NCAA Tournament Bubble Watch: Kentucky, USC and Michigan State have work to do

NCAA Tournament Bubble Watch: Kentucky, USC and Michigan State have work to do
By Eamonn Brennan
Feb 7, 2023
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If there’s one thing you’ve got to know about Bubble Watch, it’s this: The thing is long. Bubble Watch long, OK? Big column, much long. It’s especially so at this stage of the process, when we cast a relatively wide net and a ton of teams (like, most of the Big 12) aren’t official locks yet, and also we’re kind of riffing and being goofy in spots and maybe taking too long to say the thing we need to say oh wait we’re doing it right now — sorry, what was the point? Long column, that was the point. So let’s skip the thematic introductory slice this week and just jump right in with the housekeeping and get to it, cool? You guys cool with that? Cool.

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(Yes, we wrote the introduction last this week. How could you tell?)

Housekeeping:

• Locks are generally reserved for teams that have zero chance of missing out on the NCAA Tournament, even if they were to lose every game the rest of the way; a lock should mean what it says on the tin. “Should be in” means your team would be pretty safely in if the field was selected today; “work to do” means nothing is guaranteed.

• Those last two categories are pretty flexible this time of year. In March, the differences between them will matter much more.

• NET and schedule numbers are current as of Monday morning. Records are fully up to date.

• As always, a million thanks to Warren Nolan for his amazing website. Doing this without it would is unthinkable. Like the very idea of using the NCAA’s site for this stuff makes us physically ill.


Jim Boeheim may have questions but Miami proved again Monday it’s a good basketball team. (Jasen Vinlove / USA Today)
ACC
Oh my God — is that Brandin Knight’s music?


You’ve seen this by now, undoubtedly, but on a day packed with amazing college basketball, one of the highlights of the day came in two parts:

1) Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim issuing an extremely salty verbal broadside claiming that everyone is now “buying” their teams, but not Syracuse, presumably by way of explanation for why Syracuse isn’t good at basketball anymore, and then 2) Knight, at 12:25 a.m. telling Boeheim to tread very carefully, lest he invite questions about — how shall we put this — Syracuse’s relationship with NCAA prohibitions over the years, which likely includes more than whatever the Orange were formally sanctioned for in 2015, which saw Boeheim punished for violations regarding academic misconduct and extra benefits for more than a decade during his tenure.

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Truly incredible stuff. Boeheim is on fire lately. Everything’s going great! Oh, and he also told Thamel that he doesn’t plan to retire anytime soon, so there should be a steady supply of this sort of comedy into the foreseeable future. Long may he reign!

Elsewhere, we took Wake Forest off the page. The Demon Deacons kind of needed that narrow loss at Duke to be a win last Tuesday; the Notre Dame win Saturday didn’t help much. We’ll revisit if they knock off North Carolina Tuesday night (very possible!) but right now their profile (NET: 69, noncon schedule: 202, 1-6 Quad 1, 3-2 Quad 2, etc.) doesn’t really hold up.

Should be in: Virginia, Duke, Miami
Work to do: NC State, North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, Clemson

Virginia (17-4, 9-3; NET: 15, SOS: 42): The Cavaliers lost at Virginia Tech, which was probably annoying to their fans, because nobody likes to lose to Virginia Tech (or vice versa). But losing to Virginia Tech is a very reasonable thing for a good team to do, and was just the Hoos’ fourth loss of the season. They host NC State and Duke this week; they’re more likely than not to be a lock this time next week.

Duke (17-7, 8-5; NET: 25, SOS: 51): Good news and bad news. Good news: Duke beat North Carolina Saturday night. Whether or not the teams involved are national title contenders or not, this is always the most important thing a Duke team can do, and this one did it. The bad news is that the resonance of that win has a lot more to do with local rivalry pride and emotion than hugely improving the Blue Devils’ likely seed. North Carolina is starting to look like a real bubble team; beating them in your own gym only gets you so far. And then a bit more bad news: Duke got completely run at Miami Monday night, though, again, the impact on their eventual tournament status will be minimal, because losing at Miami is not a big deal for a currently solidly single-digit seed. If you’re a Duke fan, you absolutely take that trade, anyway.

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Miami (19-5, 10-4; NET: 39, SOS: 66): You could actually visibly see Miami’s age Monday night. There is a risk of overstating this case somewhat; Duke was playing on the road against a good team almost exactly 48 hours after the biggest win of their season (and of some of these players’ young careers) to date. A letdown was practically guaranteed. (Betting Miami -3 would have been a very smart thing to do. Maybe we should start betting on sports. Nahhhh.) Still, though, there were plenty of plays where you could just see Miami’s physical development shine through, plays where Duke’s best big guys looked like extremely talented but also kind of Bambi-ish kids while third-year sophomore Norchad Omier — who will be 22 this August — bounced off and around them like the coiled ball of muscle that he is. It is an interesting thing for Jon Scheyer long-term; maybe it makes sense to swerve from building freshman superteams in the era of immediate transfer eligibility. Then again, it hasn’t exactly worked at Kentucky, and elite freshmen, whatever their learning curves, have become Duke’s brand. Much to consider.

