to stay scorching in the homestretch to provide that top-shelf stuff with firmer footing to stand on, and the Cats may have a postseason shot just yet.
BIG EAST
Ya know, it was getting kinda interesting for Villanova for a second there. Following a Feb. 1 clash with Creighton, in which the Wildcats lost, thanks in part to Steven Ashworth bending the laws of physics, Villanova won three straight, including a late rally over bubbly Xavier, followed by a Tyler Perkins triple with nine seconds left to knock off then 21-3 St. John’s. Could the Cats really make a late push for the bubble with their résumé metrics in such a state of disrepair? Thankfully, we don’t have to ponder that predicament, as Villanova got utterly embarrassed at Providence on Saturday, trailing by as much as 22 to a team that has had its bubble popped for months—enough to give Villanova its single worst Game Score (per Torvik) of 2025. I want to get off Kyle Neptune’s wild ride.
UConn: What on earth is this UConn team? I’m not even sure that UConn knows. How is it physically possible that this group of Huskies is the one that wins in Omaha for the first time ever—a feat that neither of the previous two national championship teams accomplished—considering that they followed up that herculean act by losing at NET #212 Seton Hall, who hadn’t won a game in well over a month? Is this some sort of cosmic karma for all of Dan Hurley’s antics? That UConn is destined to provide the funniest possible outcome, based on what spawns out of Hurley’s mouth? I could get behind that. Anyway, the end result of all this nonsense is that UConn sports a very strange team sheet, in which their record of 4-0 against Quad 1A opponents—a mark of perfection that no other team in the nation with as many attempts has achieved—clashes greatly with ranks in KPI (44th), SOR (36th), and WAB (41st) that indicate a bubble team. It all coagulates to place UConn somewhere in the midst of that mushy safe zone; consider it purgatory for a team that hasn’t shown an iota of consistency for over a month.
Creighton: Creighton and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week. While winter storms make Middle America look like a scene straight out of a Soviet gulag, the team that calls Omaha home is likely yelling cyka blyat at its latest turn of fortune. The Bluejays’ nine-game winning streak came crashing down as UConn won at CHI Health for the first time in history, allowing the ever-contentious Dan Hurley to exchange some words with a fan and provide yet another “I absolutely love/hate this guy” moment, then Creighton fell short at St. John’s on Sunday, while centerpiece Ryan Kalkbrenner appeared to suffer a nasty foot injury. (Of course, the big fella checked back into the game late; the Bluejays will have dodged a major bullet if he doesn’t end up missing any time.) But optimism should remain—even if Kalk has to sit a game or two, the worst is behind, as a trip to Xavier on March 1 presents the only real threat remaining on the schedule. Just get things back on track this week against Georgetown and DePaul, and we’ll be a-OK here.
Xavier: Xavier’s place on the weekly Watch is all going to be about treading water. As touched on previously, the Musketeers’ only hopes at a splash victory late lie in Creighton’s visit to Cintas on March 1. Everything else needs to be a W just to keep the ship from sinking. So far, so good; both wins last week came without X ever trailing for a single second during the second half. Can they complete that same task against a Butler team playing much better ball as of late? Or at a Seton Hall squad that just shocked the defending national champions? Easier said than done, evidently. But with no losses worse than Quad 2 being one of the saving grace’s of Xavier’s otherwise bleak team sheet, that order must be maintained to remain afloat.
BIG TEN
Let’s go ahead and lock UCLA. I probably could have done it last week, given that the Bruins’ metrics and plethora of quality victories were already in the range of a 5 or 6 seed, but I wanted to show some patience and make sure that Mick Cronin and company were physically capable of winning a game outside of the Pacific Time Zone—something they quite literally had not done in 2025 until beating Indiana in Bloomington on Friday night. And now that they have, that’s good enough for me! Welcome to March.
Our second Big Ten lock of the week comes in College Park with Maryland cementing its postseason spot. The Terrapins have come a long way to rectify their typical road woes, with Thursday’s win at Nebraska being Maryland’s third in Quad 1. And Sunday’s lock-sealing victory over Iowa shows how scary this team can be when they turn it on, erasing a 51-47 halftime deficit by outscoring the Hawkeyes 54-24 in the second half to reach the century mark against Big Ten opposition for the first time in the Kevin Willard era. That’ll most certainly do, Terps.
