Daniel Evans (@bracketexpert) is RTC’s new resident bracketologist. According to Bracket Matrix, he ranks as one of the top several bracketologists among those who have produced brackets for more than three years, including two seasons with perfect bracket projections. He updates the field daily on his site, Bracketology Expert, and will be producing a weekly bracket update here at RTC on Fridays. RTC Bubble Watch will publish on Sunday nights and Thursday afternoons for the rest of the season.

F0r the last few days of the regular season, here is a whole new look bubble watch:

Bracket Math: Below there are 37 locks along the right column. Basically, that number means that if none of my “locks” clinches an automatic bid for the NCAA Tournament, there are zero at-large spots available. In most years, an average of around six “locks” win automatic bids, meaning there are six un-clinched spots for the NCAA Tournament. Right now, there aren’t any teams in the “should be in” category, or teams that I give a 70% chance or greater of making the Tournament. That means that of the teams below listed in the Bubble Watch, only five can get bids. Remember that bid stealers will potentially shrink that number.

LOCKS: 38
“SHOULD BE INS”: 0
TOTAL: 38 (minus six for projected auto bid winners = 32)
PROJECTED AT-LARGE SPOTS AVAILABLE: 5

BID STEALERS REMAINING:

• ACC (quarterfinals): Boston College (vs. Miami), Maryland (vs. Duke), Florida State (vs. North Carolina)
• Atlantic 10 (quarterfinals): Charlotte (vs. Saint Louis), Saint Joseph’s (vs. VCU), Massachusetts (vs. Temple)
• Big Ten (quarterfinals): Nebraska (vs. Ohio State), Iowa (vs. Michigan State )
• Conference USA (semifinals): Southern Miss/UTEP winner, Tulsa (vs. Memphis)
• Pac-12 (semifinals): Utah (vs. Oregon)
• SEC (quarterfinals): LSU (vs. Florida), Vanderbilt (vs. Kentucky)

THIS UPDATE:  I moved Minnesota to lock status, even with the Gophers’ last second loss to Illinois Thursday. At this point, it is almost impossible to see a team with the Gophers’ victories not getting into the field.

There are currently 20 teams fighting for 5 spots. If you believe (as I do) that Baylor, Louisiana Tech, Akron, and Charlotte are long shots at best (very small chance, if any, to make the field) you can bring the numbers down to 16 teams fighting for 5 spots.

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ACC

LOCKS:

• Virginia (21-10, 11-7; RPI: 67): The Cavaliers have been a strange bubble case all season. They have some of the worst losses a bubble team can have, but they also have six impressive wins. One of those wins is against Duke, who might be the nation’s best team now that Ryan Kelly is back. A win over Sunday against Maryland left the Cavs in position to play their way into the field in the ACC Tournament. They get dangerous North Carolina State on Friday in the ACC quarterfinals. AT-LARGE ODDS: 50%
• Maryland (21-11, 8-10; RPI: 85): Maryland has two great wins (Duke, NC State) and absolutely nothing behind them. Thursday’s win against Wake Forest keeps the Terps alive, but they’ll have to replicate their February win against Duke to get serious at-large love.. AT-LARGE ODDS: 40%

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Huge day on the Circle of March Thursday, as a whole slew of teams were knocked out of contention for the 2013 national championship. What we’re left with are 112 remaining schools on our way to the selection of a final 68 a little over two days from now. As always, we’d like to thank those who are no longer playing for their participation in college basketball this season.

Teams Eliminated From National Title Contention (03.14.13)

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1. The last game of Thursday’s session was perhaps the best. Oklahoma State survived a massive collapse to outlast the desperate Baylor Bears, 74-72. The Cowboys led by as many as 20 points late in the first half yet the Bears chipped away at the lead until they got it to a four-point deficit with 25 seconds left in regulation. BU’s Gary Franklin then tied it seconds later on a four-point play from the corner. After the Cowboys nailed two subsequent free throws, Pierre Jackson, who was all types of awesome in scoring 24 of his 31 points in the second half, missed a potential game-winner at the buzzer. Now what? The good in this is that we’ll get a look at Oklahoma State-Kansas State Version 3.0 as both teams split the regular season series. The bad news is of course that Baylor’s chances at an at-large bid is all but shot at this point. It looks like it’ll be the third time in the Scott Drew era that Baylor will miss the NCAA Tournament a year after making it. 
   
