Is Bubble Watch getting boring?
I sure hope not. Otherwise, what am I spending my entire Sunday writing 7,500+ words for?!
I only pose this question because the thrill of Bubble Watch comes from seeing how résumés develop on a weekly basis. It’s an ever-evolving game, in which teams shuffle their level of safety based on newly acquired wins and losses. Bubble teams have meteoric rises. Teams that you locked early start to make you sweat. Others continue to tiptoe the line between in and out all the way to kingdom come.
But that’s not really happening this year. The teams at the top of the bracket keep winning, and the teams at the bottom of the bracket keep losing. And it’s kinda sucking the fun out of it, y’know?
I mean, last week, I already had 26 locks doled out, which is far and away the most ever for a second-edition Bubble Watch, and none of those teams are making me second-guess that decision. It’s a consequence of the formation of these super-conferences, in which the dichotomy between teams at the top that have built bulletproof résumés, and teams at the middle-bottom that are allowed to be overwhelmingly mediocre and still find themselves inside bracket projections, since we need to fill out a 68-team field somehow, has never been greater.
And that means that work on the Watch from this point on is pretty bland. This week, we’re locking just two teams, popping two more, re-inflating two cases worth addressing, and sliding one team up from bubble to safe. Like, wow, that’s boring as hell. But that’s reality. And I suppose the burden is on me to try to make it interesting somehow with my writing, else you could just pull up last week’s Watch and essentially get the exact same information. No pressure!
In a nutshell, I’ve been doing Bubble Watch for about seven years now, and I’ve never run into this problem of complete and utter résumé stagnation before. I just hope the future of the sport doesn’t make all this watching and writing for naught. Harumph.
Anyway, let’s try to be a little bit more positive. The next time that I post this column, it will be March! Woohoo! In fact, conference tournaments will have already begun, with the opening round of the ASUN tournament tipping off on Sunday, March 2. There is no better way to raise the spirits than relish in the return of postseason basketball, so I’ll be doing exactly that. And two weeks from today, when the final full Bauer’s Bubble Watch of the year is posted, we’ll have already named a champion in the Missouri Valley, meaning our watch for potential bubble-popping bid thieves will have begun. (We had five total thieves last year—can we get just as many this year? If it means sending some of these garbage bubble cases to the ether, I’m all for it.)
OK, here’s our latest look at the team-by-team breakdown for our three categories before we dive into the analysis:
Try not to let the ennui set in. March is less than a week away.
ACC
So Duke is good. Like, really good. This was known already, given that most brackets have had the Blue Devils firmly on the 1 seed line for the better part of the 2024-25 season and maybe the entirety of it, depending on who you ask. Perhaps, though, it was not known that Duke was beat-a-solid-Illinois-team-by-43-at-Madison-Square-Garden-in-February good. I mean, the game was never even close. Duke led by 17 at halftime and chose not to take their foot off the gas. They scored 54 in the first half and scored more points in the second half! Like, good god! That’s the kind of win that cements your spot on the 1 line, even if things somehow manage to get hairy in the final few weeks of conference play against a weak ACC. (Not that I expect they will.)
What’s more is that win is actually kind of huge for the ACC as a whole. It’s rare that you receive such a shot in the arm from a non-conference game this late in the year. But with that victory elevating the Blue Devils to #1 in all the quality metrics (save for Torvik), the entire league benefits too. Bubble teams like Wake Forest and North Carolina now have a greater chance at turning their tepid team sheets into something astonishing… if only Duke is willing to share the wealth. (Any takers in Durham? No? Looks like we’ll have to do things the hard way.)
Anyway, long story short, Duke is really good. You know who’s not really good? Pitt. This is a take that would have had you heavily scrutinized had you said it on Jan. 6, when Pittsburgh was still 12-2 and top 15 in NET, one day before losing by 29 in Durham. Guess the writing was on the wall with that one, as the Panthers are 4-8 since, which is just unacceptable against this ACC, Saturday’s latest blunder in South Bend sinking Pitt’s résumé metrics below 60 and leaving them at 4-10 in Quad 1/2. As such, I’ve made the difficult decision to pop Pitt’s bubble for good… unless they can somehow knock off a Louisville team that has lost just once since Dec. 14 in Louisville this Saturday. Then I’d be willing to get the air pump back out. But I’m not holding my breath.