And one final bit of housekeeping—I’m pulling the plug on USC. That’s not to say that the Trojans can’t plug themselves back in with good work down the line, but losing at home to Minnesota is a very big no-no, and that loss has USC’s team sheet looking extraordinarily similar to Arizona State, a team that I’ve had listed as dead for at least two weeks now. You can take ASU and USC out of the Pac-12, but you can’t take the Pac-12 out of them!
Illinois: Hey, uh, Illinois—you know you’ve got a whole bunch of predictive metrics like KenPom and T-Rank and NET saying a lot of nice things about you, right? Would it behoove you to show them a little love in return? I mean, a 9-7 record in Big Ten play and résumé metrics in the 30s? Really? For a team of your talents? The Illini should be a team that we’re talking about for a protected seed right now, based on the flashes they’ve shown that they’re capable of accomplishing on the floor. But getting those flashes to develop into consistent, winning results… now that’s a different story. Just take Saturday’s home loss to Michigan State, in which Illinois—very hilariously, if I might add—scored -2 points over the final eight-and-a-half minutes of game time, as a result of an MSU goaltending call being overturned. (I mean, let’s be real: Illinois was doomed from the second that Terrence Shannon’s jersey went into the rafters upside down. Somebody is not surviving that mistake.) Anyway, do something to inspire me like winning at Wisconsin or beating Duke at MSG on Saturday, and all my ire will be for naught.
Oregon: It may have been against two Big Ten bottom-feeders like Northwestern and Rutgers, but, man, did Oregon really need those wins. The Ducks have been in free-fall since their 16-3 start, dropping five straight and watching their dreams of a top-4 seed spiral down the drain in the process. At last, this week of winning stops the bleeding, albeit without doing much to help the metrics that have deteriorated over this skid. (Note that daily NET movements have reduced Oregon’s once-gaudy Q1 win total of eight down to six.) But those neutral-court non-conference victories over Alabama and Texas A&M aren’t going anywhere, and a pretty tough middle conference slate will soon turn more manageable with home contests against USC and Indiana and a short jaunt to Seattle to face arch-nemesis Washington still on the docket. Just win one or two more games here and there to make me feel a bit more comfortable about the situation, and we ought to be good to go.
Nebraska: Nebraska stays in bubble range this week, simply because the metrics demand it, as the Cornhuskers lack the plethora of high-end wins needed to counteract such a designation. But let it be noted that this is where the bubble begins; I’d have a very hard time seeing the Huskers on the outside of the bracket were it built today. Whereas most of the bubble yields a losing record across the top two quadrants, Nebraska is actually 9-8, also sporting a 5-5 road record with two such victories tucked at the tail end of Quad 1A. Granted, the Cornhuskers really could have made a spiffy case for safety had they not fallen at home to Maryland on Thursday (PBA used to be a Fortress of Solitude—what happened?), and Sunday’s 20-point comeback at a limping Northwestern is much more of a necessary result than a feather in the cap. But a Quad 1 win is a Quad 1 win, and it makes the Huskers’ team sheet a lot more appetizing than the morsels being served elsewhere on the bubble. Only corn for me, thanks.
Ohio State: And so the Buckeyes’ dance with being perfectly mediocre continues. Sigh. Though a 24-point win over Washington is nothing to sneeze at, it’s Sunday’s loss against Michigan that will resonate the most, given that Ohio State had the perfect opportunity to tie it just before the horn… only for Bruce Thornton’s wide-open floater to completely miss the basket, cementing OSU’s fifth loss of the season by a single possession. Agonizing! A home win of that caliber really could have gone a long way, given that the Buckeyes’ three remaining Quad 1 opportunities are all on the road; not great, considering Ohio State is just 1-5 against Q1 on the opposing floor, with Jan. 21’s still-mesmerizing win in West Lafayette being the only reprieve. A mark of 4-8 in said quadrant isn’t terrible, considering what teams lower on the bubble are cooking in the same statistic, but beefing up that number between now and Selection Sunday is the only sure way to safety. (That, or winning the Big Ten tournament. That strategy never fails!)
