March, March, March. What a double-edged sword in the world of bracketology you are.
I’ve gone on record plenty of times before stating that March is my favorite month of all. Between the warmer weather, the seasonal treats, and the nonstop flood of amazing college basketball, there isn’t a better chunk of 31 days that the year has to offer. And from a bracketology standpoint, it clearly stands head and shoulders above the rest. Months and months of watching games, analyzing team sheets, and building brackets finally comes to a head, with all the hard work reaching the payoff point at last on Selection Sunday, i.e., the bracketology equivalent of a second Christmas.
There is, however, a downside to this all. Given that March is the prime college-hoops-viewing month, the number of eyes on the sport increases exponentially the moment that the calendar flips. Most casual viewers are finally starting to tune in at this point, and that’s totally cool; there’s plenty of room on the CBB bandwagon for everyone.
What’s not so cool is how everybody with an opinion is a bracketology expert all of a sudden.
This has been a recurring problem for years. Coaches in postgame pressers, talking heads on TV, rowdy fans on social media, you name it—everybody thinks that they have all the answers. It was just as recent as 2024 that Jon Rothstein of all people christened St. John’s as an NCAA Tournament lock after beating Seton Hall in their opening Big East tournament game. (The Johnnies weren’t even in the committee’s First Four Out, mind you.) Now, we’ve got TNT Sports allowing Bruce Pearl to come on their show and spread blatant misinformation left and right about the state of the bubble, basing his takes on zero empirical evidence and instead taking potshots at Miami (OH) and other awesome mid-majors, all in the name of advocating for his former team—now coached by his own son—without coming out and saying it directly.
Do you realize how harmful this is to bracketology? To those of us who are familiar with how the selection committee operates and have done the legwork all season to keep up with it? I promise you, not anybody can just pick up bracketology as hobby and be an expert at it from day one. It takes a lot of time, practice, and a keen eye for recognizing patterns to actually get good at it and prognosticate things as they lie better than the typical college basketball watcher can.
Bruce’s comments—alongside the garbage takes that I’ve seen from college basketball Twitter casuals one too many times—don’t seem to grasp the idea that the selection process for the NCAA Tournament has never been about choosing the 68 “best” teams. It’s always been about choosing the 68 most deserving—the 68 that actually have gone out and won games, built up the metrics that we have available to us to show how impressive those wins are, and left a visible, palpable stamp on the college basketball sphere. Please, leave the “best” talk for college football. We don’t need that subjective BS in our sport. We have facts, and those are far, far more reliable.
So let’s stop it with the nonsense. Let the coaches coach, let the players play, let the fans watch the games, and let the bracketologists handle the bracketology, for the sake of everyone’s sanity.
(Also, for what it’s worth—if you’re like Bruce, and you’re trying to poke holes in the résumé of a 30-0 basketball team, or are actively rooting for their downfall, I wholeheartedly question your sincerity as a college basketball fan. Stories like these are what make college basketball such a special sport in the first place, and you want to stomp all over it. Shame on you.)
OK, soapbox over. Let’s get to the bubble watchin’. We’ve got a week and a half left to go, and conference tournaments are already tipping off. Automatic bids will soon emerge, as will potential bid thieves, shrinking our bubble by one spot with every auto-bid that they nab. Today in Bauer’s Bubble Watch, we lock three more teams, reevaluate one bubble case, and dissect where exactly the rest of the un-locked pool of at-large hopefuls stand:
Next Wednesday’s update will be the final Bauer’s Bubble Watch of the year. It’s over and done with far too quickly, every single time.
ACC
Took two weeks longer than I anticipated, but we can finally lock in Clemson. It’s never a good feeling to be handing total postseason certainty to a team that has lost five of its last six, especially when two of those came to teams not even within spitting distance of the bubble. But the key thing for the Tigers is that they did sprinkle a win in there—a Quad 1A win at that—outlasting Louisville in Littlejohn on Saturday to seal this thing up for good. We may be a far cry from the 20-4 Tigers of early February that had a potential protected seed on the mind, with an appearance in an 8/9 game looking imminent. But at least total catastrophe to close out the regular season has successfully been avoided. Phew.
