bierce

I can see excusing Miller for missing the tournament last year due to not having Freemantle last year, but he went into the season knowing he'd be out, and he previously made the sweet sixteen without him in 2023, and with Freemantle now back he's at risk of missing it again. Of course, Freemantle did miss 3 games this year including two close losses in q1 games, but even so, Xavier hasn't been all that good this year, even if I think it could still make the tournament. I'm not much of a fan and will be disappointed we didn't go for a younger guy if we hire Miller. I never will understand throwing tons of money at a coach when a bigger share of the money could be used to get better players for a younger and better coach.

I thought about Brownell, too. Clemson has always been at a disadvantage in the ACC, as Barnes knew very well. My biggest concern about Brownell is that until this year his teams couldn't sustain momentum from one year to the next, but maybe he's past that now.

I'll repeat. SC's last 5 home games have all been losses, but all have been by four points or less to ranked teams, except a 5 point OT loss to current #21 Mississippi State.

A long overdue reckoning.

I already mentioned Vandy, Arky, OU, and SMU hosting ranked teams today, but there are some other games with bubble significance TCU @ Cincy. Both need to win out at this point. WVU @ Tech. WVU has bravely hung in there, but it has just one win over NET top 50 since mid January. Wake Forest @ NC State. Wake has just recently managed to climb back in. Loss here kicks it back out. Pitt @ Notre Dame. Pitt is on a lot of First Four out lists. On more second four out. Georgia @ Auburn. Georgia is now on the outside. Would be a huge win, but I don't see it happening. UVa @ UNC. UNC is also on a lot of First Four out lists. George Mason @ VCU. Could a road sweep of VCU and Dayton earn GMU an at large bid. Probably not with a q4 loss to Central Michigan, and with Dayton slipping into fourth place in the conference. Would likely knock VCU out of the likelihood of an at large bid. SDSU @ Utah State. Both having big games following, Utah State @ Boise State, SDSU hosting UNM. BYU @ Arizona. BYU is still looking for a real signature win. Everyone beats Kansas these days. Hawai'i @ UC San Diego. For reasons stated above, I don't think UC SD will get an at large bid if it fails in the conference tournament, but maybe it should.

I thought about Forbes, but he turns 60 next month, has to take care of his stroke victim wife, and has never won a tournament game.

Too little respect for authority?

Dayton lost on the road to Loyola-Chicago. Toast. Fifth q2 loss. A-10 should be a one bid league unless VCU wins out the regular season but loses in the conference tournament, and it might not deserve a bid. Zero wins against NET top 50 teams. Zero q1 wins now that Dayton will drop out of the top 75.

Nova 81-66. Freshman Jordann Dumont had 14 career points entering the game. He attempted 5 shots. He made 4 3s. He was fouled on the 5th attempt, made all 3 free throws, and finished with 15 points. Nowhere to go but downhill from there.

Nova shot 80% bta in the first half, hitting 12 of 15. Up 68-53 with 6:44 to go.

Indiana fans today: "IT WORKED!"

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.