Wake Forest: And so the rollercoaster ride in Winston-Salem continues. Wake Forest had a nice, relaxing week off, watching the majority of bracketologists move them well inside the field, typically to a 10 or 11 seed above the First Four games, as a result of last weekend’s refreshing 11-point win at SMU. All good in Deaconville! Then Wake got stuck in the mud at Tobacco Road rival NC State this Saturday, ceding a late 13-0 run to the Wolfpack to ultimately lose by a dozen to a team well beyond the NET top 100. Not great, Steve! Now the Deacons are right back to the uneasy sensation of riding right along the cutline with four games to go; three are at home and are must-wins, all residing in Quad 3, lest Wake wants to incur an unsurvivable hit to the team sheet. The fourth game, of course, is next Monday’s fateful visit to Cameroon Indoor, where the Deacs will look to do something no other team has done this year: slay Duke in Durham. Depending on how the rest of the bubble shakes out, it might end up being a necessary task. Godspeed.
North Carolina: For now, a Wake win over Duke is only labeled as possibly necessary for the Demon Deacons to go dancing. There’s no “possibly” about it for Carolina; the Tar Heels must beat the Blue Devils in the season finale to make the tournament. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here—we can afford a second to look back and admire what UNC has done to be far more consistent than the team that didn’t show up for the second half of Feb. 10’s vital trip to Clemson. Yeah, a six-point win at listless Syracuse may be a little nervy, but back-to-back no-nonsense W’s over NC State and longtime thorn-in-the-side Virginia? Much more reason to have some faith in these Heels. They’ll have to keep that act up throughout the rest of the regular season, as the three remaining non-Duke games can only provide more harm than help to the résumé (to varying degrees). But if Carolina can ride a six-game win streak into the Dean Dome on March 8, with their archrival stanced up on the other sideline, in a do-or-die scenario… Let’s just say that the phrase “appointment television” would be underselling it.
SMU: Conglaturation, SMU, your did it! You managed to make it to March without a single Quad 1 victory! Yep, Saturday’s bout against Clemson was the final chance for the Mustangs to add some direly-needed weight to their profile before the postseason. Instead, SMU fell by double digits, meaning they’re now 20-2 against competition outside of that top quadrant and 0-5 against those inside it. Confoundingly, SMU still looks pretty good from a metric standpoint; a résumé average of 48.7 and predictive average of 39.7 are highly believable for a tournament team. Heck, even my own metric BRCT likes SMU enough to project them a spot in the field. But come on. They’ve had five opportunities to prove those metrics correct against tournament-level opposition, three of them coming against the ACC’s three locks IN MOODY COLISEUM. SMU went 0-5, losing these games by an average of 16 points. Their best win away from home is NET #100 Notre Dame. They aren’t dancing; not without causing some serious havoc in the ACC tournament.
BIG 12
As I mentioned in the introductory writeup to this week’s Watch, there haven’t been any locks that have made me really worry about naming them such. Kansas probably came the closest. It was admittedly not a great feeling previously praising the Jayhawks as “the gold standard for Big 12 success since the dawn of man,” only to seem them lose to two Big 12 newbies in Utah and BYU, the latter coming by means of 91-57 beatdown in Provo. Big yikes moment! But all is well with the world again after Saturday’s return to form in a never-competitive 96-64 drubbing of Oklahoma State. No doubt this Kansas team has issues; they’re very likely to be the first KU team to not earn a protected seed since to the turn of the millennium. But they’re not missing the tournament.
Elsewhere in the Sunflower State, Kansas State’s brief stint on the Watch comes to a close following Sunday’s home loss to Arizona State. It’s not every day that a team that 99% of people left for dead suddenly turns into the ’96 Bulls for exactly three weeks in the middle of winter, before reverting back into the pumpkin they were before, but, by golly, these Wildcats did it, and they made our lives a whole lot more interesting in the process. That makes them heroes in my book. A tip of the cap to you, Cats.
BYU: There is not a team in the nation playing better basketball right now than BYU. For months, the predictive metrics have been pretty adamant that the Cougars are a good team—never placing lower than 39th in T-Rank and 47th in KenPom—just one that hasn’t produced the results to back it up. Well, how does a 34-point trouncing of Kansas and true road victory at Arizona sound? Sounds like the predictive metrics knew what they were talking about all along. (As they usually do.) Yes, the latter may have come as a result of an extremely generous road whistle in the closing seconds, but that’s a gift you gladly take and run with. And the much bigger takeaway here is that BYU went toe-to-toe with one of the best teams in the nation on their home floor, addressing that zero in the Quad 1A win column in the process. Now, just a week and change removed from being a filler choice in most bracketologies, the Cougars are a win or two away from certifying themselves as a stone-cold lock. Guess we did have one meteoric rise from the bubble after all.