2. We had a comeback attempt to close out the night but there was an actual one much earlier in the day. Iowa State found themselves down 14 early, and even 11 points halfway through the second half, only to take down the Sooners, 73-66. A storyline that won’t get much attention is the exchange senior guard Korie Lucious had with his coach Fred Hoiberg. Hoiberg benched Lucious in the second half mainly due to his poor shooting (0-of-8). After the move, the Cyclones began to make their comeback and during a subsequent timeout, Lucious told Hoiberg to “keep going with these guys” because they had “a great flow going.” It turned out to be the right thing to do and now ISU gets its third shot at nailing down a win vs. Kansas.
3. Jordan Tolbert’s layup with 3:11 left in the first half cut the Kansas lead to two over Texas Tech and signaled to the Jayhawks that they weren’t running away with the game any time soon. And then KU ran away with it. Ben McLemore was doing plenty of Ben McLemore things, scoring 24 points and hitting 8-of-12 from the field, four of those on three-pointers. Bill Self emptied out his bench later in the game and gave us a chance to see some Jayhawks who will make bigger impacts on future teams. Freshmen Anrio Adams went for 11 points in just five minutes and Perry Ellis had his second good game in a row, totaling eight points and seven rebounds. It’s only a matter of time before these guys win a Big 12 title of their own.
4. Kansas State shot only 40% as a team, grabbed the same number of rebounds as Texas, missed eight free throws, and still beat the Horns by 17. Wait, what? It’s just another win in a long line of uninteresting and non-flashy wins for the Wildcats, who now improve to 26-6 on the season. Rodney McGruder poured in an efficient 24 points (10-of-20), eight of those coming on a K-State 10-0 run to give the Wildcats a double digit lead for good. He also pulled down seven rebounds. They’re still under the radar, aren’t they? Give it a week.
5. Why does Marcus Smart wear #33? There is an answer and it further amplifies the kind of person this young man is. The number three has special meaning in his family. His three older brothers all wore three when they played in high school and that includes Smart’s half-brother Todd Westbrook, who was the first to don the number. Westbrook lost his long battle with cancer in 2004 at the age of 33. This surprises no one. You might think I’m going overboard with this but we don’t just need more Marcus Smart like prospects in college basketball, we need more Marcus Smart like people on this planet. I bet John Wooden would’ve loved to coach this kid.

1. Louisville beat Villanova 74-55 in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals last night with an uncharacteristic offensive distribution, scoring almost as many threes (10) as two-point field goals (13). But the Cardinals continued to weather inconsistency on that end of the floor by featuring the most efficient defense in the country. Rick Pitino remarked after the game that the 58 deflections the Cardinals caused against the Wildcats were the most he’d ever recorded since he started tracking the statistic with his teams. Pitino’s team was rewarded with a surprise locker room cameo from college basketball scholar Bill Clinton, who has paid the Cardinals a couple visits in the past, as well.
2. Russ Smith finished with 28 points and hit four of six attempts from beyond the arc last night, but admitted he was distracted and upset all day after learning of the death of his high school coach, Jack Curran. Curran, 82, was a legend in New York City high school basketball, who coached future NBA point guards Kenny Anderson and Kenny Smith during his 55-year tenure at Archbishop Molloy. Smith learned of his mentor’s death yesterday morning, when he performed his ritual visit of his alma mater while back in New York for a game, and said it was “hard to take it all in” on the spot. “He was everything to me, and to my mom, my family. He treated everyone with respect,” Smith continued; “Today was definitely Coach Curran day for me, and it will be the rest of my life.”
3. Notre Dame will appear in its fourth consecutive Big East Tournament semifinals after defeating Marquette 73-65 last night. The Irish came out flat against the Golden Eagles but responded with resurgent play for the latter 30 minutes after Mike Brey asked his team in the huddle if they were scared. Jerian Grant and his teammates responded in a big way for the rest of the game, with Pat Connaughton hitting another six three-pointers to score a team-high 18 points. The comeback led Jack Cooley to make some bold postgame predictions: “I think we’re going to come out strong and handle [Louisville’s] pressure phenomenally. I think we can get to Saturday night and that would mean a lot for me.”
4. Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins laments the demise of the Big East Tournament in a scathing essay on the misaligned priorities of college administrators. “This isn’t collegiate competition we’re watching any more,” Jenkins contends, “It’s thinly veiled money laundering, and it’s ruining the NCAA’s chief commodity, which is our affection.” She places blame on the university presidents, athletic directors and conference officials who she says have colluded to engineer more lucrative arrangements at the expense of the athlete and the fan. Jenkins recalls a press conference in which she posed a question to former Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese about the ethics of vastly uneven revenue among power conference schools, to which he responded, “This isn’t communism.” In the columnist’s words “you live by the sword, you die by the sword.”
5. Georgetown showed off its composure and balance in a 62-43 quarterfinal win over Cincinnati that was at times much closer than the score would indicate. “For the most part, this group doesn’t get rattled,” said John Thompson III, whose team weathered a three-point shooting barrage from the Bearcats that eroded a 15-point lead into a deficit early in the second half. Markel Starks said after the win that his team takes pride in its defensive adjustments, and that players’ enthusiasm for shutting down their assignments is not a new phenomenon: “It’s no formula. Everyone’s talking about our defense now, but we’ve been playing defense all year.” They’ll face a rematch from last weekend with Syracuse in the semifinals today, and will probably be making plenty of adjustments on defense as they try to beat the Orange for the third time this year.