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NC State (19-5, 9-4; NET: 42, SOS: 88): Did you guys know N.C. State had already won 19 games? True story. The Wolfpack have undoubtedly gone just slightly under the radar this season, for understandable reasons: They didn’t do anything of note in the nonconference, up to and including playing a remotely challenging schedule (rank: 268), and they’re playing in an aggressively mediocre edition of the ACC, where only Virginia can be regarded as a reliable quality win. Still: Question the quality all you want (still 3-4 in Quadrant 1 and just 2-1 in Quadrant 2), but the quantity is starting to stack up here. Anyway, NC State gets its chance at the biggest marquee victory any ACC team can get Tuesday night — in Charlottesville.

North Carolina (15-8, 7-5; NET: 44, SOS: 29): Technically, there’s still time for North Carolina to run it back. The Tar Heels are a thus far disappointing but clearly talented team somewhat floating through their regular season, not defending well enough, succumbing to ostensibly inferior ACC opposition, losing at Duke in early February, and only narrowly being considered for tournament inclusion. Does that sound familiar? This is almost exactly where they were last season. We all know how that ended. And yet, there is something about this team — the lack of Brady Manek, maybe, for starters; the deterioration of anything resembling direct attacking efficiency in Caleb Love’s game — that feels very unlikely to congeal and turn this season around in quite the same way. If UNC loses at Wake Tuesday night, that’ll be three defeats in a row. We’re as eternally chastened by last season’s run as anyone, but things have to start turning around soon.

Virginia Tech (14-9, 4-8; NET: 50, SOS: 57): Welcome, Hokies friends! A couple of commenters asked us to reconsider Virginia Tech last week, but upon reflection we feel like we were basically right: This resume leaves a lot to be desired, not least of which is just the sheer number of losses here. There’s one bad defeat (at Boston College), but there’s also the matter of a 2-3 Quad 2 record, plus a bad noncon schedule. Losing seven games in a row in the middle of the season hurts, it turns out. Still, Tech has time in its schedule to remedy some of those issues, provided it doesn’t slip up against any of the (considerable!) number of bad teams that also remain on its schedule.

Pittsburgh (16-7, 9-3; NET: 55, SOS: 69): One of the funnier things about Boeheim claiming Pittsburgh “bought” a team? Pittsburgh is just OK! The Panthers aren’t exactly the Western University Dolphins, you know? Their NET is in the mid-50s! They lost at home to Florida State! They’re 4-4 against Quadrant 2; their NCAA Tournament participation is far from guaranteed. Anyway, that likelihood definitely improved last week at UNC, which added another Quadrant 1 win, probably the chippiest win the Panthers will earn all season. Pitt still has a quality victory over Virginia, too. Things are heading in the right direction, but it is funny to see Boeheim talking like this team is some unstoppable juggernaut.

Clemson (18-6, 10-3; NET: 64, SOS: 134): There are a lot of bubble teams with questionable nonconference schedules this season; practically the entire Mountain West bubble could have done itself a favor by adding a few more quality opponents — not that it’s always easy for good teams in smaller conferences to do so. Clemson has much less of an excuse. That noncon SOS (334!) is putrid, and among the reasons why the NET seems so divorced from Clemson’s early impressive performance in the ACC — though last week’s loss at Boston College hinted at some potential regression. None of the predictive metrics like the look of Clemson, really, though strength of record only rates them 52nd. There’s a lot of work to do on all fronts, frankly.


Kansas’ KJ Adams dunks during a big home win over Texas on Monday. (Denny Medley / USA Today)
Big 12
OK, Kansas and Texas are both locks. The Longhorns, oozing maturity and toughness, won a brutal road test at Kansas State Saturday, before traveling to Kansas on Monday and playing relatively well but ultimately falling to the Jayhawks in arguably the toughest gym in college basketball. Such is life in the 2023 Big 12. The Longhorns are very much for real, and obviously so is Kansas, and so even if the Big 12 can put a bunch of losses on you in a short space of time — such are the perils of a league with this many top-20 teams in it, where every night feels like a desperate scrap — none of those losses are going to keep either one of these excellent teams out of the tournament. This league is trending toward six obvious bids and then a couple/three bubbly teams around the margins. We’re not ready to lock all of those obvious at-larges just yet, but we can get KU and UT out of the way, anyway.

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Locks: Kansas, Texas
Should be in: Iowa State, Baylor, TCU, Kansas State
Work to do: West Virginia, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma

Iowa State (16-6, 7-3; NET: 12, SOS: 7): Took another very large step toward lockdom Saturday, with a 15-point win over Kansas in Hilton Coliseum. Had the Cyclones not melted down in the second half at Texas Tech Jan. 30, we would have considered them for a lock this week anyway.

Baylor (17-6, 6-4; NET: 13, SOS: 4): Much like Iowa State, the nature of the Big 12 is keeping us a little scared. It is possible, in this league, for even a very good team to go on some sort of disastrous run that the idea of them as a guaranteed NCAA Tournament team starts to seem downright shaky. Anyway, Baylor’s losses in league play all feel like a very long time ago; the Bears have won seven of their last eight, the only loss coming in a tight game at Texas.

TCU (17-6, 6-4; NET: 17, SOS: 25): Despite the relative surface similarities to Baylor, the Horned Frogs’ bad nonconference schedule strength and loss to Northwestern State are why the Bears would likely be seeded a line (or two?) higher if the bracket was built today. But no matter: Even after Saturday’s loss at Oklahoma State, we’re talking about the difference between being on the No. 3 or No. 4 lines. TCU needs Mike Miles Jr. to get healthy, obviously, but they’re in good shape anyway.

