Bubble watch

[bierce]

In what has to be the closest frame by frame review of a shot, Oregon's three-pointer as the shot clock was expiring was ruled . . .

Waved off

78-76 Oregon with 51.5 seconds left. 

[bierce]

Announcers were flabbergasted by the overrule, thinking not indisputable evidence.

Iowa came down and missed a bunny.  No review of a possible f1.  Maybe a make up call.  Oregon now trying to run clock and Iowa trying to burn fouls to force ft.

Oregon to the line for 1-1 with 21.9 seconds left. 

[bierce]

NCAA review rules suck.

We just had a 2 minute delay to review whether an Oregon player's foot was out of bounds.  Now we get another 3 minute review to see who touched the ball last before it went out of bounds.

We've played 20 seconds of basketball in 8 minutes without a timeout being called.

Just so Iowa can airball a three and have an attempt to rebound and follow barely hit rim.

Oregon wins.  Iowa is now out of lives, and Oregon is pretty much safe now. 

 

[bierce]

In the sloppiest 3 seconds of basketball by top 20 teams, Alabama guard tries to switch hands with the dribble and missed the ball, only for the Missouri guard who picked it up to immediately lose his own dribble uncontested, giving Bama an uncontested three.  A Missouri breakaway on the ensuing inbound pass and a Missouri steal and breakaway for a couple of ft seals this for Missouri, anyway. 

Not a bubble game, but I thought I'd mention that 3 seconds. 

[bierce]

Arky gave Auburn a game but came up short, 67-60.

UNM is getting run by Boise State in the second half. 

Dennis Gates telling the crowd with 1.5 seconds left to not storm the court.  It didn't.  Good for him. 

[bierce]

Boise State stays alive with an 86-78 home win over UNM, thanks to 42% from the arc and 81% from the line with 15 more fta. 

Utah State won by so many that it doesn't matter. 

Northwestern @ tOSU is the only game that matters tomorrow unless you believe Big West contenders UC San Diego and UC Irvine could get an at-large bid.  I don't.  I also don't think San Fran or Santa Clara can get in with at-large bids.  They all play tomorrow night in games that can only eliminate them. 

[Neil Leininger]

9 hours ago, bierce said:

Boise State stays alive with an 86-78 home win over UNM, thanks to 42% from the arc and 81% from the line with 15 more fta. 

Utah State won by so many that it doesn't matter. 

Northwestern @ tOSU is the only game that matters tomorrow unless you believe Big West contenders UC San Diego and UC Irvine could get an at-large bid.  I don't.  I also don't think San Fran or Santa Clara can get in with at-large bids.  They all play tomorrow night in games that can only eliminate them. 

I think the Big West should get two this season. There is good basketball played in that league.

Edited yesterday at 03:07 PM by Neil Leininger

[bierce]

11 minutes ago, Neil Leininger said:

I think the Big West should get two this season. There is good basketball played in that league.

There are a couple of teams that look good, but as so often is the case with teams in such conferences, they had very few opportunities (and have none left) to get impressive wins but plenty of opportunities to suffer bad losses.  UC San Diego is the best, and it beat Utah State on the road, but it suffered a q4 loss at home to Seattle.  If SDSU was a stronger seed, losing by 5 in on the road in a cross-town game might be a good loss, but SDSU is a 10 seed or so, so it's really not much to brag about.  UC Irvine beat Northern Iowa by 20 but lost to Oregon State by 12 and Duquesne by 16.  All were on the road, but that was bad loss to Duquesne.  Between the two of them, UCSD and UCI have 3 q1 wins, and two of them were because each won on the other's home court. 

These teams profile a lot like Drake and Indiana State from the MVC last year.  Beating each other without much more didn't get the conference more than one bid, and the MVC last year was stronger overall than the BW is this year.

But I don't disagree with you.  The system is rigged to maximize P5 participation in the tournament.  The quad system was just a way to quanjustify it.   

[bierce]

Northwestern started the second half with a 12-1 run and is piling on tOSU in Columbus 54-29 with 11:23 left.

Won't be a good loss for tOSU

Edited 15 hours ago by bierce

[Neil Leininger]

9 minutes ago, bierce said:

Northwestern started the second half with a 12-1 run and is piling on tOSU in Columbus 54-29 with 11:23 left.

Won't be a good loss for tOSU

By in the end of the season they are going to be a Q3 loss? I guess they are still Q1, and their 5-8 record in Q1 games is really saving them right now. Ok, nevermind, their Net is 29, no way they are falling 72 spots.

Edited 15 hours ago by Neil Leininger

[bierce]

52 minutes ago, Neil Leininger said:

By in the end of the season they are going to be a Q3 loss? I guess they are still Q1, and their 5-8 record in Q1 games is really saving them right now. Ok, nevermind, their Net is 29, no way they are falling 72 spots.

Yeah, I doubt they'll even fall out of the top 50, so it should stay as a q1 loss.

Meanwhile, NMSU just won on the road to get some revenge against Ray Harper's Jacksonville State team.  That will probably push NMSU back into the top 160, even if just barely, pushing that win at least temporarily back to a q3.