1. Many of the ideas for fake award teams that get created often try to hard for their own good and end up being something completely useless, but one that always seems to point out the right guys is Seth Davis’ Glue Guy Team. Using the same methodology of selecting “players whose value was lost in the shadows” Seth picked Mike Hart, Kyle Anderson, Melvin Ejim, Roosevelt Jones, Nate Lubick, and Travis Releford for this year’s version of the team. We are sure that people can come up with a few other players who probably belong (most likely listed in Seth’s honorable mentions), but we think these are all pretty solid representatives and with a little luck for Iowa State we should be seeing all six (#DausterMath) in the NCAA Tournament.
2. We have been trying to keep the firings as separate points in the Morning Five, but there were just too many yesterday so instead they get grouped together. The list of coaches who were fired yesterday: Chuck Martin from Marist (41-118 overall), Mark Phelps from Drake (77-86 overall), and Billy Taylor from Ball State (84-99 overall). Mike Gillian fared only slightly better as he resigned at Longwood after going 93-214 at the school. While none of these are what we would consider high or even medium-profile jobs they are all jobs at the Division I level, which will probably viewed as stepping stones for coaches at prominent mid-majors who are looking for their break.
3. College football fans have been inundated with the SEC Speed meme, but somehow that dominance has not translated over to the basketball court. In fact, as Pat Forde points out, the level of play and interest in SEC basketball has been appalling. Obviously there are some very good programs (Kentucky, which could be argued is the standard-bearer in the sport, and Florida, which has been one of the top programs in the country for over a decade), but outside of that the quality of play has mostly been bad. On top of that the fans don’t seem to care as evidenced by the poor attendance across the conference. Forde and SEC Commissioner Mike Slive offer a variety of explanations and proposed solutions, but the heart of the issue is cultural and until the schools and fans start caring about basketball as much as they do football they will continue to be a second-tier conference.
4. In the wake of the ongoing Miami debacle, the NCAA brought in Johnathan Duncan to replace Julie Roe Lach, who was the scapegoat for identified as having obtained information improperly during the Miami investigation. Duncan may not have had to campaign publicly to get his job, but he will if he hopes to win the public relations battle/nightmare that he has inherited. Duncan has an 18-month window (the duration of his interim term) to turn things around for an organization that is being increasingly vilified with people beginning to talk about dissolving the institution as it is presently constituted. There are plenty of tougher jobs, but there are not many in sports than the one that Duncan is tasked with.
5. With all the coverage that we have had across the site for the conference tournaments we have tried to stay away from commenting on specific games, but the Richmond meltdown was too ridiculous not to mention here. If you missed the highlights of the game, Richmond led Charlotte 63-60 with 4.7 seconds left when they decided to foul before giving Charlotte a chance to attempt a three-pointer. They were able to execute the first part successfully, but after Pierria Henry made the front end of a one-and-one (now 63-61) Richmond’s Derrick Williams and Charlotte’s William Clayton got tangled up trying to grab the potential rebound and Williams shoved Clayton to the ground resulting in a technical, which resulted in two more free throws. Henry converted the back end of the one-and-one and made both free throws (now they were up 64-63) and still had the ball, which they inbounded and knowing they would get fouled Henry put up a three-point attempt leading to three free throws. The foul call only further incensed Chris Mooney, who picked up two technical fouls for good measure. Henry made four of the seven free throws (now they were up 68-63, which was the final margin). So if you are scoring at home in 1.9 seconds of game time Henry took 11 free throws and made eight of them. This sequence will never be made into a “30 for 30”, but it is probably more surreal than what Reggie Miller pulled in Madison Square Garden.