Kansas State (18-5, 6-4; NET: 21, SOS: 19): Here’s the Big 12 thing: You play Kansas and Texas, you play pretty well on at least one of those nights, you end up with two straight losses, and three in your last four, because oh yeah the first in that four-game stretch was a road trip to Iowa State where you lost 80-76. There are a lot of games left to play for the K-States and Baylors and TCUs and Iowa States of the world, and maybe the losses and tough nights add up to a genuine collapse after a while. But more likely all of these teams sew up their tournament bids sooner rather than later. They will cross the threshold shortly here, and probably as a group.

West Virginia (14-9, 3-7; NET: 20, SOS: 6): Here’s where things get really interesting. In terms of pure NET number and most predictive metrics, West Virginia is an obvious tournament team, one that stacks up favorably with the rest of the loaded top two-thirds of this league. The only problem is that the Mountaineers have lost a lot more games than any of those teams. All of those losses have come to good teams — all of them, save one, are in the upper reaches of Quadrant 1, and even that outlier is still a “lower” Quad 1 loss (at Oklahoma Jan. 14). But West Virginia is also one of those weird bubble teams with a really good schedule that has had a ton of opportunities to impress and hasn’t really done it, and has thus ended up with this weird lopsided team sheet full of defeats. We do expect that to change, though. After Saturday’s 93-61 home win over Oklahoma, WVU became the No. 14 team in the country, per KenPom. The Mountaineers are playing really good basketball, and they’ll have a ton of chances to get on the right side of the scoresheet between now and early March — including this week (Iowa State home, Texas away). Projecting forward, we’d bet these guys get into the tournament after all; this team seems a lot better than its record. But this thing would be fascinatingly close if Selection Sunday was today.

Oklahoma State (14-9, 5-5; NET: 35, SOS: 13): The Cowboys are a bit like a poor man’s West Virginia, in that they have the same overall record, play in the same brutal league, have won a couple of additional league games (including over West Virginia itself), but also lost to UCF on a neutral floor and Southern Illinois in Stillwater, which muddies things a bit. West Virginia’s team sheet is weird, but it is very clean; this thing is a bit messier. OK State also didn’t play as tough a nonconference schedule, but the good news is the Cowboys are making up for it by simply existing in the Big 12, where every visit from TCU or Iowa State or Kansas State or whatever is a chance to change the entire trajectory of your season. (Kansas comes to town next Tuesday, but Texas Tech and Iowa State come first.)

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Oklahoma (12-11, 2-8; NET: 61, SOS: 3): We kind of hate to include Oklahoma. They are in the very far fringe of the bubble picture, so know that going in; this team would not be in the bracket right now. And frankly, there are probably better mid-major teams that are not on this page, because — yes — Oklahoma gets a ton more opportunities to play quality opposition because college basketball, like life, isn’t fair. So it goes. Oklahoma did beat Alabama 93-69, though, and it’s hard to totally dismiss a team capable of that, even if they turned around and lost by a combined 43 points to Oklahoma State and West Virginia in their next two games. A loss at Baylor Wednesday night would take them off the page. They could fade entirely very soon, the product of sheer Big 12 attrition. But they’ll always have that blowout of ‘Bama.


Tristen Newton scored 15 points against Georgetown with eight boards and six assists. (Brad Mills / USA Today)
Big East
We’re starting to feel pretty bad for Georgetown. It’s one thing when you’re so bad that you get blown out basically every time you take the court; that’s always a pitiable situation, especially for players who thought they were signing up to play big-time high-major college hoops at a legacy program with a desire to turn things around. But there is something extra demoralizing about losing competitive games every time you take the floor. Since they beat DePaul and finally snapped a record Big East losing streak Jan. 24, the Hoyas have fallen at St. John’s by two, Creighton by 10, and UConn by six. The days of losing by 30 at home to Butler appear to be over, but Patrick Ewing’s guys aren’t reaping any of the tangible benefits — save for gradually gearing up for that Big East tournament championship run, of course. There is always that.

Should be in: Connecticut, Marquette, Creighton, Xavier, Providence
Work to do: Seton Hall

Connecticut (18-6, 7-6; NET: 7, SOS: 36): Non-Brandin Knight-related tweet of the weekend award goes to No Escalators, the UConn account, for their silky trolling of disaffected Huskies fans frustrated by Connecticut’s six-loss slide since Dec. 31:


Hahaha. We did not know this was a thing people said about Dan Hurley before this tweet, but having seen it, we immediately understood it to be a fun new front in the battle raging within the Connecticut fan base. The replies are very funny. Turns out some UConn fans are still not super happy! This is fairly understandable: The Huskies were a few buckets away from losing to a Georgetown team ranked 236th in the NET. It would have been a serious disaster. Getting so close to it isn’t going to make anyone feel better about the team’s long-term trajectory, even if avoiding a horrendous loss is something to be mildly enjoyed. Concerns that the Huskies have figured things out would be better assuaged against Marquette Tuesday night and at Creighton Saturday. We’ll see.

Marquette (19-5, 11-2; NET: 14, SOS: 48): We’re getting close to locking Marquette, which handled its business against Butler Saturday, albeit in a rare display of offensive struggle from the most efficient scoring team in the men’s game. Tyler Kolek was the most productive guy on the floor; he had 13 points and eight assists, and his command of the game got the Golden Eagles over the line. Defensively, too, there are signs of real progress, particularly down the stretch last week against Villanova, which Marquette held without a field goal for the final eight minutes and change. Whether or not it wins Tuesday night at UConn, a win at Georgetown Saturday should probably make Marquette a lock.