NC State: Will Wade’s wild ride extends another week. NC State has had just about the most volatile month of any at-large hopeful yet to be locked, going 1-5 with losses of 41, 29, and 29 again… alongside a thorough 82-58 whomping of hated rival North Carolina. (It’s like the Wolfpack are playing the college basketball equivalent of Russian roulette, except instead of one bullet and five empty chambers, there’s one empty chamber and five bullets.) The latest no-show against Duke on Monday night is not particularly troublesome by itself, but it is when paired with Saturday’s OT loss in South Bend, as NC State’s once-solid-looking résumé now sports both an SOR and WAB in the 40s, a 4-7 clip in Quad 1, and that dreaded Q4 loss to Georgia Tech in Raleigh, which has aged worse than spoiled milk sitting out in the sun for two weeks. Despite of all this, I still get the sensation that the Wolfpack are mostly fine, with OK quality metrics and eight road/neutral victories likely holding NC State to the 9 line. So long as they can fend off Stanford in the Lenovo Center on Saturday afternoon, they should be sailing into the ACC tournament with a March Madness invite already locked up. Guess we’ll find out shortly if there’s a second blank in that gun or not.
SMU: It’s starting to get sweaty in Dallas. For much of the season, SMU has been an easy postseason pick—never a particularly impressive one, but also never in danger of missing the dance entirely, residing somewhere in the 6 to 9 seed range for the whole of January and February. That is no longer the case, as the Mustangs’ tricky four-game stretch to end the season has gone awry at the midway point, losing both legs of last week’s trip to the Golden State, the latter being an ugly 95-75 beatdown at the hands of a Stanford team that hasn’t put together that sort of worldly performance in nearly two months. SMU’s once-sensible team sheet is now pretty off-putting as a consequence: 41.0 résumé average, 41.7 efficiency average, 7-10 in Quad 1/2, 1-5 in Quad 1A, 3-7 on the road… That’s the profile of a team that most often ends up in Dayton or ends up being surprisingly excluded from the bracket altogether. I don’t think the latter concern has materialized just yet; we are dealing with one of the worst bubbles of all time, after all. But I would not rule out the possibility if the Mustangs can’t close out against Miami and Florida State to finish the regular-season slate. Wednesday’s tilt against the Hurricanes in Moody should tell us whether or not we need to saddle up for a nervy final few days.
California: Awful, terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad: all apt descriptors of California’s Quad 3 home loss to 11-18 Pittsburgh on Saturday. It’s doubly soul-crushing when you consider that the Golden Bears had just survived a dogfight with SMU three days prior, a result that truly felt like a game-changer for Cal, that a corner had been turned and that the first NCAA Tournament appearance in a decade was finally within reach. How quickly that kind of high can come crashing down. The good news for the Golden Bears is that such a loss, as bad as it may feel in the moment, is not an immediate bubble-popper. The rest of the bubble is really, really bad, and Cal is right there—maybe on the outside of the bracket, but still there—with four Quad 1 wins and résumé metrics hovering near 50. Do the Bears need to beat both Georgia Tech and Wake Forest on the road this week? Absolutely. But would going 2-0 in those games move them back up onto the right side of the cut line? It’s entirely possible. Do not lose sight of the goal when you’re this close to the finish!
Virginia Tech: So close, and yet, so very far: the story of Virginia Tech’s season. From buzzer-beaters, to rim-outs, to half-court heaves, the Hokies have been left on the front porch of glory one too many times for the faint of heart, Saturday’s loss in Chapel Hill being the latest example. Virginia Tech had North Carolina sweating for 40 minutes, taking a brief lead before halftime and trimming the deficit to five with under three minutes to go. But the Tar Heels closed out the job, and the Hokies were left to ponder what could have been for umpteenth time. A 2-9 mark against Quad 1 competition isn’t pretty—not disqualifying, as Xavier and North Carolina proved last year, but also not the kind of number you want to be carrying when every metric but KPI says that you’re only as good as the 49th-best team in the nation. There’s only one way to change that perception, and that’s to win: something that I believe Virginia Tech must do in Charlottesville this weekend to end up on the right side of the cut line by Selection Sunday. We saw the Hokies claw out a marathon match against the Cavaliers once before. Can they do it again?