Andrew Murawa (@amurawa) is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-12 Conference. He filed this report after the second session of the Pac-12 Tournament in Las Vegas on Thursday evening.

The evening pair of quarterfinals began with the expectation that there was no way it could live up to the atmosphere and excitement of the afternoon session. And, while it took some time for all of the fans to filter in from happy hour, by the second half of the first game, we had a really good crowd. And what a game that first one was as Utah stormed back from an eight-point second-half deficit against California, survived a seven-minute scoreless streak and got a miraculous Jarred DuBois three over the outstretched arm of 6’10” David Kravish in the waning moments to force overtime, where they would eventually win the game. Lots of little things to mention from this contest:

• First and foremost, gotta give props to Larry Krystkowiak. Aside from rebuilding his roster from scratch, he’s also done a great job getting incremental improvements out of this team over the course of the season. Remember when this team lost to Stanford by 31? Or lost at the Oregon schools by an average of 14.5 points per game? Now this team is riding a four-game winning streak, shows all the hallmarks of being a well-coached team and is a deserving semifinal entrant. Just wait until the talent level gets to where he wants it.
  

  Larry Krystkowiak Has Done A Great Job Getting A Rebuilding Program Into The Pac-12 Semis

• Utah freshman Jordan Loveridge struggled early, missing seven of his first nine shots, but then hit back-to-back threes to give Utah its first second-half lead, then hit another big three at the start of overtime to extend the Utes’ momentum. He’s had some ups and downs in his first year for the Utes, but he’s a special talent who will eventually, maybe as soon as next year, be an all-conference guy.
• Richard Solomon continues to be one of my favorite/most-frustrating players in the conference. Dude’s got all the talent in the world, but his motor is often lacking. Case in point tonight: He got 37 minutes of action, probably competed really hard for about 20 of those minutes, and wound up with eight points, 11 boards and three steals.
• Cal’s Ricky Kreklow, who has missed 24 of his team’s 31 games this season due to a foot injury, played 18 minutes tonight, his most in a game since November, and knocked down two big threes in the first half that kept the Bears sticking around when little else was going right. A lanky wing with a nice shooting touch, it would be a nice addition if he’s good to go without concern for his foot.

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Joe Dzuback is the RTC correspondent for the Atlantic 10. He’s covering the Atlantic 10 tournament in Brooklyn this week. You can also find his musings online at Villanova by the Numbers or on Twitter @vtbnblog.

Fans at the A-10 Tournament evening session were treated to two hard-fought contests where the winning points were scored with less than five seconds remaining. Saint Joseph’s ended Xavier’s Atlantic 10 run, 58-57, in a game that came down to a full court inbounds pass with 1.4 seconds remaining that ricocheted off of Xavier’s backboard. Isaiah Philmore, trailing the play, found the ball in his hands, but despite a good angle could not convert the shot. He collapsed on the court as time expired. In the other game, Massachusetts ended George Washington’s season with a 77-72 decision that was settled at the free throw line with five seconds left on the clock.

Chris Mack and his Xavier squad ended its A-10 season ended with a heartbreaking loss Thursday evening.