Baylor: You see that, Baylor? You see what BYU did? Why can’t you do something like that? While the new kid in town is out here strutting their stuff, beating the likes of Kansas and Arizona, the old guard is content to plod along and lose to 1-14 Colorado. When did the Big 12 get so backwards? The good news for Baylor is that the bubble remains so dreadful that even that kind of loss is not enough to knock the Bears from being any worse than the 10 line, still well removed from Last Four In/First Four Out kind of territory. But there’s also still time to get there. Two of Baylor’s last four are pretty decent road challenges (Cincinnati, TCU); reminder that the Bears have not won outside of Waco in a month. As for the two remaining home contests, it’s a gotta-have-it trap game against Q3 Oklahoma State and the season finale against Houston, the only team in the nation that hasn’t lost an away game all year. Needless to say, it is not a forgiving road ahead! Can you manage 2-2, Baylor? You’ll be in if you do that. Any worse, and it starts to get dicey.
West Virginia: Could basically copy-paste Baylor’s blurb verbatim for West Virginia, but let’s have a little discretion here. Though the Bears and Mountaineers are near-identical in the results metrics and quad splits, Baylor’s case is propped up by solid efficiency numbers, whereas Quad 1A splashes over Gonzaga, Arizona, Kansas, and Iowa State—a quartet of quality victories you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere on the bubble—is what’s keeping West Virginia’s boat afloat. But just like Baylor, the recent results are troubling; WVU hasn’t beaten a team on the inside of the bracket since that Iowa State game over a month ago. And unless they’re able to upset BYU in Provo on Saturday, that same statement will be true up until the start of the Big 12 tournament. That’s enough to make you feel a little uneasy… though those aforementioned victories remain gargantuan, and they should be enough to carry West Virginia to finish line, so long as they don’t fall on their face in this final stretch. Same ask as Baylor: Can you get to 2-2, WVU? (I really could have just copy-pasted the Baylor writeup, couldn’t I? Would have saved me about 200 words.)
Cincinnati: I get a little chuckle every time I open Cincinnati’s team sheet. When it comes to stacking up Quad 2 wins, the Bearcats have you covered! Their eight victories against the second tier are matched only by New Mexico (safely in the field) and a collection of teams specifically eyeing up protected seeds. This is to say that Cincy is positively elite at beating the teams they’re supposed to beat. The issue, of course, is that they’re also 1-9 against Quad 1, hence why just about every bracket in the land has the Bearcats on the exterior. Time is ticking to amend that mark, and a win over Baylor at Fifth Third on Wednesday is unlikely to do enough, given that the Bears’ NET rank of 30th resides right along the Q1 cutoff border. No, Cincinnati needs to do the unthinkable and slay Goliath by taking down Houston in the Fertitta Center on Saturday afternoon, a game that Torvik gives the Bearcats a mere 5% chance of escaping alive. Do ya feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
TCU: Sure, let’s give TCU a second look, why not? The Horned Frogs have at least done enough to earn another glance, collecting wins over BYU, Baylor, and now Texas Tech, en route to a 6-12 record across Quad 1 and 2, which is actually somewhat respectable in comparison to the bubble. (God, that’s sad.) But there’s no way that they’d be in the field if it were selected today; not with a résumé metric average of 54.3 and a mark of 2-10 outside of Fort Worth. Alas, TCU is a fringe bubble team at best, as is often the case with teams we re-inflate just for the sake of doing our due diligence. They’ll have to finish the regular season 3-1, maybe 4-0, with wins at West Virginia and Colorado being highly preferred, if not just for the sake of addressing that shoddy road record. Only then do I think that TCU might actually have a chance. So make like a frog and hop to it!
BIG EAST
For the third straight week, the Big East’s NCAA Tournament picture sits in the exact same spot: two locks, two safe for now, and one bubble team. Consistency is key, they say! And just like last week, Villanova is at least worth an honorable mention, taking advantage of a suddenly sagging Marquette on Friday night to keep the bubble within arm’s reach. Heck, the Wildcats would probably have been on the page entirely if they had just held on at UConn on Tuesday, instead of allowing the Huskies to go on a 27-6 run across the final 12 minutes of game time to steal the W away. Hey, you can’t win ’em all. (Though you would have really liked to win that one.)