BIG 12
Is anyone beating Arizona this year? Alright, alright, we get it! But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Wildcats in the same breath as I’ve done for Michigan and Duke previously, the three representing a holy trinity in college basketball in terms of both résumé quality and championship-level looks, each now firmly cemented to their region of choice on the 1 seed line. Think about it this way: Since Arizona fell at home to a fiery Texas Tech squad on Valentine’s Day, the Wildcats have rattled off five consecutive Quad 1 wins, two of them in the always-daunting environments of the Fertitta Center and Foster Pavilion, by an average margin of double digits. Despite that, we’re still only talking about Arizona as being pretty firmly the third-best team in the land. We might as well just skip all the March mumbo jumbo and flash forward to Saturday, April 4, when the Wildcats, Blue Devils, and Wolverines are suiting up in Indy for the Final Four. (The only mystery is which fourth team will join them. Florida? UConn? Miami (OH)? Your guess is as good as mine.)
Also, Oklahoma State might still have an ounce of life left after beating UCF in Orlando on Tuesday, though the bubble remains popped for the time being. Résumé metrics in the low 50s start the conversation; a 2-9 Quad 1 record and quality numbers in the 70s bring it to a prompt end. Do the unthinkable by beating Houston in Stillwater on Saturday, and we’ll talk.
TCU: Move aside, Wisconsin—no team in the country can beat anybody or lose to anybody quite like the TCU Horned Frogs. And while the worst of the losses (New Orleans, Notre Dame, Utah) have been the results grabbing more attention, it’s the wins that have been happening more frequently as of recent, TCU now victorious in seven of the last eight. None of those triumphs have been as humongous as what the Horned Frogs accomplished on Tuesday night, taking down Texas Tech in Lubbock for a fifth Quad 1 win and third in Quad 1A, with upward metric movement enough to elevate the Frogs into the tourney’s safety zone for the first time all year. Though I’m not quite ready to call TCU a total tournament lock, it’s getting mighty difficult to envision a world in which a team with wins over each of Texas Tech, Iowa State, Wisconsin, and Florida ever gets left on the couch for March Madness, even if those Quad 3 and 4 losses leave you scratching your head at how they happened in the first place. Knock off red-hot Cincinnati in Fort Worth on Saturday, and we’re 99%—maybe even 100%—of the way there.
Cincinnati: What the hell, sure. Let’s get a little crazy and bring Cincinnati into the mix. Even if it’s still a major longshot, the Bearcats are worth a quick glance at minimum, at least as a means of recognizing the 6-1 stretch that Cincy has embarked on over the last month. Plain and simple, UC was dead in the water on Feb. 5, as the Bearcats blew a 14-point lead to lose to West Virginia at home, driving yet another nail into the coffin of both Cincinnati’s postseason aspirations and Wes Miller’s status as future head coach of the program. But like a scene taken straight out of the Undertaker’s wrestling routine, the Bearcats have risen from the dead, walloping UCF, stunning Kansas in Lawrence, and most recently clobbering BYU by 22 points, all in the span of 24 days. (There are late-season surges, and then there’s whatever the hell is going on in the Queen City.) As I said before, it’s still a longshot; résumé numbers in the low 50s and an 8-12 showing across Quads 1 and 2 are grounds for discussion, not inclusion. But what happens if UC goes into Fort Worth and notches another Quad 1 win on Saturday? Certainly a situation worth monitoring with the Big 12 tournament now just a stone’s throw away. Let’s check back in a week.
BIG EAST
The words that I never, ever thought I would hear myself say: The Big East is boring. (Gasp!) I know, I know—harsh comments for a conference that has produced as much zaniness on and off the court as any over the past few years. But in 2026, what exactly is there to get up in arms about? UConn just wins. St. John’s just wins. Villanova just wins, unless they’re playing UConn or St. John’s, then they get blown out. And everybody else just sorta stinks. Where is the intrigue? Where is the drama? This is not the Big East I’m accustomed to. And unless Seton Hall can brew up some chaos by beating the Red Storm this weekend and winning one or two in the conference tournament, we’re going to be left with exactly three bids, no more, no less. Such a pity that this typical madhouse of a league has been reduced to becoming the most tepid section of Bauer’s Bubble Watch in present year. (I guess that DePaul has been a pretty cool story, though. Say… Wanna go win a couple games at MSG and pull me out of these conference-wide doldrums? Sco Mons, I suppose.)