Creighton (15-8, 9-3; NET: 16, SOS: 31): Even when they were losing a bunch of games in a row and ostensibly drifting toward the bubble, the Bluejays’ underlying numbers have almost always looked like those of a solidly top-20 team (if not better), and they’ve spent most of the past month living up to that billing. Saturday’s close win over Villanova — which is suddenly giving everybody fits and just not finishing down the stretch, and could be a very interesting team in the conference tournament — was their sixth in a row. We bumped them up to the “should be in line.” At this rate they’ll have zero issue doing so.

Xavier (19-5, 11-2; NET: 24, SOS: 22): Wednesday night’s fraught overtime home win over Providence was pure Big East excellence, and a nice victory for Xavier in the circumstances, those being XU’s first game without leading rebounder and top usage rate-haver Zach Freemantle, who will miss at least four weeks with a foot injury. Getting past an always-tough Friars team without Freemantle was a good sign, as was last weekend’s blowout home win over St. John’s, in which the Musketeers scored 1.32 points per possession and got another well-rounded outing out of senior forward Jerome Hunter, who had nine rebounds against Providence and 10-6-4 and three steals Saturday against the Red Storm. As replacements go, you could do a lot worse.

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Providence (17-6, 9-3; NET: 36, SOS: 52): Shout out to Providence for throwing it back to 2021-22 for one night last week. Remember Providence last year? It was crazy. Every game was close. The Friars somehow won most of them, which was its own strange analytical dynamic, but the main thing was that when Providence was on the TV in the Big East you knew you were guaranteed a game that would come down to the final moments and/or go to at least one overtime and potentially several. It was awesome. Last Wednesday felt like that, right up to the point that Jared Bynum’s last-second corner 3 rimmed out. The defeat had very little impact on PC’s at-large outlook. Really fun game, though.

Seton Hall (14-9, 8-5; NET: 53, SOS: 21): The Big East’s lone real-deal bubble team, but one trending in a marginally good direction. Good news: The Pirates have won three in a row, and seven of their last eight. The bad news: five of those wins have come against Butler, Georgetown and DePaul, with one decent road win at St. John’s. Only Jan. 18’s home win over UConn has meaningfully changed the Hall’s odds of getting into the tournament. That said, the basketball here has improved, there’s a genuine edge about this team that has emerged in league play (and was visible early in the year when the Pirates got out of Rutgers with a 45-43 victory), and there are good opportunities for the Pirates to add actual quality to their resume, starting Wednesday at home against Creighton.


Indiana beat No. 1 Purdue on Saturday. (Trevor Ruszkowski / USA Today)
Big Ten
Ohio State is gone. The collapse has been sustained and also somehow sudden. After all, on Jan. 1, OSU was a top-15 team in KenPom.com’s adjusted efficiency rankings, albeit one with reasonable losses to all of the good teams, save Rutgers, it had played to that point. And this wasn’t just preseason rankings weights thrown in, either; OSU ranked seventh in Bart Torvik’s rankings from the start of the season to the turn of the year, up there with the Purdues and Kansases of the world. Ohio State seemed good!

Since then, the Buckeyes have lost all of their games except one. This resume would look a good deal different if they had closed out a 71-69 loss to Purdue Jan. 5, admittedly, and these are the fine margins. But the trend is bad and the vibes are worse. Last Thursday’s home loss to Wisconsin was ugly, and an unusually frustrated Chris Holtmann lost the run of himself and got ejected for his troubles. Sunday’s loss at Michigan was no more encouraging. Ohio State is now 11-12, and who knows whether this is even rock bottom.

Lock: Purdue
Should be in: Rutgers, Indiana, Illinois
Work to do: Maryland, Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern, Penn State, Wisconsin

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Rutgers (16-7, 8-4; NET: 19, SOS: 46): Rutgers’ offense still isn’t much to look at, but it still guards like mad, and Saturday’s Madison Square Garden-hosted comeback win over Michigan State was a tidy indication: a 61-55 victory played out across 66 possessions, in which Steve Pikiell’s team managed just 19 first-half points and 3-of-16 3-point shooting overall but went ahead and won anyway. This is not sizzling entertainment, but it works for the Scarlet Knights, who remain the only team to beat Purdue in West Lafayette this season (if not the only team to beat them period anymore).

Indiana (16-7, 7-5; NET: 22, SOS: 15): Indeed, on Saturday the Hoosiers joined the most exclusive club in college hoops: Teams Who Beat Purdue. Beyond making the NCAA Tournament last season or bringing together and building a top-20-ish team for this one (despite injuries that might have derailed the year altogether), finally and now regularly beating Purdue — after four years when Indiana didn’t notch a single win over their in-state rival, one Hoosiers fans consider to be their historic little brother — might be the best thing Mike Woodson has accomplished in his two years as Indiana’s coach. IU’s odds of making the tournament were already pretty good, but they took a real leap after Saturday’s win. Huge game.