But the big takeaway from the night is that we might have just pushed past tOSU and Nebraska on many brackets and are approaching the 9 line. 

A new team picked up some votes yesterday--TCU which beat Tech on Tuesday.  TCU is NET 72, 3-7 q1 and 3-4 q2 but it has a couple of winnable q1 road games left as well as a possible q1 home game against Baylor which it beat in Waco earlier.  Worst thing on its record is the 0-3 on neutral floors against Santa Clara, Colo State, and Vandy.  Four point win over Xavier at home was only worthwhile OOC win. 

[bierce]

Only one game of interest tomorrow.  Nova hosts Marquette in what is its last chance to get a second q1 win before the conference tournament.  I think Nova is dead in the water, but it would have a chance if it wins out and gets at least one good win in the BE tournament.

Saturday will be a really big day for the bubble.  Vandy, OU, Arky, and SMU will host ranked teams, and SDSU plays at Utah State, so we could see a lot of movement. 

[Alex Butler]

2 hours ago, bierce said:

Only one game of interest tomorrow.  Nova hosts Marquette in what is its last chance to get a second q1 win before the conference tournament.  I think Nova is dead in the water, but it would have a chance if it wins out and gets at least one good win in the BE tournament.

Saturday will be a really big day for the bubble.  Vandy, OU, Arky, and SMU will host ranked teams, and SDSU plays at Utah State, so we could see a lot of movement. 

Noca’s fall, albeit not super surprising goes to show what a great coach Wright was! Honestly, hope the beat Marquette just because it’s hard for me to understand why Shaka had such a hard time here with all the talent and support he had coming in.
Do we really think OU has much of a chance this year at this point? They just seem to have disappeared, even worse than we have at times. Arkansas on the other hand has played some really tough teams really close, last night for example so I think they’re probably in especially with the Cal bump. Vandy finishing strong helps us, even though we should’ve beaten them. SMU needs to lose just to keep them humble lol.
Would love to see tOSU fade to black. As little as we play them in anything I’ve grown increasingly more hostile towards tOSU. I effectively have them as the OU of the north. No matter what, it’s fun to watch them lose in anything. 

[bierce]

4 minutes ago, Alex Butler said:

Noca’s fall, albeit not super surprising goes to show what a great coach Wright was! Honestly, hope the beat Marquette just because it’s hard for me to understand why Shaka had such a hard time here with all the talent and support he had coming in.
Do we really think OU has much of a chance this year at this point? They just seem to have disappeared, even worse than we have at times. Arkansas on the other hand has played some really tough teams really close, last night for example so I think they’re probably in especially with the Cal bump. Vandy finishing strong helps us, even though we should’ve beaten them. SMU needs to lose just to keep them humble lol.
Would love to see tOSU fade to black. As little as we play them in anything I’ve grown increasingly more hostile towards tOSU. I effectively have them as the OU of the north. No matter what, it’s fun to watch them lose in anything. 

I'm happy for all bubble teams to keep losing, except us of course.  Then we won't be worried at all about selection day.

Arky is playing better than OU or Vandy or Georgia over the 6 games, that is certain. 

[bierce]

And Cal State Northridge just put the stake into the heart of UC Irvine 84-72, giving UCI its third q3 loss.  UCI has nothing but q3 and q4 games left on its schedule unless UC Santa Barbara can stay 135 or under.

That is the problem with being a good team in a mid-major conference.  You can't get home games against P5 schools, so all you have are maybe a couple of road games against middle of the P5 conference schools or a shot in a holiday tournament, wind up with no more than 3 q1 games on your entire schedule (and usually fewer) to go with maybe half a dozen q2s and 20-25 q3s and q4s.  You are bound to lose a q2 game or two and at least 10% of the q3 games, so if you don't win most (and in some cases all) of your q1 games, you'll get skipped by the committee.

[bierce]

tOSU is the new addition to the list of teams on which bracketistoids are split.  Starting to see it left off some brackets that were updated this morning.  It joins OU, Vandy, Arky, and Wake Forest in the teams that are lacking near unanimity in selection.  Georgia/SMU/Xavier are in a group of teams that still get mentioned in a handful of brackets, but they are each on a small minority of brackets, and only Xavier is rising in that group.  TCU is also rising, but most of that is seen by its position on First Four out lists instead of lists of Mr. Not-Appearing-in-this-Film.  I don't think TCU will get there short of it winning out and not embarrassing itself in the Big 12 tournament.  Currently sporting a 2-4 q2 record, too many  bad margin losses, and nothing on the OOC record to give it reason to brag, but it is 4-7 in q1 with 3 q1 games left.  Sweeping bubble WVU and Cincy on the upcoming road trip would give it a huge boost leading to its home game against Baylor.  Would be hard to ignore a team with 7 q1 wins.

[BobInHouston]

I got a bad feeling about Texas at SC-East.

[BobInHouston]

Of course, my last bad feeling was at LSU, and they crushed them. If they play quality defense, that'll help.