Seton Hall: That’s probably it for Seton Hall, right? The Pirates came excruciatingly close to pulling off “The Big One,” leading UConn in Storrs by as many as eight points in the second half and by two at the U4 timeout. But it was not meant to be, as the Huskies ripped off a 12-6 run over the final three minutes and change, and Seton Hall’s bid to completely overhaul its team sheet in one fell sweep fell two possessions short. Heartbreaking. At least the March dream isn’t totally dead; it would have been had they followed up Saturday’s tragedy by losing at Xavier on Tuesday, but the Pirates kept their composure and held the Musketeers to just eight points across the final 10 minutes, gathering a Quad 2 victory that keeps the bubble from going pop, at least for one more week. It’s obvious that Seton Hall needs to beat St. John’s in Newark on Saturday, and I’m not even convinced that that’ll be enough, given the current clip of 2-4 in Quad 1 and résumé numbers still situated in the 50s and 60s. But if they can pull it off, the door will be open, with another chance at UConn (this time on a neutral court) in the Big East tournament. Fingers crossed.
BIG TEN
No big movements in the Big Ten this week, so let’s talk about the awesome hoops being played in the state of Michigan! We were already keenly aware of how good the Wolverines are; we’ve known that since before Thanksgiving, back when Michigan went thermonuclear against each of San Diego State, Auburn, and Gonzaga on consecutive nights. But the fact that they disposed of once-1-seed-hopeful Illinois in Champaign on Friday without breaking much of a sweat is truly terrifying. (How the hell did they lose at home to Wisconsin?) The real development is how good the basketball is getting an hour northwest in East Lansing. Since stumbling against the Badgers in Madison on Feb. 13, Michigan State has reeled off four consecutive Quad 1/2 wins, now sitting at 6th in both SOR and WAB in what looks to be a very real push for a top-2 seed. Heck, a 1 seed may not even be out of the question, if the Spartans were to, say, beat Michigan in Ann Arbor on the final day of the regular season. (The phrase “appointment television” doesn’t do it justice.)
Iowa: I’m running out of words to talk about how disappointingly ordinary Iowa is. For a team that once ranked as high as 15th in KenPom, 16th in T-Rank, and even 12th in NET, the Hawkeyes sure haven’t built a résumé to corroborate those gaudy numbers. It’s been one step forward and one step back for Iowa for about three weeks now, a Wednesday win over Ohio State and Saturday loss to Penn State extending that pattern. I may sound like a broken record at this point, but the fact of the matter is that there isn’t anybody on this team other than Bennett Stirtz who can take over a game with any sort of consistency. Alvaro Folgueiras played great against the Buckeyes, and it was nice to see Cooper Koch come out of hibernation vs. the Nittany Lions. But those are the only significant efforts we’ve seen from either of those guys in the past month. Stirtz is sensational, approaching NBA lottery pick status at this point; the team around him is not. Prove me wrong by beating Michigan or Nebraska this week, or enjoy a 10 seed and an inevitable first-round exit. Your call.
UCLA: Mick Cronin is petitioning the NCAA to play every tournament game in Pauley Pavilion as we speak. It truly is remarkable how the Bruins turn into the ’96 Bulls every time they take to their own hardwood and turn into the world’s biggest pumpkin every time they step foot into an opposing gym. Home game against the best Nebraska team of all time? Piece of cake! Road game against 14-15 Minnesota? Someone call an ambulance! Truly scintillating stuff. Bad news for the Bruins: The NCAA Tournament will not be played entirely within a 15-mile radius of Los Angeles. Good news for the Bruins: I don’t think that it really matters! We’re currently scrounging down on the bubble to find 68 teams worthy of filling up this bracket; we probably don’t need to have an in-depth discussion about UCLA’s postseason merits because of their home/away splits when they’ve beaten each of Purdue, Illinois, and Nebraska while also ranking top-40 in every metric aside from KPI. And if you really are that concerned about the Bruins’ road record, note that they close the year at a lifeless USC. Hey, that’s technically a road game! A 15-minute bus ride across town, sure, but a road game nonetheless!