Illinois (16-7, 7-5; NET: 26, SOS: 38): A tough week for Illinois fans — particularly the members of the Orange Krush — was capped by a road loss at Iowa Saturday, but not before the Iowa athletics administration ended a week of extremely effective rivalry pettiness by actually inviting the Cedar Rapids Boys & Girls Club on to the floor to be honored during a timeout. (Brief background: The Orange Krush pretended to be “a boys and girls club” to try to get discounted group tickets to “invade” the road rivalry game before Iowa admins sussed them out; the Krush kids then issued a Twitter statement lamenting their lost money on bus rentals and made it seem like Iowa was being mean. It did not go as it thought it was going to go.) Illinois fans can console themselves with the fact that a narrow loss at Iowa doesn’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things. The Illini could definitely afford to pick up a couple more quality wins, maybe, but they’re in good at-large shape as it is.

Maryland (16-7, 7-5, NET: 28, SOS: 33): Last week was a very good one for Maryland. Beating Indiana is nice; beating an Indiana team that goes on to upend arguably the best team in the country a few days later is even better. Transitive property and all that. Maryland is the best team in the country now! That’s how it works. OK, obviously not, though an 81-46 win at Minnesota Saturday wasn’t just a product of the Gophers being atrocious; Jahmir Young is keying a serious surge in defensive stoutness that nearly saw the Terps take down Purdue at Purdue before this latest four-game winning streak even started.

Iowa (15-8, 7-5; NET: 33, SOS: 17): You know what’s funny? Iowa fans — and presumably Illinois fans, too — are going to remember this win for a while. Will it remain as long in the memory as, say, then-Iowa assistant Bruce Pearl recording Deon Thomas and submitting the transcript to the NCAA, eventually leading to Thomas missing his freshman year at Illinois and the Illini missing the 1991 NCAA Tournament, et al.? No, probably not. Many Illinois fans still actively root against Pearl to this day, their hate undimmed by the passage of time. But still: The whole Orange Krush/Boys and Girls Club Fiasco of 2023 was very funny, one of those things that enliven good rivalries the way cooking with oil seasons a cast iron pan. They’re why college sports are interesting in the first place. A hearty bravo to all involved.

Michigan State (14-9, 6-6; NET: 45, SOS: 2): Whatever complaints or qualms people have with the idea of team sheet quadrants and horizontal layout, they can occasionally be revealing. Look at Michigan State. The Spartans are the quintessential pretty good team that plays a tough schedule and beats the teams it should beat (mostly, save a home loss to Northwestern and a random no-show at a bad Notre Dame) while losing to the teams it should lose to. This is visibly apparent the second you look at their nitty gritty page. The top portion of Quadrant 1 (home games against teams ranked 1-15, neutral court games against 1-25, and road games against 1-40) is entirely Ls, seven of them: Alabama, Purdue twice, Gonzaga, at Rutgers, at Illinois, at Indiana. Again, other than the loss at Notre Dame, there’s nothing else wrong with this resume, but the consistent averageness of these Spartans is also readily apparent. This schedule was very tough (and should have been even better, as discussed last week), but Tom Izzo’s team hasn’t done a ton to distinguish itself against it.

Northwestern (16-7, 7-5; NET: 52, SOS: 61): Northwestern’s win at Wisconsin Sunday night was a classic of the “we know you’ve watched an unhealthy amount of college basketball this weekend, but here’s another random mid-table Big Ten game to help you fight off those Sunday scaries for a little while longer” genre. Rage, rage against the dying of the weekend! Was this a good game of basketball? Not remotely! But it was a game of basketball, and so we had it on the TV while we did chores and collected a weekend’s worth of small children’s toy detritus up off the floor. Literally anything would do. Of course, NU fans won’t be too bothered by the aesthetics; they needed a win after Thursday’s 17-point home loss to Michigan, and they need to seize on this week’s opportunities (at a reeling but still NET-relevant Ohio State, home against Purdue) to stay on the right side of the bubble at this early date.

Penn State (14-9, 5-7; NET: 58, SOS: 34): The Nittany Lions didn’t lay a glove on Purdue Wednesday, which anyone who saw their previous attempt at the Palestra could have guessed — Penn State especially just has nothing for Zach Edey, and if you can’t at least make Zach Edey feel some form of resistance you have very little chance of stopping that offense altogether. (Purdue scored 80 points in 59 possessions.) But worse was Sunday’s loss at Nebraska. Now, for NET purposes, the Cornhuskers in Lincoln are still a Quadrant 2 defeat, and so it’s not the end of the world, but the trends here aren’t good. PSU is 3-6 in its last nine. Having already fallen to the wrong end of the bubble picture, Micah Shrewsberry’s team can’t sustain this pattern for much longer.

Wisconsin (13-9, 5-7; NET: 77, SOS: 8): If you were going to pick a team most likely to eventually fall off this page, you would do worse than to pick the Badgers. Simply put, this NET number is prohibitive. Teams with rankings approaching the 80s don’t get at-large bids all that often. It could happen, of course, and with a strong schedule and some quality wins on their resume — Marquette away continues to hold this entire team sheet down — the committee has other things it can point at to argue for Wisconsin’s quality. Fair enough. But this isn’t a team playing particularly good basketball this last month or so, either. (Avert your eyes from this offense, which never turns the ball over and thus makes its typically turgid, fruitless possessions the maximum length of time. Shudder.) The Badgers need to turn a significant corner to a) start winning some of these games in the first place and b) start looking like a viable at-large team in terms of raw NET, for whatever that’s worth.