UConn: Aha! So it turns out that UConn is mortal against top-level competition after all! It has been duly noted throughout this column how bizarre the two-time defending champs’ résumé is, given the Huskies’ very bubbly results metrics (48th in KPI, 36th in SOR, 42nd in WAB) and completely counterintuitive penchant for beating the best of the best across a staggering 4-0 Quad 1A record. Well, 4-0 no more! Sunday marked St. John’s second win over UConn in a month, the Red Storm looking like the superior team from start to finish at Storrs South, finally handing the Huskies an L guaranteed to stay in Q1A until season’s end. So that makes UConn a bubble team, right? Hardly. Though the metric profile is certainly underwhelming, one little slip-up does not negate the rest of those top-shelf wins. As long as UConn doesn’t implode across a final set of four very winnable games, there’s no reason to believe that they’ll ever slip below the safety line, even if their eventual seed is much worse than what was forecasted in the preseason. I don’t expect that the 1 seed who lines up across 8 or 9 seed UConn will be all too thrilled about it…
Creighton: Creighton, you little prankster, you! You gave me and all of Middle America a heart attack when you went down 10 at home to Georgetown on Sunday, only to outscore the Hoyas by 24 across the next 10 minutes and (mostly) coast to an easy second-half victory. Don’t play games with my heart like that! And don’t play games with your résumé either; metric averages right around 30 and a 10-8 Q1/2 record are pretty good, but a little whoopsie against DePaul here or Seton Hall there in the closing stretch could make them not so in an instant. Still, I think this worrying is for naught; the second-place Big East team has never missed the dance since the conference was reformed in 2014, and Creighton is not going to be the first. Just keep the shenanigans to a minimum against the Blue Demons on Wednesday, and we should be all good to go.
Xavier: Just keep swimming, Muskies! That’s the name of the game. Though none of the results from this recent four-game winning streak have done anything individually to bolster Xavier’s résumé in a significant way, victory is reward enough, as X’s overall record continues to climb while other bubble teams continue to shoot themselves in the foot. As such, a handful of brackets are already placing the Musketeers back in the projected field ahead of this Saturday’s clash with Creighton. That’s a bridge too far for me; at 1-9 in Quad 1 and sporting a single non-conference victory away from Cintas over non-contender South Carolina, I still think Xavier is on the outside looking in. But a win over the Bluejays would transform that outlook tremendously. Call it a necessity, given that neither of the other remaining games (at Butler, vs. Providence) provide much benefit. By the time tipoff comes on Saturday, it’ll have been nearly a month since Xavier last played in a game of such high magnitude. Will the Musketeers be up for the challenge?
BIG TEN
Only took half the damn article, but we finally have a new lock to christen: Welcome to March, Oregon! The Ducks’ sudden swoon in late January/early February, in line with what the predictive measures expected would happen sooner or later, is now ancient history. Dana Altman’s bunch has secured its 15th straight 20-win season, doing so with aplomb, as Saturday’s 17-point comeback at Wisconsin nets the Ducks their ninth Quad 1 win and fifth in Quad 1A: a total far exceeding any worries that the efficiency measures may have about Oregon’s tendency to win games by one or two buckets. Perhaps a suspect choice for a deep run when filling out your March Madness bracket a couple weeks from now, but no such concern as to whether or not Oregon will be there in the first place.
Illinois: You know, for a team that is supposed to be one of the best in college basketball per KenPom and company, Illinois sure doesn’t look like it. I understand that a group as freshman-reliant as the Illini is bound to put up some head-scratchers from time to time, but… 110-67? Really? Losing to Duke is one thing; being completely outclassed from tip to whistle in every phase of the game is another. That’s a team heavy on freshman talent too, and they’ve got it figured out! Why is Illinois still working out the kinks less than a month away from Selection Sunday? It’s frustrating to see from a neutral perspective—I can’t even imagine what Illini fans are thinking and feeling. I mean, 11 losses is kinda a lot for a team at this stage in the season eyeing a seed somewhere in the upper half of the bracket. They do have the necessary victories (11 in Q1/2) and inherent quality numbers that have yet to turn tail completely (24.0 average), but the once-reasonable aspirations of a protected seed are all but gone now. It’s sad to see. Just take care of Iowa on Tuesday and keep it respectable at Michigan on Saturday so we don’t have to mope about anymore.
Nebraska: Last week, I postulated that Nebraska was merely a bubble team in name, and that the Cornhuskers clearly had an aura of safety about them that other teams lower on the bubble lacked. So, how do Fred Hoiberg and company repay me? By putting up their single worst performance of the season per Torvik at Penn State on Wednesday. Aw, shucks, guys, you shouldn’t have! No really—you shouldn’t have; road game or not, you cannot be losing by 17 to a team that’s been eliminated for weeks (as much as it may make this suffering Penn State fan’s day). Thankfully, the Nittany Lions are back in the NET top 75, so it only goes down as a Quad 1 loss, keeping the Huskers’ team sheet solid in comparison to other bubble teams… though not solid enough that I’m willing to call them “safe” and risk my credibility. Just put that misstep in the rearview mirror by doing something like—oh, I don’t know—beating Michigan on Monday night, and all prior transgressions will be forgiven.