Ohio State: Well, well, well… Seems like Ohio State might do this thing after all. The Buckeyes have been the butt of many a joke across this column’s prior three editions, trading wins and losses with utmost consistency for the span of a month, all while that magic number in the Quad 1 wins column never rose above zero. (At least, until Northwestern decided that it wanted to be part of the NET top-75 on Feb. 24… Not that it matters since the Wildcats are nowhere close to the at-large radar.) But the jokes can finally come to a merciful rest, as the Buckeyes’ monumental 82-74 victory over Purdue on Sunday signals a Quad 1 triumph—one against a likely protected seed, at that—sure to stay put until Selection Sunday. It sure is a sad state of affairs down on the bubble when one home win is likely enough to clinch Ohio State a tournament berth, but that’s Bubble Watch in 2026 for ya. We sold the soul of this sport to cram as many underwhelming high majors into the postseason as possible long ago! Just don’t go and eff it up at Penn State on Wednesday or against Indiana on Saturday, and I’d feel optimistic about the Buckeyes’ dancing chances with a week to spare.
Indiana: It’s a pretty damning indictment of Indiana that they got essentially the exact same opportunity on Sunday that Ohio State did—a chance at a potentially season-saving Quad 1A win, in their own building, no less—and while the Buckeyes buckled down and got it done, the Hoosiers fell flat on their face to drop to an unholy 4-12 in Quad 1 and 2 games. I mean, you can throw KenPom and NET and all those other quality numbers that somehow remain insistent that Indiana is a top-45 team out the window at this point. No team that is this consistent at losing nearly every time they line up against a tournament-level opponent is going to be included in the field, even in a bubble as bad as this one. Remember that Indiana was left out to dry last year with a 9-13 mark across the top two quadrants; Darian DeVries has somehow outdone Mike Woodson in maintaining the mediocrity that has settled in Bloomington for the last decade. Just baffling stuff from one of college hoops’ once-storied programs. Anyway, consider Saturday’s double-bubble showdown in Columbus an elimination game for IU. If the Hoosiers can’t land the upset, a lengthy run in the Big Ten tournament is the only way out.
USC: I think that we can just about call it on USC. Things have fallen apart in record time down in Los Angeles, as the Trojans have now lost five straight, their once-solid metrics have spoiled into low bubble territory, and—to top it all off—leading scorer Chad Baker-Mazara is no longer part of the program following a yet-to-be-properly-explained falling out, after exiting the second half of Saturday’s loss to Nebraska with an apparent injury. That means that USC is now down its top two pieces (we haven’t forgotten about Rodney Rice), and neither of the remaining regular season games—at Washington, vs. UCLA—feel like they would provide enough girth to a team sheet that features a single victory against the at-large bracket, that being the Trojans’ Jan. 25 win at Wisconsin, in which Baker-Mazara scored 29. They’re worth keeping on the page, just in case the bubble implodes upon itself (a very real possibility), but the probability of USC reaching the big dance is more and more rapidly approaching zero with each passing second. The Muss Bus pulls into the station a tattered, broken mess.
SEC
The Georgia Bulldogs: an NCAA Tournament lock in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2002! Sometimes, a little change of scenery is exactly what everybody needs. Mike White leaving Gainesville for what is almost certainly a worse job in Athens has obviously worked out in Florida’s favor (look at the shiny new championship banner in the O’Dome for proof), but it’s been a good move for White and the Bulldogs, too. White is now a subject of praise instead of constant ire, and the Georgia program is at a place where it can beat the Alabamas and Kentuckys and Auburns of the world with something resembling consistency. It’s a feel-good story for a school that has been far too football-focused to give the basketball team the TLC that it deserves! Now that UGA’s bid is secure, we get to the real question: Can the Bulldogs win their first March Madness game in over two decades? I’ll give ’em a puncher’s chance… so long as they don’t pair up with a horrendously under-seeded Gonzaga team in the first round. Personally, I’d never forgive the selection committee for that one if I were a Georgia fan.
Missouri: Missed opportunity to land a lock in Norman on Tuesday night, but you know what? That’s OK! Missouri has been playing some damn fine basketball as of late, winning six of the last nine, recent victories over Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, and Tennessee all pairing rather nicely with those W’s against Florida and Kentucky to start the new year. (Mizzou’s come a long way since doing absolutely zilch in non-con.) I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on why Missouri’s NET (59th) is so low in comparison to their other metrics, all of which rank 50th or better, but I’m not going to get hung up on the little details when the Tigers have won 10 Quad 1/2 games, five of them in the opposing gym, while never once dropping a contest beyond the NET top-100. Mizzou is in fine position to dance, and even if they get swept by Arkansas in Columbia on Saturday, I’ll still feel the same way. It would take a monstrous amount of bid thieves to put the Tigers’ tournament spot in jeopardy at this point.