Oregon has a pivotal bubble week ahead of it. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
Pac-12
UCLA bounced back from frustrating come-from-ahead losses at Arizona and USC with very expected but nonetheless mostly impressive home victories over Washington and Washington State, the latter of which featured a Jaime Jaquez Jr. masterclass (24 points, 15 rebounds) and the return of the Bruins’ previously comprehensive defense (52 points allowed in 65 possessions). Washington State is a pretty decent team, too. Ahem. We keep saying this.

Anyway, the Bruins might not have the elite wins at the top end of its resume like some of the teams they will share an eventual seed line with, but they are obviously going to the tournament, so let’s lock them.

We’ve also said farewell to Utah. The Utes could still get back on the page — their No. 56 NET keeps them viable as a conversation piece, anyway — but they have to start reliably winning before it will matter. Thursday’s home loss to Stanford (NET: 114) added a Quadrant 3 defeat to a resume that already included just a 1-5 mark against Q1 and a 2-3 record against Q2.

And so, in just the second week, the Pac-12 Bubble Watch section shrinks by 14 percent. Off to a typically roaring start.

Lock: Arizona, UCLA
Work to do: USC, Oregon, Arizona State

USC (17-6, 9-3; NET: 51, SOS: 55): In keeping with its very handy scheduling conventions, USC had the reverse set of visits from the Washington schools as UCLA, likewise emerging with two home wins. Most of the rest of USC’s regular season is going to be devoted to this sort of bad-loss avoidance. Sure, there are fixtures like Thursday’s game at Oregon, a challenging trip and an important game for the Ducks, but then there are games against Oregon State, Cal, Stanford, even and Colorado, which isn’t terrible but has also lost to Washington (home), UMass, Grambling State, Oregon State and Cal. For us, USC would be pretty safely in the tournament if it started today, but there are enough flaws in this resume (up to and including that glaring home loss to FGCU and the very average nonconference schedule) that make it imperative the Trojans don’t slip up too much en route to the postseason. Beat Arizona at home if you can on March 2, great. But mostly just don’t lose to Cal.

Oregon (14-10, 8-5; NET: 54, SOS: 18): This is the make-or-break week for Oregon. After a 14-10 start to the season, one that has featured a pretty consistent and sustained pattern of defeats to merely average teams — it’s one thing to pull a Creighton and lose five games in a row or whatever; it’s another to lose every third game you play for months the way Oregon has — the Ducks will now host USC and UCLA. In our view, they need to win both. From there, they play Washington, Wazzu, Oregon State, Cal, and Stanford, a bunch of win-column fodder that would make negligible meaningful impact on Oregon’s chances of getting in the field. The Ducks beat Arizona State in Tempe Saturday, and fair enough. But this week is the chance. Oregon needs to take it. Simple as.

Arizona State (16-8, 7-6; NET: 67, SOS: 79): It’s not looking good. Arizona State, which started its season 15-3 with a neutral-court win over Creighton — a win that continues to buckle and perspire from the stress of propping up this entire team sheet — is now 16-8 with five losses in the last six games. Even the lone victory in that spell, 68-57 over Oregon State, was frighteningly unconvincing. Now the Sun Devils have to go to Stanford and Cal, where anything less than two wins would be catastrophic. The good news is there are some real resume opportunities at the tail end of this regular season schedule, trips to Arizona, UCLA and USC. But ASU has been outscored per-possession in league play to date. There is very little reason to think the Sun Devils would be capable of salvaging their season in Tucson, should things come to that.


Kentucky beat Florida on Saturday, but Oscar Tshiebwe struggled. (Michael Hickey / Getty Images)
SEC
Last Tuesday, Alabama beat Vanderbilt 101-44. On Saturday, Tennessee beat Auburn (in basketball) 46-43. College basketball! It takes all kinds.

Lock: Tennessee, Alabama
Should be in: Auburn, Missouri
Work to do: Arkansas, Kentucky, Texas A&M, Florida, Mississippi State

Auburn (17-6, 7-3; NET: 30, SOS: 62): There should be an unofficial Bubble Watch rule that if you hold a team to 46 points in 67 possessions — an average of .69 points per, an incredible dream of a defensive performance, particularly against a national title contender — and somehow don’t win, you’re disqualified from the NCAA Tournament altogether. Alas, we’ll make an exception for Auburn, because Tennessee’s defense is also really good. But still. All season the Tigers have been looking for something approaching a marquee win. Granted they haven’t played many top teams to begin with, and have done a good, mathematically inclined job of avoiding Quadrant 4 opposition without actually playing a tangibly difficult nonconference schedule. But the point is Auburn needed a prove-it victory, and they had it in their hands, and they shot 10-of-28 from 2 and 3-of-27 from 3 in the process of fumbling it. Brutal.

Missouri (17-6, 5-5; NET: 48, SOS: 47): If you only look at Mizzou’s record, top-line numbers and predictive metrics (BPI: 58, KenPom 54, Sagarin 54) you might wonder whether they were closer to being a bubble team. But the numbers don’t tell anything close to the whole story. When Missouri has lost, it has tended to lose by significant margins; Kansas and Alabama both ran the Tigers off the floor in their own building. The predictive metrics don’t love that (nor some of the early-season narrow wins over very bad teams), and understandably so. But Missouri has also not lost very often, period, and opposition-wise none of its defeats are anything close to concerning. Even Saturday’s defeat at Mississippi State falls safely into Quadrant 1. The predictive metrics are only a problem if they presage a meaningful change in results moving forward. There is still time for this to go awry, but right now Missouri’s team sheet looks better than that NET number lets on.