Indiana: It’s a sad state of the bubble when a team as fully dysfunctional as Indiana resides firmly in First Four Out or Next Four Out territory. Heck, if the Hoosiers had completed the comeback in Friday’s loss to UCLA, they’d probably be in the field altogether! The 2024-25 Mike Woodson Hoosiers, in the bracket! What a thought! Credit where it’s due, though; Tuesday’s necessary win at Michigan State was far more inspirational than anything that IU has put on the court in the past month, and at 5-11 in Quad 1/2 with a résumé metric average just beneath 50, the Hoosiers remain within striking distance if they can just string one or two of these big ‘uns together. How does a chance at revenge against hated rival Purdue after the Boilemakers spoiled Indiana’s upset bid in West Lafayette at the end of January sound? Sounds to me like the transformational win that the Hoosiers are looking for.
SEC
Kentucky, can you just be normal for once? Please? Among teams that are looking at a protected seed, I don’t think there’s a single case more confusing than the Wildcats. As it currently stands, Kentucky is positively elite against teams that rank 11th in NET or higher, sporting a record of 6-1. 6-1! And yet, the Wildcats are just 2-7 against teams that rank between 25th and 42nd. Best of the best? No problem! Run-of-the-mill bubble team? Egads! I mean, seriously—Texas, Arkansas, Georgia, Vanderbilt, and Ohio State are all still in this thing because they’ve beaten UK. Like, how the hell does something like that happen with such consistency? In a bizarre sport with many bizarre stats, this might be the bizarrest of them all. In any case, the Cats, ranked 10th overall in the selection committee’s top 16 preview and owners of seven Quad 1A wins (second most behind Auburn), are a lock, regardless of their inexplicable dichotomy between the cream of the crop and the middle of the pack.
Much less confounding is Missouri, a newly minted lock off the back of a 24-point thrashing of Oklahoma on Wednesday and an inspiring 13-point win in Athens on Saturday, the latter helping to shore up a previously questionable mark of 2-4 in road contests. One year removed from going completely winless in SEC play, the Tigers are back in the dance with room to spare. Now that’s a comeback story.
And finally, I’m granting a lock to Mississippi State, too. I would feel a lot better about it had the Bulldogs coupled Saturday’s season sweep of Ole Miss in Oxford with a win at the Hump over Florida on Tuesday (a pair of results that puts MSU at 3-3 in its last six, with the three wins oddly coming on the road and the three losses oddly coming at home… I guess Kentucky isn’t the only SEC team that routinely does the completely inverse of what a normal team would do). But considering how much better the metrics are looking following the weekend’s rivalry victory (all résumé marks place 20th or better), I’m good to sign, seal, and deliver this thing.
Dang, that’s nine locks from the SEC already, and we still have a full month to go. I suppose it really does just mean more.
Vanderbilt: Well, Vanderbilt got through the first act of this season-ending gauntlet alive, playing about as well as they possibly could have without actually coming out victorious. Tuesday’s loss to Auburn is disappointing but not unexpected, given that fellow 1 seeds Duke and Florida remain the only teams to clip the Tigers all year. A bubble team just wasn’t meant to slay that kind of beast! It’s the loss to in-state rival Tennessee that stings more, as Vandy didn’t just lead in the first half; they dominated, controlling the Vols in Knoxville to a 16-point margin at its peak. But the deeper more talented team dug deep and won by five in the end, denying the Commodores the kind of win that would have lifted them from high-end bubble to safely in the field. Still lots of opportunities ahead to clinch a bid for the first time since 2017, though, what with Kentucky and Ole Miss on the slate this week. It’d be well-advised to win at least one of those two; the Dores’ 327th-ranked non-con schedule will not serve them well if their at-large case comes to a coin flip.
Texas: The latest beneficiary of the Kentucky Quality Win Program, Texas’ victory over UK couldn’t have been more timely. Recent bracket projections (mine included) had just begun to boot the Longhorns from the field on the heels of three straight L’s, the latest being a Crimson Tide curb-stomping in Austin. Well, throw those projections in the trash! A win over the Wildcats does miracles for this team sheet, bringing all measures but KPI back within upper bubble range. In fact, the Longhorns’ new résumé looks mighty similar to the team one spot ahead of them in NET as of writing: Ohio State, a former recipient of the Kentucky Quality Win Program itself, who also beat Texas in Vegas back on the first night of the season. (Time truly is a flat circle.) That said, the end goal remains the same: Coast to an 8-10 conference record—very doable, looking at who the Horns still have to play—and lock down a 10 seed or so by the time it’s all said and done.