Texas: You know what the selection committee loves? Quad 1 wins. You know what Texas has a lot of? Quad 1 wins—seven of ’em, to be exact. That’s the same number that the Longhorns had on Selection Sunday last year, which was enough to nab them a somewhat dubious bid, in spite of a 12-15 Quad 1-3 record and most résumé numbers in the 50s. And while that Q1-3 mark still isn’t super pretty a year later (just 10-11), the metrics are certainly improved, as Texas sits at 39th in SOR and 40th in WAB. That’s a consequence of all four of the Longhorns’ road wins landing in the uppermost quadrant, the most recent coming on Saturday in College Station, as Texas repaid the favor a month and change after the Aggies took the Horns down in Austin. (Gotta love when two teams participate in the mutually beneficial Road Win Exchange Program. What good friends Texas and Texas A&M must be!) I still wouldn’t put Texas any higher than, like, a 9 seed, given that only one of their seven Quad 1 wins lands in Quad 1A. But the Longhorns’ chances of missing March are slim, so long as they go 1-1 against Arkansas and Oklahoma this week. Manage that, and we’re probably good to go.
Texas A&M: Shoutout to Kentucky, whose two most recent losses to Auburn and Texas A&M may very well be the reason that the SEC gets double-digit bids into the tournament. Thank you kindly for your contribution to the cause, Wildcats! But seriously, Tuesday’s triumph was mighty necessary for an Aggies bunch trending dangerously toward the bubble. While road wins over Auburn, Texas, Georgia, and Oklahoma are great, none of those have been against the SEC’s elite, as the Aggies entered Tuesday’s tilt with UK a combined 0-6 vs. the upper portion of the conference standings. It’s for that reason that the résumé metrics have remained rather bearish on A&M (45.0 average), in spite of three victories against Quad 1A opposition. But I think the wins win out in this scenario; I’d have a hard time seeing Texas A&M as anything worse than a mid-10 seed at present moment. Assuming that they take care of LSU in Baton Rouge on Saturday to claim their fifth Quad 1 victory in enemy territory, the Aggies should be free from danger if and when bid thieves come a-knockin’.
Auburn: Hey, Auburn—remember when I said that you absolutely, positively could not lose to Ole Miss at home if you still wanted to make the tournament? Why must you insist on making things difficult? Do you get pleasure out of being a renegade, Auburn? Out of pushing both the selection committee and the brains of bracketologists to their absolute breaking point? Well, I hate to break the news to ya: You’re 16-14 with one game left to play in Tuscaloosa, where a loss probably signals the end of your season. Even if Auburn were to go on a deep run in the SEC tournament—let’s say to the semifinals—you still have to assume another L for at-large purposes. The Tigers, in our hypothetical scenario, would not only be testing the committee’s limits on overall record, they’d also have 16 losses in general. Only two teams have ever earned an at-large being fewer than three games above .500; no team has ever been granted a spot in the dance with more than 15 losses before the tournament begins. This is all a very roundabout way of saying that Auburn must win in Tuscaloosa on Saturday, or that’s all she wrote.
OTHERS
Man. I soooo badly wanted to put Belmont on the Bubble Watch this week, but Illinois State just had to go and ruin a good thing for everyone. The Bruins had long been on the Watch’s radar, just outside of what could be considered a legitimate bubble team, but always in the periphery at the very least. Then Belmont’s case suddenly became very real—the Bruins won their 26th game in 30 tries, their WAB finally rose into positive numbers, and other bubble teams continued to pee down their leg, as they’ve done for much of February. Had Belmont escaped Normal on Sunday, they’d be 6-1 in Quad 2 and almost certainly ranking in the high 30s or low 40s résumé-wise, an enticing choice for an at-large look, given, well… *gestures wildly at the bubble.* But the Redbirds refused to play nice, outscoring the Bruins 29-13 over the final 10 minutes to slam the door shut on Belmont’s tournament hopes. Sigh. At least we’ve still got Arch Madness, and it’s there for the taking now more than ever, given that Drake is finally having a down year. Please get it done, Bruins. A whole host of brackets eager to pencil in an obvious 5-12 upset depends on it.
