bierce

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.

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.

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.

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

I just noticed something. Wade is 10-0 against the Agroids in his coaching career.

It was step 2 in Barnes's path of finding his way out of Austin. Step 1 was the 2010 collapse and the unfortunate comment about not being obsessed with winning championships. Step 3 was losing to Chaminade in Maui, and CBI the season that followed. Step 4 was losing to Butler to finish that season on a 6-10 run.

Miller has had a really good career (and his own run-in with the scandals about pay for play before it became legal), and five second weekends in seven years is hard to ignore, but people should understand Arizona failed to make the tournament only 4 times since 1997, and all the teams that missed were during Miller's 12 years there. He also only had one team play above seed in his career, the 2011 team that beat us in the 4/5 game then went on to trash Duke to make the Elite Eight. OK, if you want you can call winning in the first round as a 9 seed "playing above seed," but since the 9 team wins almost half those games, I don't.

I'll let Tyler speak for himself, but it's hard to argue with Wade's resume of making programs better. He took over LSU after it went 2-16 in the SEC, and he had it winning the regular season title and making the S16 in 2 years. It had been 11 years since McNeese (then McNeese State) had a winning record in conference, and he went 17-1 there in his first year and managed to get former P5 players to go there this year. He didn't really improve VCU during his 2 years there, but he certainly didn't make it worse.

Where's Phil Tolstead when you need him?

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.

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.

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.

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.

I nominate Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer singing a duet cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" with Tom Morello on guitar.

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.

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.

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.

Very cool, but I would have preferred him to work with Pavia's legal team to get another 2 years eligibility.

Vandy lost to Kentucky 82-61. At risk of falling out of the tournament at this point. Tough schedule left with 3 games against ranked teams. 3 of the 5 remaining games are at home, and Vandy is 4-2 at home in conference, so there is hope, but it is 1-6 on the road in conference with the only win being over LSU.

Nebraska lost by 17. Back to the 11 line for them. Cincy nearly had a miracle finish, hitting a three with 8 seconds to go, getting a steal, hitting a 3 with 5 seconds to go, then getting WVU to fumble the inbounds pass (with considerable help but apparently not enough visual evidence to overturn the call on the floor), but it missed an open three off the front of the rim. 62-59 WVU final. TV announcers called it a q1 win for WVU. Yeah, not. Game was in Morgantown.

Nebraska is down 50-27 at the half. It came back from down 18 in the second half against Northwestern, but this is playing with fire. Penn State has only once been outscored by more than 10 at home this year, and that was when was missing its starting center and was outscored by 12 by Minnesota. Niederhauser is not only around today; he has 15 points so far.

Had Hartzell announced his resignation effective May 31, 2025, to retire or take up an entirely different sort of job, then I would agree with you, but Hartzell announced he is leaving to take the same job at another university. Have to worry about divided loyalties and all that. Need someone to perform in the office while the candidate search/vetting process continues for the long-term replacement.

And the erroneous perception that a non-basketball school can money-whip anyone to become second banana to football. Beard? Sure, because he was previously an assistant here and was at a lesser school in the conference (sorry, Tech fans). But guys don't leave places like Arizona or UCLA unless they are kicked out. And May was talking up Michigan NIL over the summer, promising how it would soon lead the Big Ten in NIL for basketball, and saying it wasn't there yet, but it was making rapid strides. I guess so, landing in demand bigs like Goldin and Wolf, adding P5 starter Donaldson from tOSU, 20 mpg Auburn guard Gayle, and big name freshman Sam Walter from Alabama, while hanging on to Burnett and Tschetter and signing several four star out of high school. Here's a wild guess--that took quite a bit more than we spent on Johnson, Kaluma, Pope, and company.

Even better was the comment about how he blames only himself because he would be accused of throwing players under the bus otherwise. Then he described a bunch of things in terms of "I guess we didn't go over" while listing a bunch of things they obviously emphasized in practice for this particular game. He's not someone who interviews politely after a loss or two or four. He had a near meltdown, make it real meltdown, in mid-January.

SDSU won 83-60 last night in a q4 game. Yawn. But it goes to Utah State on Saturday and comes home to face UNM on Tuesday. Big games. A split would guarantee the Aztecs a bid. Lose them both and they'll start to sweat, mainly because they'll be 0-4 against MWC 1 and 2. I still think at that point they would profile stronger than a lot of the teams on the bubble. The neutral site win over Houston gives them a lot of goodwill, and don't laugh when I say beating UC San Diego was a good win. Wednesday's games It's Wednesday, so there are a bunch VCU (35) hosts UMass in a q4 game. Has to win that to keep status as a team to be considered for an at large bid. Nebraska (46) @ PSU (80) Nebraska losing would be like Texas losing @ South Carolina. PSU has played most teams close at home. Vandy (42) @ Kentucky I'm guessing someone is looking for major revenge, but Kentucky will be without Butler, Robinson, and Kriisa. Cincy (45) @ WVU (44) Consider it an elimination game. Cincy because it is on the outside and has few chances left to make a statement (home against Baylor, @ Hou and good luck with the last one). WVU because it is trending way, way wrong and follows this game by going to Tech and then on to Provo to face a hot BYU team. SMU (40) @ Notre Dame (out of contention, but the coach knows how to make microphones suffer) SMU can't lose this, but a win won't help it. Only beating Clemson this weekend can help. NC State @ UNC (50) UNC is nearly dead in the water. 1-10 q1, 5-0 q2, a q3 loss at home to Stanford. Can't lose this. Only 1 q1 game left, hosting Duke in season finale. Only 1 q2 game left, visiting UVa. Everything else is q3 (or q4 like hosting Miami). Oregon @ Iowa One team has to pretty much lose out to miss the tournament, and the other has to pretty much win out to get in. I think you can figure out which is which. Arky (43) @ Auburn (overall 1 seed) Arky might have to wait to the home stand against Missouri and Texas to solidify its position in the field. Also will have a game @ Vandy and host MSU to end the season, so it can still move up. San Jose State @ Utah State (38) Since Tim Miles arrived at SJSU for the 2021-22 season, it has won one game over 4000 feet in conference against a team not named Air Force. USU will next host SDSU before traveling to Boise State and Colorado State to try to cement second place in the conference and a tournament bid. It should be safe right now. It won @ St. Mary's and picked up 3 q2 wins on neutral floors in November. UNM (37) @ Boise State (47) UNM is 3-1 q1 and 8-1 q2. It does have the barely q3 loss @ SJSU and the barely q4 OT loss at home to NMSU, but it should be safe at this point barring a complete collapse, thanks to neutral site wins over UCLA and USC and a home 14 win over VCU. Of coures, UNM does have the advantage of playing at altitude. The fact that the playing surface at The Pit is 37 feet below street level doesn't do anything to offset the fact Albuquerque sits slightly higher than Denver. Boise State is in trouble. It is 0-5 so far against the other top teams in the MWC, so it needs a home win or two here or against Colorado State and SDSU. It probably needs to win all three because losses to BC and in its own home town to Wazzu are pretty bad.