Indiana: Well… this is awkward. Over the course of three weeks, I’ve spent much of this column dragging Indiana’s name through the mud, calling them everything from “fully dysfunctional” to “unmitigated disaster,” decreeing the Hoosiers as the team representative of how bad this bubble is, given that they’re allowed to be on it. Now I’m the one with egg on his face. Though I do think there is still some merit to those insults given this team’s preseason expectations, I also think that Indiana would probably be in the field if it were announced today, as the recent wins over Michigan State and Purdue have elevated this team sheet signficantly. Hell, I’d be damn near certain of it had the Hoosiers finished the comeback against UCLA last Friday. For as much crap as I’ve given IU, they’ve been surprisingly resilient at the most important juncture of the season. Guess that all they had to do was say that they’re going to be parting ways with Mike Woodson—not actually doing so until season’s end—and all the bad juju surrounding this program just up and vanished. Some teams have all the luck.
Ohio State: Nearly every year, we have one team willing to push the selection committee’s stance on overall record to the breaking point. And who better to do so in 2025 than the always-fickle Ohio State Buckeyes? It’s well-known that a team’s overall record doesn’t really mean much to the committee; everybody is going to win games, and everybody is going to lose games. It’s who you pick and choose your wins and losses against that decides your fate. But it’s also well-known that the committee doesn’t take too kindly to teams that aren’t at least three games above .500. The last team to not reach this mark and still receive an at-large bid was 2001 Georgia, whose 16-14 record came against the third-most difficult schedule in the country. Well, Ohio State is now 15-13, fresh off this terribly-timed three-game skid, which includes one of the single worst performances a bubble team has posted this year in Thursday’s 70-49 home loss to a crippled Northwestern. Though the Buckeyes do still have wonderful wins over Kentucky, Purdue, and Maryland to point to, I sincerely doubt it would be enough to make the committee break an unwritten rule that has stood for 24 years. Needless to say, OSU needs wins, and fast.
SEC
I’m starting to think that a 13- or 14-bid SEC is a pretty unlikely idea. Don’t get me wrong, this year’s SEC is still the best conference these eyes have ever seen. And I think the goal of getting the most bids ever from one league, surpassing the 2011 Big East’s total of 11, remains somewhat reasonable, especially when nine of the conference’s 16 teams are already guaranteed a place. But sooner or later, the difference between the top and bottom had to come to a head. Simply put, the good teams in the SEC are too good—so much so that they’ve created serious separation from the league’s other half. Just look at the cavernous gap in the “safe” column below; the nine teams on the left of the graphic are all looking at a 6 or 7 seed at worst, and the five teams on the right of the graphic are all eyeing up a 10 seed at best. Are we really going to see all five of those teams squeeze into the final eight or nine at-large spots? I don’t think so. I think we’ll be lucky to get two or three.
Vanderbilt: I didn’t expect the team with the 321st-ranked non-conference strength of schedule to be the one I feel most confident about grabbing a bid out of this SEC bubble, but here we are. Vanderbilt has looked the part of a tournament team all season, and even though a 6-8 league record might refute that, the Commodores have landed multiple blows on the SEC’s better half (Tennessee, Kentucky, Ole Miss), en route to a metric profile that supports a tourney invite. I do have concerns about all those wins coming at home, though; Vandy’s marquee road victory is over LSU, which is not a good thing to be saying less than a month out from Selection Sunday. The Dores will have two opportunities to fix that: at Texas A&M this Wednesday (good luck) and, much more reasonably, at Georgia to close out the regular season. Huge stretch of games coming up, if you couldn’t tell.
Oklahoma: That sound that you just heard is the entire city of Norman breathing the deepest sigh of relief ever breathed. There’s no understating how massive Saturday’s survival against Mississippi State is; that was a 100% necessary result for a Sooners team careening into the abyss to the tune of a 3-10 conference record, completely unraveling the pristine work that they did in the non-con. (They were 13-0, people!!) But this victory is only a temporary reprieve; Oklahoma needs to load up the guns again for the most grueling final stretch that any of the SEC’s bubble squads has yet to face, starting this week with a clash against Kentucky at Lloyd Noble and followed by a Saturday matinee at Ole Miss. Again, the Sooners are 4-10 in the SEC. They aren’t favored to win another game the rest of the way. Either things are gonna get ugly here quick, or we’re in store for some March mania a week ahead of schedule.