In much cheerier news, Saint Mary’s makes the rare bubble-to-lock leap after one of the most productive weeks anywhere in the college basketball world. The Gaels got their revenge on Santa Clara on Wednesday, affording the Broncos zero chance to breathe in a second-half strangling, before doing the same to Gonzaga in the final WCC meeting in Moraga between the two rivals. It is admittedly a bit strange locking a team that is just 1-3 in Quad 1—that one victory coming at the regular-season buzzer—but the rest of Saint Mary’s profile reveals that there’s zero chance for the Gaels to be left out: 8-1 in Quad 2, no losses worse than NET #58, and every single metric ranking 25th or better. I still think SMC could easily fall victim to being under-seeded, given that they’ve won just twice outside of Moraga against the NET top-100, but nothing worse than an 8 or a 9, even if they somehow suffered some inexplicable loss in the WCC tournament semis. Nope, the Gaels are locked into the dance and a single-digit seed for the fifth consecutive season. Randy Bennett deserves his flowers every bit as much as Mark Few.
Utah State: Three straight weeks now that I’ve been forced to leave Utah State on the doorstep of lock-dom. Infuriating! But the Aggies have nobody to blame but themselves; losing three of the last four, including an embarrassing 92-65 thrashing at the hands of UNLV on Tuesday night, is not ideal when neither an NCAA Tournament invite nor a Mountain West championship have yet to be secured. And while it’s ultimately unlikely that a team ranking 32nd in the résumé metrics and 37th in the quality metrics, while also being 10-5 in Quad 1/2, ever feels the pressure of missing out on the postseason, I also wouldn’t say that it’s entirely out of the question, given the fact that Utah State hasn’t beaten (or even played) an opponent inside the NET top-40. Closing out the season by going 0-2 against a New Mexico team hungry to get off the bubble and an upset-minded opponent in the Mountain West tournament quarterfinals could make things unnecessarily uneasy in Logan. Remove all doubt by K.O.’ing the Lobos in the Spectrum, if you please.
Saint Louis: OK, so it’s been over two weeks since Saint Louis last looked the part of the world-beaters that they were during their 18-game winning streak. Each of the four games that the Billikens have played in the time since have either seen them take an early double-digit deficit (VCU, Duquesne) or a full-on L (Rhode Island, Dayton). Do I feel a lot less bullish than I did previously on how far the Billikens will be able to advance in March? Perhaps. Am I concerned that they’ll fall out of the bracket entirely? Hell no! May I remind you that Saint Louis is still 26-3, still top-30 in every metric except WAB (probably the worst metric for them to not be top-30 in, unfortunately), and still 7-2 in Quad 1/2 games, with a sweep of second-place VCU in their back pocket. SLU is fine, and so long as they don’t commit atom-bomb-to-résumé by losing as 24.5-point home favorites to Loyola Chicago on Wednesday night, they’ll be locked and loaded at this same time next week. Really, the only point of intrigue is how the Billikens’ sudden vulnerability in conference play makes the potential for an Atlantic 10 bid thief that much more realistic. Bubble teams will be rooting for SLU in Pittsburgh next week harder than they may be rooting for themselves.
Miami (OH): Thirty down, four to go. For just the fifth time since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 in 1985, a team has opened its season with 30 straight victories. Unsurprisingly, each of the prior four made the tournament with room to spare. And it’s for that reason that I’m putting my credibility as a bracketologist on the line and sliding Miami up to safe territory. Look, I know that the RedHawks have played one game above Quad 3 all year. I know that they have the 345th-ranked strength of schedule. I know that BPI, KenPom, and T-Rank all agree that they’re closer to being the 90th-best team in college basketball than the 45th. But here’s the thing: none of that stuff matters when your schedule reads “WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.” The number one most important thing that you can do in college basketball is win, and the RedHawks have done that every single time that they’ve stepped on the court. They’ve won pretty. They’ve won ugly. They’ve won blowouts. They’ve won nailbiters. They’ve won in every single way imaginable, and they’ve done it multiple times over. Doing that is an extraordinary feat, no matter the difficulty of the schedule. The résumé metrics know it (21st in SOR, 30th in WAB), and I promise you that the selection committee knows it. If the RedHawks close this thing out and get to 31-0 by beating Ohio on Friday, they will be an NCAA Tournament lock, regardless of what transpires in the MAC’s postseason. I guarantee it.
