One of the slower and less compelling Saturdays of the college basketball season — almost certainly the last Saturday that will fail to excite the senses — still produced some significant developments. This was a Saturday on which the season seemed to take one big breath before the frenetic stretch run. What happened during this final gathering of breath? Enough to put a few brand-name teams in trouble… and maintain a large bubble.
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5 – HARVARD’S HAPPINESS
The Ivy League still gives its NCAA tournament bid to the regular-season champion, refusing to join the conference tournament parade. Harvard therefore took a giant step to the Big Dance, rallying late to beat Princeton while Yale lost at home to Columbia. Harvard has already beaten Yale this season, so with a one-game lead in the standings over the Bulldogs, the Crimson know that as long as they can at least split next week’s pair of games against Cornell and Columbia, their March 6 home date against Yale could be the ticket-puncher.
Harvard made a strong run at the Sweet 16 last season and has won round-of-64 games in consecutive seasons. No fourth or fifth seed wants Harvard as the 13 or 12.
Saturday, the Crimson came a lot closer to making a return trip to March Madness.
4 – THE LARGE SEC BUBBLE
The SEC has four teams that could legitimately be seen as on the bubble: LSU, Ole Miss, Georgia, and Texas A&M, in no order of seeding/ranking priority. LSU and Georgia lost earlier in the week, but all four teams won on Saturday. It doesn’t seem likely that six teams will go to the Big Dance from the SEC, but four seems probable, and five is very realistic. All these teams could still play their way in or out of the field, though. Stay tuned.
3 – IOWA STATE-TEXAS, AND A WEEK OF BIG 12 MOOD SWINGS
The Iowa State-Texas game on Saturday mirrored much of the Big 12 from the past week. The Cyclones, who had just one conference road win to their credit before the week began, collected a second straight road triumph to dramatically improve their seeding for March. The pair of wins also brings Iowa State a lot closer to the second seed in the Big 12 tournament. A home-court win over Oklahoma on March 2 would very likely wrap up that second seed. ISU has also played its way above the 5 line in the NCAA tournament. A 4 seed now seems to be ISU’s floor. A 3 seed is the probable ceiling. The Cyclones achieved a lot this week, and Saturday’s win over Texas was the capper.
As for Texas, the Longhorns are now in a lot of trouble.
It seemed that Rick Barnes’s team was okay for the NCAA tournament, and it might still get into the Dance with a 7-11 conference record (that sort of thing doesn’t happen often, but it does happen every now and then: a team making the tournament despite a record four games under .500 in league play). However, Iowa’s recent slide means that Texas’s win over the Hawkeyes is not currently an RPI top 50 win. Texas has just one top-50 win (West Virginia). That’s alarming.
If the Longhorns don’t win one of their next two road games at West Virginia and Kansas, they will very likely need to beat both Baylor and Kansas State to have a decent shot at the NCAAs. They would probably need one more win in the Big 12 tournament to feel really safe.
Beating Iowa State probably could have punched Texas’s ticket. Now, though, the Longhorns face a lot of doubts as they head to West Virginia for a massive midweek matchup on Feb. 24.
As for the Big 12’s mood swings in general:
Oklahoma won two games this week after a bad loss at Kansas State.
Oklahoma State lost twice, falling on Saturday to West Virginia… which won twice this week after spiraling downward.
The Big 12 — save for Kansas leading it and the TCU-Texas Tech combo bringing up the rear — will remain a puzzle for a few more weeks.
2 – UCLA BEGINS TO SWEAT
The UCLA Bruins are on the bubble like a lot of other teams, but the point to appreciate about UCLA’s situation is that the Bruins don’t have quality-win chances in the next two weeks before the Pac-12 tournament in Las Vegas. UCLA hosts the Washington schools and USC. The Bruins cannot move up in the bubble picture with those games. They can only be hurt by a loss. UCLA has to hope that other bubble teams crash and burn in the next two weeks.
Once in the Pac-12 tournament, the Bruins — which would have to play in the first round if they can’t finish in the top four of the league — will definitely need to make the semifinals to have a realistic chance at a Dance card. They will probably need to make the Pac-12 final at this point to feel that they have a better-than-even chance of getting in. They’re in serious trouble — they’re not dead, but their margin of error in their next four games (maybe five) is zero.
Should UCLA miss the tournament, the Bruins would join Florida, Connecticut, Michigan, Tennessee — and possibly Stanford plus Dayton — as Sweet 16 teams from 2014 that will fail to make the 2015 NCAAs. That would make 5 of 16 teams with a chance for as many as seven. That’s an eye-popping possibility.
1 – GONZAGA WINS… WHICH MEANS IT LOSES, AS DOES THE WEST COAST CONFERENCE
The West Coast Conference has risen as high as seventh in various computer rankings and various rating indexes. This is higher than it’s been in the past. However, is this a rise on the part of the WCC — a true elevation in quality — or the product of other conferences falling?
A great way to answer that question is to see if the WCC gets more than one team in the NCAA tournament. Had Saint Mary’s defeated Gonzaga late Saturday night, the WCC’s chances of getting a second team would have improved. SMC either would have been good enough to get in, or BYU would have stood to benefit from possibly beating SMC in the semifinals of the upcoming WCC tournament, gaining more of a boost than it would have in the event of a Gonzaga win.
However, Gonzaga rallied from a 36-19 first-half deficit to defeat Saint Mary’s, which means the Gaels are done as an at-large candidate. They had to have this win in order to put forth a credible at-large portfolio. BYU is now the one WCC team that can get a second at-large bid. The Cougars face Gonzaga next Saturday… but it’s in Spokane, where the Zags haven’t lost this season and rarely lose in general. It’s now likely that Gonzaga will run the table in the WCC regular season. If the Zags win the WCC tournament as well, it’s going to be hard for BYU to make a case, especially if it fails to beat Saint Mary’s in the semis.
If there’s only one NCAA tournament team in the WCC, the conference will find it hard to square such a reality with its higher computer/index ratings. In past seasons, SMC was able to beat Gonzaga, and the league sent multiple teams (usually GU and SMC) to the big show. Gonzaga running the table in the WCC regular season would send the wrong kind of message to the nation about the WCC.
As for Gonzaga itself, why would this be a negative development for the Zags, you ask?
Read this story from 2014 by Kyle Tucker of the Louisville Courier-Journal. The money stat: Since Indiana went unbeaten in 1976, no national champion has won its last 20 games. UCLA won 13 in a row heading into the 1995 tournament, so when the Bruins won all six tournament games, they concluded their title season with a 19-game winning streak. History shows that you don’t carry very long winning streaks through to the national title.
Last year, Florida took a 26-game winning streak into the NCAA tournament.
What would Gonzaga’s winning streak be if it wins its remaining WCC games — regular season and conference tournament combined? 26. Gonzaga won on Saturday night… which means the Zags will likely shoulder an added load of pressure when the Big Dance begins.
Gonzaga loves to win in Moraga, Calif., against Saint Mary’s, a team it rightly considers a rival in the WCC. For that reason, GU coaches and players are very happy right now. In a much larger context, though, history suggests that Gonzaga will need to lose a game in the next few weeks to feel more comfortable about its March prospects.
Speaking of losing a game: The WCC would love to claim another NCAA tournament team as well.
