Bubble watch
Northern Iowa clinched the MVC’s automatic spot into the NCAA tourney last weekend. The Panthers will most definitely be a tough matchup for anyone, and will probably earn a 13 seed.
This week will now prove to be another nail-biting sweat bucket for Creighton as they are relegated to hoping conference tournaments around America go like this:
In the ACC it’s Miami, Virginia Tech, Maryland and Boston College that can’t go deep in the ACC tournament. Maryland probably has the best chance as of right now, but anything less than two wins for all of these schools and they are probably all out.
The Big East can finally count out Georgetown after its loss to the Johnnies today. Providence gets an Eastern Washington-esque (we’ll get to that reference in a minute) matchup when they face DePaul Wednesday. That game doesn’t mean anything unless DePaul wins, and I think Providence would have to win at least one more game after DePaul to hurt Creighton.
The Big Ten will get eight teams in, regardless of what happens. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
Oklahoma St. losing to Iowa St. in the Big 12 first round would probably knock out the Cowboys. Some say Kansas St. is a contender, but I think they’d need a run to the Big 12 title game for consideration.
Then there’s the MWC. The loser of UNLV-San Diego St. is probably going to the NIT. The winner isn’t guaranteed anything.
And what about New Mexico? The Bluejays beat New Mexico in November, but some people are already declaring the Lobos as in while leaving out Creighton. Nonsensical! New Mexico has to make a run to the MWC title game to get considered for an at-large — and this could actually benefit the Bluejays as that win only looks better as the Lobos keep winning. What a conundrum.
Only one bubble team from the Pac-10, and who would have thought Arizona would be there after the nice run they put together in the middle portion of its conference schedule. Well, they now need a likely run to the Pac-10 title game to get in.
The SEC has three schools making last minute cases for the NCAA committee. Florida, South Carolina, and now Auburn are all in the mix. Each of these teams will probably need to win two games, which means not all three can logically make it. A potential Florida-Auburn matchup on Friday could be a pseudo play-in game.
Creighton really needs Dayton (A-10) to either win the A-10 tourney, or get to the finals and lose to Xavier. This gives more credibility to the Jays’ win over Dayton, and disallows some random A-10 squad from stealing a bid.
Some argue that Rhode Island is in the at-large conversation, but this is the only mention you’ll see on this page.
Three other mid-majors are in the mix — Saint Mary’s, Creighton, and Utah State.
SMC is interesting, as they decided it would be a good move to make a late-season schedule addition by adding Eastern Washington at home for a game this Friday.
Not only will winning not do anything for the Gaels’ at-large hopes, losing would disintegrate those hopes. This game only makes sense if SMC wins the WCC tourney, to give star Patrick Mills some playing time to get back into some type of regularity after sitting out a month with a wrist injury.
Well, they didn’t win the WCC tourney, and it’s officially a bad idea.
Should Utah St. not win the WAC tourney — and it’ll be on 2-seed Nevada’s home court — it’s hard to leave out the Aggies. A run to the WAC finals would mean 29 wins. Creighton would like to see them bow out in the first round against Fresno or Hawaii.
Let’s not forget Memphis, even though they haven’t lost a CUSA game in about 10 years. They need to keep winning.
There are 34 total at-large bids, but there are really only eight available, assuming non-mentioned lock teams win their respective conference tournaments.
I’ve mentioned 18 teams here, including Creighton, vying for those eight spots.
Some may argue that Illinois St. deserves consideration, but unfortunately, not only did its non-conference schedule (ranked 272nd) kill its RPI, it hurt the entire MVC. Nice job, Mr. Jankovich!
As it is every year, it’ll be a very interesting final few days of the college basketball regular season.