bierce

South Carolina's last 5 home games: Three point loss to overall #1 seed Auburn. One point loss to projected 1 seed Florida OT loss to current #21 Mississippi State Four point loss to #7 A&M Four point come from ahead loss to #24 Mississippi Will definitely not be an easy game with or without Kaluma.

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.

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.

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.