Arkansas (16-7, 5-5; NET: 29, SOS: 60): For all of the comedy thrown at Louisville, Georgetown and California this season, South Carolina has gotten off light. The Gamecocks are ranked 276th in the NET! For any power-conference program, that is pretty atrocious. It is just Season 1 of the Lamont Paris project, of course, and so some growing pains are understandable. (Georgetown is in Year 6 of the Ewing era, by comparison. Year six.) But still: South Carolina’s badness has gone very under the radar this year, at least as far as we can tell. Congrats to the Gamecocks for managing to keep it so quiet, and to Arkansas for getting out of Colonial Life Arena two points away from a debilitating bubble loss Saturday afternoon. Huzzahs all around.

Kentucky (16-7, 7-3; NET: 31, SOS: 40): Kentucky beat Florida 72-67 in Rupp Arena Saturday night, in what felt like a placeholder game to keep people vaguely aware of college basketball until Saint Mary’s and Gonzaga could take the stage at 10:30 p.m. ET. Oscar Tshiebwe had one of his worst games of the season, a four-point, three-turnover, 2-of-14 shooting performance that highlighted part of the reason why Kentucky hasn’t been as good as they were last year: because Big Oscar hasn’t, either. He hasn’t been bad, far from it, and by any other offensive standards he’s been excellent. But basically all of his rate numbers are down year over year. (Free-throw rate is the only area where he’s improved; he’s drawing more fouls, barely.) Meanwhile, his defensive stats are also down, which dovetails with the general impression that he’s looked pretty lost on that end at times, too. Recriminations for why Kentucky finds itself on the bubble this year have been extensive and varied, and Tshiebwe isn’t in the top five on that list. But he hasn’t been as good as he was a year ago, either.

Texas A&M (16-7, 8-2; NET: 40, SOS: 83): After struggling in a road loss at Arkansas last Tuesday, the Aggies bounced back with an 82-57 home win over Georgia, one that felt more representative of the kind of performances they’ve been submitting for most of the past two months. The only lingering concern for us here is this putrid nonconference schedule (rank: 249th), which could come into play if A&M does end up on the bubble after all. (There is also the loss to Wofford.) But given how well the Aggies have been playing, and the general trend here, our feeling is that they’ll end up doing more than enough to get in the field, such that the awful noncon SOS number won’t matter in the end.

Florida (13-10, 6-4; NET: 43, SOS: 14): Florida is back on the bubble, baby! It just didn’t feel the same around here without the Gators in the mix, but last week’s home win over Tennessee put them into the picture. A win at Kentucky would have added to the festivities, but the Wildcats held on. At the very least, Saturday’s defeat was a bit of a national highlight for Colin Castleton, who has quietly been having another excellent season in an excellent career, and who was fantastic in Rupp: 25 points, eight rebounds, five assists, three blocks, one steal. Can he lead them to the tournament? There is a decent chance. The Gators have lost a ton of games already, but almost all of these losses have come against quality opposition; their worst loss is a Quadrant 2 neutral court defeat to Oklahoma. Throw in a good schedule, the opportunities the SEC will continue throw up, and Castleton’s productivity as a baseline for performance, and sure: Florida could get there. Let’s see how Wednesday at Alabama goes.

Mississippi State (15-8, 3-7; NET: 46, SOS: 39): After playing a needlessly bad, cupcake-riddled nonconference schedule highlighted by a win over Marquette and an 11-0 start, and then losing eight of nine in the middle of the year, Mississippi State appears to have things back on track. The last three games have been huge: A home win over TCU in the Big 12/SEC Challenge, a zero-nonsense road win over South Carolina, and then Saturday’s 63-52 home win over Missouri in Starkville. Tailspin averted, at least for now, and if the Bulldogs can turn this into five or six or seven wins in a row — and their next four are LSU (home), Arkansas (away), Kentucky (home) and Ole Miss (away), so it’s doable — then we could be looking at this at-large situation very different in a couple weeks’ time.


Aidan Mahaney introduced himself to college basketball at-large with a big night against Gonzaga. (Neville E. Guard / USA Today)
Others
Farewell, Charleston. Pat Kelsey’s Cougars are having a fantastic season, a fact that didn’t change in the matter of five days last week. But unfortunately, after a questionable Jan. 28 home loss to Hofstra, Charleston slipped up (by a measly point) at Drexel last Thursday, putting two Quadrant 3 defeats on a resume with the No. 62 NET, the 316th-ranked schedule, and no Quadrant 1 wins. Charleston’s win over Virginia Tech looks better after the Hokies knocked off UVa, but not so much so that it makes up for what was already a pretty shaky at-large case.

That leaves Florida Atlantic as the last bona fide mid-major in this section. (Mountain West teams of the size of even Utah State only marginally count.) Recent seasons have seen a much more robust group of small mid-majors here; this is a concerning trend, albeit one that might just be a one-season deal. We’ll see how it goes.

