Bracketology Notes
Who's Out: Texas Tech, William & Mary, USC, Jacksonville, Northern Colorado, Lehigh
Who's In: Arizona State, Charlotte, Florida, E. Tennessee State, Lafayette, Weber State
Last Four In: Louisville, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina
First Four Out: Texas Tech, Minnesota, Virginia Tech, Dayton
Conferences with multiple bids...
ACC - 7 (Duke, Georgia Tech, Clemson, Wake Forest, Florida State, North Carolina, Maryland)
Big East - 7 (Syracuse, Villanova, West Virginia, Georgetown, Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Louisville)
Big 12 - 7 (Kansas, Texas, Kansas State, Baylor, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Texas A & M)
SEC - 6 (Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, Florida)
Big Ten - 4 (Michigan State, Purdue, Wisconsin, Ohio State)
Atlantic - 10 - 4 (Temple, Xavier, Rhode Island, Charlotte)
PAC - 10 - 3 (California, Arizona State, Arizona)
Mountain West - 3 (BYU, New Mexico, UNLV)
West Coast - 2 (Gonzaga, St. Mary's, California)
With Kentucky losing to South Carolina this week, Syracuse takes hold of the #2 overall seed and becomes the #1 seed in the South region, which is a little closer to home than Salt Lake City. William & Mary had a terrible loss to James Madison and USC also had a bad loss to Oregon State causing them to fall out of the bracket.
Texas Tech was removed for a few reasons the most obvious being that they lost this week and the inevitablity of the Big 12 eventually losing a bid as play works out. However, a closer look into the RPI might be a better reason when comparing the Red Raider resume to Charlotte's resume. Texas Tech has a slightly higher overall RPI, but against top 50 RPI teams Charlotte is 3-5 while Texas Tech is 0-6 and that is the biggest reason for the change. To date neither team has a bad loss to a team outside the top 100 of the RPI. Charlotte's marque win over the best Atlantic 10 team (Temple) helped them make a significant jump off of the bubble to one of the last four teams in. They were also helped by Dayton's loss to Rhode Island this week.
The other primary beneficiaries were Florida and Arizona State. Florida has reeled off four wins in a row to claim one of the last spots in the bracket. However, the Gators will need to hold off Tennessee this weekend to remain in the field of 65. Arizona State gets the third PAC 10 bid by default. If the committee would not favor the "Big Six" conferences neither Arizona nor Arizona State would make the cut. It's almost automatic that the "Big Six" conferences will receive at least 3 bids so the PAC 10 schools or in this case the Arizona schools will not be listed among the Last Four teams in the bracket.
The final field will likely have a fifth Big Ten team before the Atlantic 10 receives a fourth team due to the "Big Six" bias. However, it's still hard to make a strong argument for Minnesota over Charlotte, Dayton, and Richmond. Minnesota trails all of the aforementioned Atlantic 10 teams in both RPI and wins. The Golden Gophers also had a very weak non-conference schedule especially when compared to the Dayton Flyers.
For now, since there's another month or so until the tournament, we'll call the rest of the top 100 teams in college basketball "Bubble Teams." All of these teams still have plenty of time to build their resumes for the March Madness tournament, but as of Thursday's games they are all on the outside looking in. South Carolina made a significant jump knocking off top ranked Kentucky, but they still have some work to do, if they want to earn an invitation to the dance.
Bubble Teams
1. Texas Tech
2. Virginia Tech
3. Dayton
4. Richmond
5. Minnesota
6. Wichita State
7. Seton Hall
8. San Diego State
9. Cincinnati
10. Utah State
11. VCU
12. Northwestern
13. Marquette
14. Notre Dame
15. William & Mary
16. Memphis
17. Harvard
18. St. John's
19. Tulsa
20. South Carolina
21. Illinois
22. USC
23. Washington
24. Northeastern
25. UTEP
26. Nevada
27. South Florida
28. Marshall
29. Miami, FL
30. Alabama
31. Boston College
32. Georgia
33. NC State
34. Missouri State
35. Providence
- Jason Aufderhaar - RotoKingdom Staff Writer