Texas: OK, so maybe my prediction that Texas would inevitably coast to an 8-10 conference record and snag a seed in the 9 to 10 range, somewhere just above the bubble, was a bit optimistic. There is simply no excuse for Saturday’s no-show at South Carolina, a game in which the Longhorns never led after the six-minute mark of the first half, ultimately losing by 15 to a team that entered the night winless against SEC opposition. That single result sends what was starting to look like a decent team sheet right back to the at-large edge, likely as the last team in or first team out, depending on your bracketologist of choice. I do still think the Horns have a heck of a trump card in wins over Kentucky, Texas A&M, and Missouri, plus a critical road win at Oklahoma to round out Q1. But résumé metrics spilling north of 50 and a 9-11 record across Quads 1 through 3 make this a toss-up of the highest order. All because you couldn’t beat a Gamecocks team still searching for its first SEC win. Shameful. (Hey, at least we now have a completed SEC Circle of Suck! That’s a good consolation prize, right? …I doubt that Texas feels the same way.)
Arkansas: Ah, the fickle nature of college basketball. It never ceases to amaze! In the span of four days, Zvonimir Ivisic goes from absolute disaster-class at Auburn, putting up a goose egg and shooting 0-of-9 from three in a game that the Razorbacks absolutely could have won, to the centerpiece in Arkansas’ thrilling comeback over Missouri, scoring a game high 20 on 6-of-8 efficiency while also going a perfect 7-of-7 at the line, accounting for the deciding margin of a 92-85 win. How can you not be romantic about college hoops? Fun anecdote aside, that 1-1 week keeps Arkansas on the heart of the bubble, right where they’ve been ever since upsetting Kentucky in Coach Cal’s homecoming game. Much like Texas, they’re a last team in/first team out kind of case for most, with many opting for the former given the Hogs’ win over the Horns in Austin back on Feb. 5. Arkansas can double down on that notion by pulling off the series sweep of UT in Fayetteville on Wednesday.
Georgia: You’ve got to get up off the mat sometime, Georgia. Yes, I know, beating Auburn in Neville Arena is not a task for the faint of heart, and keeping the game within single digits for most of the night is certainly praiseworthy. But the Bulldogs haven’t beaten a tournament team in a month-and-a-half, haven’t won a road game since Nov. 15, and don’t have the team sheet marks (50 résumé average, 2-11 Quad 1 record) indicative of a March invitation. The wins need to come from somewhere—anywhere—and soon. If UGA doesn’t take at least one of the two big’uns this week (vs. Florida on Tuesday, at Texas on Saturday), the best they could possibly finish in SEC play is 6-12. And with just a single one of those six victories landing in Q1 (Kentucky), it’s not going to cut it. Get to work this week, or miss out on March for the 10th year in a row. The choice is yours.
OTHERS
Against my better judgment, I’m locking Memphis. This is a very risky move, considering the Tigers’ lukewarm quality metrics, the fact that they just lost a Quad 3 game (now up to Quad 2, god bless) a little over a week ago, and a remaining schedule that features Q4 Rice, Q3 UTSA, and Q4 South Florida: plenty of opportunity to step on a landmine or three and blow this thing to bits. But my heart says that it’s not gonna happen! Even if it gets squirrelly once or twice down the line, Memphis can fall back on their top-20 résumé metrics, 8-2 road record, 10-3 clip in Quad 1/2, and the third-toughest non-conference schedule in the nation, which proudly features victories over Michigan State, Clemson, Missouri, Ole Miss, and UConn. And that kind of profile is just convincing enough to get my heart and brain on the same page.
Also, if I didn’t lock Memphis, then Oregon would be my only lock of the week, and that would be extraordinarily boring. And I don’t do boring! Yeah! Let’s live a little!
(Ahem. Dear Memphis. Do NOT make me regret this.)
New Mexico: The bad news: New Mexico’s loss at Boise State on Wednesday ends the Lobos’ month-long winning streak. The good news: It doesn’t really matter! Boise State is playing some fine basketball these days, and thanks to a late 14-4 UNM run to make the final score look respectable (Richard Pitino’s been doing his homework, it seems), that kind of defeat hardly puts a dent in New Mexico’s decidedly solid profile. As touched on in the Cincinnati blurb much higher up, the Lobos are one of just a handful of teams to win eight or more games in the second quadrant. And that 3-2 Quad 1 record featuring neutral/road wins over UCLA and Utah State makes the comparison against the Bearcats unrecognizable. The Lobos are a-OK; take care of Q4 Air Force in The Pit on Saturday and win once more elsewhere, and the lock will land in Albuquerque without worry.