Oklahoma: In this meat-grinder of a conference, where no such thing as a bad loss exists, the one singular thing that you absolutely, positively cannot do is lose at home to one of the two teams not in contention for an at-large bid: LSU and South Carolina. No teams have done so this year, so don’t be the first. Just don’t do it, and you’ll give yourself a chance. Don’t do it, I’m warning you… Dang it, Oklahoma! You lost at home to LSU! I specifically told you not to do that! I guess it can’t be helped; the Tigers were overdue for an upset, and the Sooners were easy pickings, now losers in four of the last five and fully on the way to squandering a 13-0 non-con that included wins over Arizona, Michigan, and Louisville. This was supposed to be Oklahoma’s one remaining layup; instead, they take their 3-9 SEC record into a brutal closing stretch, with five of the final six games coming against teams that rank in the NET top 30, before finishing at arch-rival Texas, NET #31, in the regular-season conclusion. Good effin’ luck.
Arkansas: I see that John Calipari has taken a page out of his old buddy Rick Pitino’s book, unloading on his players following the loss at Texas A&M—a game that was in reach late before it suddenly wasn’t—most notably calling them “fragile.” Add that to the laundry list of insults to hurl at your team, alongside “laterally slow” and “delusional.” We’ll have the under-the-bus dictionary filled out in no time! The good thing is that Arkansas was already playing pretty fiery; even if they couldn’t pull it out in College Station late, the Razorbacks are still 3-2 in the last five with true road wins over Kentucky and Texas; that’ll absolutely play when you widen the scope of the bubble picture. But Arkansas’ position is especially precarious, the majority of projections placing the Hogs in Last Four In or First Four Out. Did Calipari rile up his players enough for them to pull off the big one and upset Auburn in Neville on Wednesday? Remains to be seen.
Georgia: Georgia’s not gonna make the tournament after all, are they? I mentioned last week that the Bulldogs’ only two wins in the past month have come against LSU and South Carolina. Fast forward to today, and that is still the case, with both losses in the past week to Texas A&M and Missouri being especially excruciating, given that UGA was competitive, if not the better team, in the first half of each contest… before completely combusting in the final 15 minutes to lose both games by double digits. The résumé metrics have approached the 50s for the first time, the Quad 1 record stands at 2-10, and that ugly non-conference strength of schedule of 233rd remains a scarlet letter stapled to the top of the team sheet. Georgia simply must start winning, or the agonizing wait on extinguishing their decade-long tournament drought will stretch another season.
OTHERS
Took a week longer than we wanted, but the land of Others has a lock! Welcome to the dance, Saint Mary’s! For the second straight season, the Gaels are the WCC’s premier outfit, riding their clampdown defense and offensive ball control to a 23-4 record, a 13-1 mark in conference, and a set of metrics and quad splits that can no longer incur enough damage down the stretch to make SMC sweat. Taking care of business in Moraga against Santa Clara and Washington State last week makes this thing official: the Gaels are headed to the NCAA Tournament.
Not much action beside that, as the rest of the mid-major bubble did what it needed to mostly stay put in the at-large conversation. In terms of teams on the bubble periphery, I did neglect to mention Boise State last week—a mistake on my part—as a team that does indeed have a sterling neutral-court win over the Others category’s lone lock. (Well, “neutral”—I hardly think that Saint Mary’s is happy with that terminology regarding a game played in Idaho Falls.) The Broncos would have had a chance to jump on the page this week… had they not laid an egg in San Diego on Saturday night. Right now, a résumé metric average of 66.7 and a Q1/2 mark of 4-7 just isn’t enough for consideration (and that’s without mentioning Boise’s Quad 4 loss to NET #225 Boston College, yuck), even if the efficiency metrics look upon the Broncos pretty favorably (as high as 39th in T-Rank). If Leon Rice’s group can take down the Lobos at ExtraMile on Wednesday, then down Nevada in Reno on Saturday, we’ll reassess.
Memphis: Remember what I wrote last week? When I said that all those close calls against bad AAC teams were unsustainable, and that Memphis was overdue to slip up eventually, as the predictive metrics foreboded? Hey, can’t say I didn’t warn ya. (Ken Pomeroy and company almost always get their way in the end.) While Sunday’s defeat at Wichita State does leave a third unsightly Quad 3 blemish on the Tigers’ team sheet, there is a silver lining: That loss is only just barely Q3 and still has time to flip to Q2 by season’s end. And it does not do nearly enough to mar a profile that is still 10-2 in Quad 1/2, features non-conference gold in the form of road/neutral wins over Clemson, Michigan State, and UConn, and ranks up there among the 20 best résumé-metric-wise. I think Memphis is probably precluded from the possibility of a protected seed at this point, but as it stands, the Tigers are still in the range of a safe 6 or 7 seed—well removed from the icy clutches of the bubble. Just avoid disaster over these final five games, and Memphis will be fine.