Three Thoughts on Thursday Evening’s Session:

1. I Left a Ticket for the Pope: Saint Joseph’s Phil Martelli is always good for a quote or two or three. Xavier could not counter an extremely physical Saint Joseph’s frontcourt as Mack rotated Isaiah Philmore, Jalen Robinson, Brad Redford and Travis Taylor in an attempt to find an answer to Ron Roberts, C.J. Aiken and especially Halil Kanacevic. The 6’9” forward/center had a terrible first half, but finished strong with three buckets, two coming at critical times. A game that saw 10 ties and 14 lead changes, with Xavier’s eight point lead the largest by either, came down to two free throws with under five seconds to play. Langston converted both to give Saint Joseph’s a one-point lead. Xavier’s full court pass to a flashing Taylor sailed high off the backboard right into Philmore’s waiting arms. The forward’s field goal attempt was wide right and fell off the rim, leaving the Joe’s to play another day. Xavier is no doubt bound for a postseason tournament somewhere, just not the NCAA Tournament. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Johnson is a Big Ten correspondent and RTC columnist. He filed this report from the United Center Thursday night. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

A scorching hot start from Iowa teetered on the verge of a huge blowout. Northwestern fought back to make the final score, 73-59, a respectable season-ending finish. The Hawkeyes will advance to Friday’s quarterfinals to face Michigan State. Here are three quick takes from Iowa’s opening-round win.

Strong defense helped Iowa get past Northwestern in the opening round of the Big Ten Tournament Thursday night (Getty Images).

1. Iowa Is On A Bubble Mission, But Don’t Tell Devyn Marble That. Other than top-level seeding implications, and maybe Indiana’s locational preferences, the most intriguing outfit heading into the Big Ten Tournament this weekend was Iowa. Why? The Hawkeyes exist on the crest of the bubble tipping point. Their postseason fate, more than any other team in Chicago, will be decided based on what they do in the Big Ten Tournament. Beating Northwestern won’t put the Hawkeyes over the top – Iowa still owns that prohibitive 319th-ranked non-conference schedule, a few ugly losses and a short supply of good wins to make up the difference. One more big chip – hello, Michigan State quarterfinal opportunity – might just get Fran McCaffery’s team safely into the field. For his part, McCaffery is satisfied with where his team stands in the at-large picture. “To me, I am very comfortable with our resume right now. I think we deserve to be in,” he said in the postgame press conference. McCaffery even name-checked his team’s impressive “KenPom” rankings (The Hawkeyes own a top-25 efficiency defense and rank 30th overall in Pomeroy’s system) to back up Iowa’s credentials. His case is a valid one; Iowa has been weighed down, perception-wise, by a confluence of poor non-conference scheduling and the national spotlight of the upper reaches of the Big Ten. But the nitty gritty RPI-dominated  facts are the facts that matter – not the reality-based efficiency facts McCaffery referred to – and those facts say this: Iowa probably needs to beat Michigan State tomorrow to make the field of 68.
2. The Hawkeyes Can Really Guard. For the first seven minutes of Thursday night’s game, Northwestern approached its halfcourt offense pretty much the same way it has since enduring a host of crippling injuries and embarking on a brutal eight-game losing streak to close the regular season. The Wildcats ran their Princeton sets to exhaustion, settled for threes and middle-range jump shots, and watched the Hawkeyes jump out to an 11-0 lead. Northwestern would crawl back into striking distance, but after Iowa’s punishing opening stretch, the game was effectively won. Iowa did it through defense; they smothered Northwestern’s unconventional offense by keeping every pass, screen and back cut in front of them, getting into passing lanes, harassing freshman center Alex Olah on the catch and obstructing point guard Dave Sobolewski’s play-making ability. The Hawkeyes destabilized Northwestern’s attack from the tip, and the rest was purely clinical (the Wildcats finished 18-of-49 from the field, and just 7-of-22 from three). With zero individual offensive talent to speak of, Iowa’s disciplined team defense forced Northwestern into bad shot after bad shot – during certain stretches, it almost felt like the Wildcats were throwing the ball around the perimeter because there was nothing else to do, akin to a harmless game of hot potato, with no creative direction or immediate solution to be found. Credit Iowa’s defense. Fran McCaffery’s team reduced the Wildcats’ already hampered offense into a rudderless half court enterprise. Read the rest of this entry »