Utah State: Utah State, man. You can’t do anything but watch and applaud. The Aggies have become the poster child for mid-major resilience, their knack for winning out the wazoo in spite of coach-poaching not seen elsewhere being well-documented. But if you want to see a slice of that tenacity in action, look no further than Saturday night. Twice, USU surrendered their multi-bucket lead to a San Diego State team eager to avenge a late December loss in Viejas, only to surge back both times, the latter seeing the Aztecs’ 17-5 run countered in resounding fashion, with a 14-2 push across the final three minutes sealing the season sweep of SDSU. Just incredible stuff coming out of North Utah, game after game, year after year. Now 23-4 overall and still possessing an incredible 10-2 record beyond the Spectrum, Utah State is one win away from lock-hood. Get it done in Boise or in Fort Collins this week, and we’ll put a bow on it.
Gonzaga: Really gonna play this one out, huh, Gonzaga? So be it. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t expecting the Zags to beat Saint Mary’s in Spokane on Saturday, a well-earned reward for the past month of play, which has easily been Gonzaga’s most consistent stretch of good basketball to date. Or maybe Mark Few could instead play saboteur by starting his walk-on son, watch as the Gaels burst out to an 11-point lead two minutes in, and then never overcome that deficit. Would someone like to remind Mark that Gonzaga is still not a tournament lock yet? That that’s the kind of the game they really needed to win? Seems like such a mental lapse in judgment, considering the state of the Bulldogs’ résumé—46.3 metric average and just 6-8 in Quad 1/2. I think that loss just about eliminates any possibility of the Zags sneaking up to a protected seed by the time it’s all said and done, but with those gaudy efficiency numbers which still insist Gonzaga is a top-15 team (NET chief among them), there’s still time to lock this thing up ahead of the WCC tournament; a 2-0 road trip to the Bay Area, taking down Santa Clara and San Francisco, would seal it. Just no more stupid stunts, please.
San Diego State: No escape from the bubble this time for San Diego State, as the Aztecs’ late push in Logan was ultimately foiled. But I wouldn’t sweat it; SDSU remains one of the more sensible bubble choices for a bid just the same. I’ve already touched on it twice, but it’s worth mentioning again: no one else on the bubble can lay claim to neutral-court wins over Houston and Creighton, an 8-4 record beyond Viejas, and a non-conference strength of schedule that ranks top 10 nationwide. That said, I would still advise Brian Dutcher and company to go 3-1 or 2-2 at minimum across the final two weeks, given the state of the Aztecs’ so-so metrics (40+ on both sides of the aisle), but a victory over New Mexico on Tuesday would surely put said bubbly numbers in a more shapely spot. Win that and one or two more, and I’d feel near certain about the Mountain West collecting at least three bids for the fourth year in a row.
Drake: Love the Drake! Gotta love the Drake! The rest of the Missouri Valley probably does not share that sentiment, seeing as how their Bulldog overlords continue to defy death; Drake is now 4-0 in overtime games this year, none of those victories more zany than what transpired in Cedar Falls on Sunday afternoon. To briefly recap: The Bulldogs’ chances of victory stood at 2.7%, trailing by two with a second left in regulation, only for Northern Iowa to foul a three-point-shooting Mitch Mascari, who sunk two of his three free throws with the pressure of the world on his shoulders, sending it to OT, where Drake would go on to win. Stuff of legends! Now a loss probably would not have been all that detrimental to the Dogs’ at-large hopes; a Q2 road defeat to the Valley’s second- or third-best team is hardly reason to get up in arms. But a W is a hell of a lot better than an L, placing Drake’s Q1/2 record at 5-1 instead of 4-2. That’s enough wiggle room that Drake really should be able to withstand any kind of blow provided in Arch Madness, so long as they clean their plate against Evansville and Missouri State this week.
VCU: You might be tempted to think that VCU is in the same boat as fellow three-letter bubbler SMU, possessing solid metrics across the board, the kind typically held by an at-large team, but also empty in Quad 1, resulting in a quirky but ultimately uncompelling case for inclusion. You would only be partially correct. Yes, the Rams’ results and efficiency numbers are indeed quite similar to the Mustangs, and that zero in the Q1 win column cannot be disputed. But the key difference lies in opportunity, my friends! Whereas SMU resides in a power conference and has routinely fallen on its face, failing in all five of its résumé-lifting chances, typically by 15-point margins or more, VCU is a true mid-major, their lone Q1 game being an out-of-conference visit to New Mexico, in which the Rams came a couple baskets shy of the road stunner. So we look to Quad 2, where VCU has made the most of its biggest chances, posting an impressive 7-3 mark with six of those victories coming beyond the confines of the Siegel Center. This is the kind of nuance needed to determine why VCU is a far more likely at-large choice than a team who looks similar team-sheet-wise at first glance. Breaking down the bubble ain’t as easy as it looks, folks.