Gonzaga: Now that’s more like it. Though there is a loss to Saint Mary’s sprinkled in there, the Gonzaga that we’ve seen over the past month has been much more Gonzaga-like than the one that lost to Oregon State and Santa Clara back-to-back in early WCC play. A 52-point victory over Pepperdine is standard fare compared to the 7-point nail-biter than the two engaged in on Dec. 30, and pushing away a pesky San Francisco team via outscoring the Dons by 17 over the final 20 minutes and change is both predictively inspiring and important for the team sheet, as another Quad 2 victory attaches itself. But as I stated in last week’s writeup, the Zags’ seed will all come down to the final three games: vs. Saint Mary’s, at Santa Clara, at San Francisco. That’s about as difficult a slate that the WCC can throw at you, but KenPom and the like do have the Bulldogs favored in each. Go 3-0, and a protected seed becomes a possibility again. Go 2-1, and the Zags are safely in the field to the tune of about a 7 seed. Go 1-2, and Gonzaga is probably still in, though it would get a little sweaty. Go 0-3… Let’s not talk about what happens in that scenario.
New Mexico: How ’bout those Lobos! As a result of Sunday’s thriller in the Pit against Utah State, New Mexico has overtaken the Aggies as the Mountain West’s most likely to land a lock in the near future, with their head-to-head sweep of USU and near-perfect conference clip of 14-1 giving the Lobos the inside track to an eventual bid. Though their two gross Q3/4 defeats to San Jose State and New Mexico State cannot be ignored, the Lobos’ mark of 11-2 in Quad 1/2 stands with the very best in college basketball—only Auburn has a better winning percentage among teams with as many opportunities. This is a team well on its way to March, so long as it doesn’t make the mistake of stumbling to NET #318 Air Force along the way… a dance with death that Richard Pitino and crew are all too familiar with. Win that game with aplomb, then find a way to go 1-3 or better against the other challengers down the line (all Q1, save for UNLV on March 7), and UNM will be dancing for the second straight season.
Utah State: Missing out on vengeance against New Mexico for a supremely helpful Quad 1 road win bites big time, but no matter; Utah State’s at-large case still looks solid in spite of that loss. With metrics a half-step behind the Lobos, Quad 1 and 2 splits befitting of a bid, and nary a bad loss in sight, the Aggies are still right in the thick of the tournament conversation, with victories at Saint Mary’s, San Diego State, and Nevada providing enough Q1 beef that Sunday’s stumping at the Pit was not an absolutely necessity. It would certainly still be a good idea to take one or two of the remaining Q1/2 games against San Diego State, Boise State, or Colorado State, whilst avoiding the résumé-tanking blows that San Jose State or Air Force would potentially provide. But unless the wheels fall off at the worst possible time, I don’t have much reason to worry about USU missing the postseason.
San Diego State: San Diego State is also beginning to look like a good bet for March, bringing our Mountain West bid total to three, though not without producing some nerve-wracking outcomes along the way. The Aztecs looked destined to notch their second Quad 3 loss of the season while trailing by 17 at halftime against San Jose State on Tuesday night, before roaring back with a 17-0 run of their own, eventually pulling it out 69-66. Disaster averted! Saturday’s complete effort back in Viejas against Boise State was far more promising, as SDSU’s stifling defense allowed the Broncos just 47 points across 62 possessions in a game that was never within single digits after the halfway mark. More of the latter than the former would be desired to keep those quality metrics in working order, but just getting the W is the most important part. After all, who else on the bubble can claim neutral-court victories over Houston and Creighton? Makes the rest of the matter moot, so long as the Aztecs hold up down the stretch.
Drake: OK, so a Quad 3 loss at home to one of your biggest rivals, ending your 11-game win streak and what looked like an ascent to safety in the process, obviously isn’t great. But it’s not the end of the world either. Bradley is a pretty good team! The Braves themselves were once considered a contender for this column. And if they can play well enough to move into the NET top 75 (currently #79), then not only will this loss correct itself to Q2, but the Bulldogs’ earlier win over the Braves in Peoria will also shift up to Q1, giving them a record of 3-0 in that frame. Wouldn’t be too shabby! That said, the margin for error between now and the Arch Madness championship has become a lot slimmer. Sunday’s visit to a Northern Iowa team playing as well as anyone in the Valley looms large.