Lock: Houston
Should be in: Saint Mary’s, Gonzaga, San Diego State
Work to do: Florida Atlantic, Boise State, Utah State, Nevada, New Mexico, Memphis

Saint Mary’s (20-4, 10-0; NET: 6, SOS: 91): Extremely fun game Saturday night. Aidan Mahaney might be our new favorite player? These are the two main thoughts we took out of SMC’s win over Gonzaga Saturday night, which we will discuss in more detail in power rankings (because Saint Mary’s is going to be in that list for the foreseeable future), neither of which really impact them here. The resume improved marginally by beating the Zags in Moraga, but the Gaels, thanks mostly to a couple of questionable defeats earlier in the year, but also the nature of the WCC, are not a formal lock just yet.

Gonzaga (18-5, 8-2; NET: 11, SOS: 26): Nor was Gonzaga’s reputation all that harmed by the loss to Saint Mary’s, either. Saint Mary’s is now ranked No. 6 in the NET. Road losses to teams with borderline top-five NET numbers are not really a big deal. Nor did the performance really affect what most people would have thought about the Zags coming in, either: This team is an All-America-level scoring big, Anton Watson doing dirty work, and a bunch of pretty good players who occasionally float a bit too much on the perimeter. Still a very good team, but lacking the kind of punch (outside of Drew Timme, obviously) that gets you over the hump in games like Saturday night’s.

San Diego State (17-5, 9-2; NET: 23, SOS: 43): A large caveat applies to Saturday’s win over Boise State, whose star point guard Marcus Shaver Jr. did not play due to injury. Still, credit the Aztecs: Rather than let Boise (who also had Tyson Degengart stuck on the bench with foul trouble early) hang around and try to figure things out, they jumped all over the Broncos in a swarming Viejas Arena environment, adding another Quadrant 1 win to their resume and further firming up what is already the most solid of the Mountain West at-large cases.

Florida Atlantic (20-2, 12-1; NET: 18, SOS: 171): Florida stocks rose sharply with last week’s win over Tennessee, and so too did the most notable piece of information (a Nov. 14 road win) on NET darling Florida Atlantic’s team sheet. Unfortunately, a day after Florida knocked off Tennessee — which, to be clear, is a very hopeful second-order sort of thing to care about anyway — the Owls took a direct hit in the form of an 86-77 road loss to UAB. Ouch. This team is still 22-2 with just one questionable loss (at UAB is still Quadrant 1, albeit narrowly), but as ever the margin for error for the best team in Conference USA is perilously thin.

Boise State (17-6, 8-3; NET: 27, SOS: 67): As mentioned above, Boise State games without Shaver, who has battled nagging injuries all season, kind of shouldn’t count; he’s obviously a very important player for the Broncos, particularly in the kind of cauldron atmosphere you get for big games in San Diego. The good news is that the committee takes into account injuries, so Boise’s off night at SDSU won’t be the thing that keeps them out of the tournament.

Utah State (18-5, 8-3; NET: 32, SOS: 87): One of the sneakily weirdest team sheets of the 2023 season. Utah State is 0-3 against Quadrant 1 opponents, all of which have come on the road in conference play, which helps explain the 219th-ranked nonconference schedule. They are a combined 15-0 against Quadrants 2 and 3. And they are just 3-2 in Quadrant 4, where they lost to Weber State at home and SMU on a neutral floor. The resume is literally bookended by defeats. Strange, and also why the Aggies need to keep grabbing strong wins in conference play. They got one against New Mexico last week; on Wednesday night they get a crack at San Diego State in Logan. Big game.

Nevada (17-6, 8-3; NET: 34, SOS: 53): Looking to beat San Diego State at home, Shooter? Nevada accomplished that feat no more than a week ago. (Well good for Happy GilMOHMYGOD.) Last Tuesday’s home victory over the Aztecs paired nicely with a similar win over Boise State on Dec. 28, and unlike Utah State, Nevada didn’t lose to the two worst teams on its schedule. (Nevada’s schedule also rates out considerably more difficult, in part because Nevada played Kansas State on a neutral court and at Oregon.) The result is a team squarely on the bubble, but with another chance for a quality win at New Mexico Tuesday night.

New Mexico (18-4, 6-4; NET: 37, SOS: 89): New Mexico won at Saint Mary’s Nov. 30, a win that looked very good a month ago and now looks like one of the most important nonconference victories of the season. Does any ostensible bubble team (though New Mexico is probably a step above the actual bubble right now, give or take) have a more impressive win on its team sheet? If so, we haven’t seen it, and UNM backed it up with a road win at San Diego State, too. Stuff like that sticks out, even when you lose a couple of games elsewhere. It’s immediately impressive. Other than a couple of unfortunate Quadrant 3 defeats, there’s very little to dislike about this resume anyway, even after two losses in three. And the Lobos have a chance to get right against Nevada Tuesday night to boot.

Memphis (17-6, 7-3; NET: 47, SOS: 82): Our first instinct, after like 15 years of professional college basketball writing, was to assume Memphis’s overtime home loss to Tulane Saturday was an abject disaster. For almost the entirety of our career, Tulane has been wretched, to the point of only occasionally being ranked in the top 200 in adjusted efficiency. Mike Dunleavy was the coach from 2017 to 2019 and finished 241st, 171st, and 284rd in his three seasons. Mike Dunleavy was the Tulane coach for three years! You probably didn’t even know that! Anyway, it’s easy to forget that Ron Hunter kind of has the Green Wave going these days: 90th in adjusted efficiency, 91st in the NET, such that losing a home game to this team, while not ideal, is not the deep Quadrant 4 death sentence it used to be.

(Top photo of UCLA’s David Singleton: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Getty Images)