UC San Diego: Things you didn’t think you’d be writing entering the 2024-25 season: The UC San Diego Tritons rank higher in KenPom and NET than the two-time defending national champions. What a wonderfully wacky world it is! Seriously, though; what was once considered a fun but far-fetched prospect—a Big West team in its first year of tournament eligibility being a legitimate at-large threat—is evolving into reality before our very eyes. At this point, the Tritons check nearly every box for a team given their opportunities: Reasonable metrics in the high 40s and low 50s… Winning record in Quad 1/2… Marquee non-conference road win over Utah State… Stunning mark of 13-2 outside La Jolla… This is a tournament team sheet, y’all! And they’ll have a chance to make it even spiffier if they can pull out the Quad 2 win at CSUN on Thursday. I’m trying to keep a lid on my excitement here, but… it’s hard not to be exhilarated about a case like this.
Boise State: It’s always a pleasure when a mid-major is able to do enough to make the leap from mere honorable mention to fully-fledged bubble team. Welcome to the Watch, Boise State! (Get comfortable—you may be here a while. Coffee maker is on the left.) Last week, I called on the Broncos to accomplish two feats: beat conference-leading New Mexico, then topple Nevada in Reno. They did both, so here they are. And I’m honestly tempted to say that Boise is pretty darn close to the field, if not in it altogether. A 56.7 résumé average is reason to pump the brakes on this assertion, though that low of a number is not unheard of; 2022 Rutgers snagged a First Four spot with a near-identical mark (granted, with four additional Q1A victories), while 2023 Providence rode a 56.0 and 6-10 Q1/2 record to a non-play-in 11 seed. Throw in some nice non-conference wins over Saint Mary’s and Clemson, as well as that ugly Thanksgiving loss to Boston College now cozied up to Q3, and we’ve definitely got something to work with here. You had my curiosity, Broncos. Now you have my attention.
George Mason: Ah, shucks. That’ll most likely do it for George Mason’s at-large hopes. The Patriots badly needed Saturday’s duel at VCU to give some girth to their profile, and their slow-as-molasses, push-you-into-the-dirt type of defense kept it a contest ’til halftime. But that sort of play style is not built to come from behind, and once the Rams nestled into a 13-point lead with around 15 minutes left to play, that was all she wrote. Though the basics of a consideration-worthy team sheet are here (47.7 results metric average, 5-4 Q1/2 record), a deeper dive reveals a much more grim outlook. It once again boils down to opportunity, and lo and behold, all three of GMU’s chances against Quad 1 foes have gone by the wayside, all by 16 points or more. Not gonna cut it, unfortunately. I’m keeping the Patriots on the page, just because I think there’s still a chance if they can run to the A-10 title game unscathed, but another regular-season loss would mean pulling the plug.
UC Irvine: Oof, my sweet two-bid Big West—you are on life support. As I wrote last week, UC Irvine, with surprisingly solid résumé metrics but poor predictives and just a single victory above NET #90, needed to be perfect down the stretch to have a real crack at this thing. But the Big West is a challenging conference with a lot of sneaky teams, and CSUN got the best of the Anteaters in Irvine on Thursday night. That makes it three in the Quad 3 loss column for UCI, matching their total number of victories in Quads 1 and 2: no bueno. Certainly, the margin for error between now and the Big West tournament title game is zero, and only UC San Diego on the other side of the bracket would provide a survivable defeat. But there is one upside to keep an eye on, that being that UC Santa Barbara has done enough winning as of recent to sneak back into the NET top 135, and the Anteaters will get their chance to sweep the Gauchos in the Thunderdome for a Q2 win on the final day of the regular season. Would that be enough to make Irvine an at-large selection should they falter in the conference tourney? Eh, probably not. But we can dream about it anyway.
San Francisco: For the umpteenth time, San Francisco remains as far out as I’m willing to stretch the bubble. At this point, I’m even tempted to give their spot on the Watch back to Santa Clara, who may not be dead yet, if Saturday’s mauling in Pullman is any indication. But USF is still a more reasonable choice with results metrics ranking about 15 spots better and none of the baggage of the SCU’s three Quad 3 blemishes. That said, the Broncos do have one major data point that the Dons lack: a win over Gonzaga, which, NET-wise, is the best thing that you can do in this conference (even though I think Saint Mary’s is clearly the better team). This is all to say that San Francisco’s tentative bubble status completely hinges on knocking off the Zags in the bay this Saturday night. The Dons will also want to win in Corvallis on Wednesday, too; certainly not a foe to be overlooked.
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