VCU: Alright, so I owe VCU an actual writeup this week after pulling out some conspiracy hooey for their blurb last time around. (It was a bundle of fun to write though, so I don’t regret it.) Despite not having a single win over the at-large field, the Rams are in decent position for an eventual bid. Should the long-term goal of Atlantic 10 tournament champions not pan out, VCU has a 6-4 Quad 1/2 record and predictive metrics well within the 30s to fall back on—though that results average of 51.3 should certainly be spruced up over the coming weeks if the Rams want to feel any semblance of safety. Dayton staying above NET #76 will be critical for the sake of having a Quad 1 victory to point to, and a win over fellow at-large onlooker George Mason this coming Saturday would go a long way toward getting those résumé metrics hammered into shape. The goal here is the same for all 363 other Division I teams: just keep winning!
UC San Diego: I don’t think enough people are talking about what the UC San Diego Tritons are doing in their first year of NCAA Tournament eligibility. Let’s fix that! Since starting the 2024-25 campaign ranked 130th in KenPom, the Tritons have now ascended all the way up to 40th, following Saturday’s easy-peasy 25-point home win over UC Davis. 40th! The Tritons are one of the 40 best teams in the land, per Kenny Pom-Poms. And the other measures aren’t far behind—NET presently sits at 43, T-Rank at 49… this is a good basketball team, y’all. The résumé does remain a worry; an average of 53.0 would traditionally be on the outside of the at-large field, and a 2-2 Q1/2 record only just offsets the Tritons’ pair of defeats in Q3/4. Gonna have to play just about perfect down the stretch, and that includes knocking off a sneaky CSUN team in Northridge about a week-and-a-half from now. Add that Q2 victory and remain flawless elsewhere in the remainder, and UCSD will be right there.
UC Irvine: And let’s not forget our other contender keeping the two-bid Big West dream alive! A home loss to UC Santa Barbara on Thursday surely would have set our aspirations up in smoke, but Devin Tillis donned the Superman cape with 0.6 seconds left, perfectly popping in the inbound pass for the 62-60 victory. Two-bid Big West lives another day! And Saturday’s no-nonsense victory on the Hawaiian islands keeps that notion afloat heading into today, but just as with UC San Diego before, UC Irvine must be impeccable from here on out—even more so than the Tritons, as the Anteaters’ remaining slate is all Quad 3 and 4 opposition, with four of those contests coming away from home. Needless to say, it is a treacherous road ahead. But it’s Irvine’s good work on the road (10 such wins, tied for the most in DI) that has gotten them to this point in the first place.
George Mason: Make that 11 straight victories for George Mason and 17 in 19 tries since Thanksgiving. 2011 was the last time that the Patriots were a double-digit KenPom team by regular season’s end; they should cruise to that mark this year, barring a collapse of epic proportions. But the main goal at hand is not a pretty KenPom number, it’s an NCAA Tournament invite. Much like VCU above, GMU is clinging to a single Quad 1 victory over NET #74 Dayton. Unlike the Rams, the Patriots will have another opportunity to pile on in Q1 before the A10 tournament, courtesy of this weekend’s visit to the Siegel Center. Considering everything else left on the ledger lies firmly in Quad 3 or 4, that’s a gotta-have-it game for the Patriots in order to turn their currently somewhat-compelling case into the real deal. Win that game, then let the Rams take the conference crown at MSG, and I think we may be looking at a two-bid A10 after all.
San Francisco: Ah, rats. Thursday’s loss in Spokane would have been really nice to have. And no doubt about it; the Dons showed up, leading by as much as seven in the early goings, before Gonzaga turned into Gonzaga, keeping the game at arm’s length for nearly the entire second half. A single home victory over Saint Mary’s does not a résumé make, and San Francisco is back to looking like a generous bubble selection at just 3-7 in Quad 1/2 with results numbers floating in the 50s. The good news is that USF will have one more crack at the Zags prior the WCC tournament, hosting them in the Sobrato Center on March 1. And let’s not forget a visit to Oregon State three days before that, which may end up in Quad 1 if the Beavers can get back to their winnings ways of mid-January, instead of, ya know, losing to NET #304 Portland. Real helpful, guys.