Santa Clara: It all comes down to a couple nights in Vegas. Santa Clara is kicking itself for missing its one remaining chance at creating some separation from the bubble, as the Broncos’ bid for a sweep of Saint Mary’s last Wednesday went by the wayside the moment the ball was inbounded to begin the second half. Going 1-3 against the Gaels and Gonzaga might seem at face value like the end of the argument for a third WCC bid, but don’t forget that San Francisco nabbed a 10 seed in 2022 despite going 0-5 in Zags/SMC contests, while also toting a Quad 4 loss, much like the present-day Broncos. This is all to say that Santa Clara is certainly still in this thing; an 8-6 Quad 1/2 record and every metric but BPI landing in the top-45 are the proof, as is the chaos happening elsewhere in Bubbleville on a nightly basis. But it’ll be a sweaty six days for Santa Clara if they can’t win the rubber match against the Gaels in Monday night’s WCC tournament semifinals. Thirty years of waiting for that NCAA Tournament breakthrough are on the line.
New Mexico: Another beneficiary of bubble teams continually shooting themselves in the foot: the New Mexico Lobos! Saturday night’s survival in The Pit against San Diego State was critical for UNM’s tournament dreams, keeping the Lobos from falling behind the Aztecs permanently in the Mountain West pecking order as a victim of a head-to-head sweep. If we’re going just off résumé, then New Mexico is pretty clearly the MWC’s second team of choice: 46th in WAB and 49th in SOR to SDSU’s respective ranks of 56th and 66th, as well as 8-6 in Quad 1/2 to the Aztecs’ 7-9. That said, San Diego State still possesses one all-important piece of data that the Lobos lack: a victory over the league’s leader and lone soon-to-be-lock Utah State. Whereas the Aztecs were able to notch such a result in the comfort of their own arena, the Lobos will be afforded no such luxury after dropping said opportunity via 20-point blowout on Feb. 4. If New Mexico wants the same claim to fame, they’re going to have to pull off the upset in Logan in Saturday’s regular-season finale. A win should secure the Lobos into the field for the time being… but it’s far easier said than done.
VCU: Can VCU actually get into the field without having a single marquee win on its team sheet? For weeks, I’d be operating under the assumption that the Rams’ critical Quad 1 contest at Saint Louis on Feb. 20 was their season; win and they’d be in, lose and they’d be done. They lost, and I only kept VCU around in my Bubble Watch as a courtesy, noting that their metrics were still in an acceptable range for a bubble team, even though the lack of any sort of signature victory on the profile almost certainly meant curtains. Well, as it turns out, the bubble is bad enough that they might not even need it. An overall record of 23-7 and both metric averages residing south of 50 are honestly pretty enticing compared to the other available options, with a mark of 5-7 in Quad 1/2 not even being close to the worst number possessed by a bubble team in that category. (Just ask Indiana.) I ultimately don’t think that anyone in the selection room is going to be pounding the table for a team whose best win is Virginia Tech or maybe South Florida, but I also don’t think that a surprise appearance as the final team in is that far-fetched of an idea, given the state of the rest of the bubble. Pick up another Quad 1 win at Dayton on Friday, and my overall outlook on VCU might just flip to the optimistic side.
San Diego State: Methinks it might be time to shift the focus toward winning the Mountain West tournament in Paradise next week. Of all the teams that have been disappointments in 2025-26, San Diego State has to be near the very top of the list. Only seven teams in D-I returned more minutes than the Aztecs, and virtually zero improvements have been made across those minutes from one season to the next: same excellent defense, same befuddling offense, and same record of 13-6 in conference play with one game remaining. Those attributes were enough to sneak SDSU into Dayton last year, but those Aztecs importantly beat eventual 1 seed Houston on a neutral court in late November. How did these Aztecs fare against 1 seed opposition? Oh, right—they lost to Michigan and Arizona by a combined score of 162-99. Yikes. With their only win over the at-large field being a home victory over Utah State, San Diego State’s streak of five straight NCAA Tournament appearances is in serious peril. Even the right combination of results at the Thomas & Mack Center next week may not be enough to sneak SDSU in without winning the whole MWC tourney outright. Can you lock in and play your best basketball for three consecutive days, Aztecs? It might be your only option.