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Bubble Situation
31 Automatic Bids
27 Lock At-Large Spots
7 Open Bubble Spots for Saint Mary’s, Auburn, Arizona, South Carolina, New Mexico, Creighton, San Diego State, USC, Michigan, Minnesota, Penn State, Maryland, UNLV.

Next Four In: San Diego State, Minnesota, Michigan, Dayton
Last Four In: Penn State, Maryland, Creighton, Arizona
Last Four Out: Saint Mary’s, New Mexico, South Carolina, USC
Next Four Out: Auburn, Virginia Tech, UNLV, Providence

Automatic bids: Binghamton, Temple, North Carolina, East Tennessee State, Missouri, Louisville, Portland State, Radford, Michigan State, Cal State Northridge, VCU, Memphis, Cleveland State, Cornell, Siena, Buffalo, Morgan State, Northern Iowa, Utah, Robert Morris, Morehead State, Arizona State, American, LSU, Chattanooga, Stephen F. Austin, Alabama State, North Dakota State, Western Kentucky, Gonzaga, Utah State.

Bids per conference: Big Ten (8), ACC (7), Big East (7), Big 12 (6), Pac-10 (5), Atlantic 10 (3), Mountain West (3), SEC (2), Missouri Valley (2), Horizon (2).

Next update: Sunday morning.
Last update: Sunday afternoon.

Six OTs.  Syracuse 127, Connecticut 117 (6OT). Every once in a while there’s a game where as you’re watching it you just know something amazing is going to happen.  Maybe it’s the bounce the players have on the court or the electricity in the air of the crowd.   Maybe it’s the way a seven-foot-three giant outhustles a guy half his size for a loose ball on the floor, or the  way a shooter comes hard off a curl to drill a 28-footer like it was a floater in the lane.  It’s unclear how you know what you know, but you know that you’re witnessing something special, and you’re not alone – everyone in the joint can sense it, and the fans watching from home feel it too.  There are only a few games in our personal history that we can remember having that sensation.  The Laettner game was one – we realized it when UK started nailing threes all over the place to erase the 12-pt Duke lead in the blink of an eye.  The Arizona-Gonzaga second round game in 2003 was another.  Tonight’s Syracuse-UConn game was the latest.

Games like this, you don’t just watch.  All the senses are engaged.  You breathe them.  You taste them.  Even better, these games breathe you.  They inhale the collective emotions and anxieties of everyone in the building, and like a living organism, emit a beautiful poetry of synaptic orgasmica. The final game time was just shy of four hours (an absurd length for a hoops game), but the second half and OTs felt like about fifteen minutes.  It’s like nestling up with a loved one or stumbling across your favorite movie on TNT.  Time no longer matters.  That’s how you know.  Our Big East correspondent, Rob Dauster, was live-blogging this game from his Blackberry inside MSG tonight, and reading through his posts is like reading the wild scribblings of a man reaching hoops nirvana (and exhaustion).  There was one post that he made that absolutely crystallized this game for everyone tonight – “Every single person is standing in this gym.”  Because that’s what it comes down to: the crowd, the players, the gym – all in unison, all making magic happen.  For what it’s worth, Rob, every single person at home was standing too.

Now let’s get to the game itself.  Obviously, we’ve been saying all year that Syracuse has F4 talent.  The problem has been that they haven’t been able to maximize that talent, but the Orange are now showing signs that they’re starting to figure it out.  This SU team has a swagger that we haven’t seen since the G-Mac days, but the key difference is that Jonny Flynn, Eric Devendorf, Paul Harris, Arinze Onuaku and Andy Rautins are far more talented than McNamara’s last two teams.  We fully expect the Orange to have nothing left in the tank for WVU tomorrow night, but we’d be utterly shocked if this team laid an egg in next week’s NCAAs.  The Cuse plays hard, and we just have a sneaky suspicion this year that they’re going to make some noise in this year’s Tourney (Flynn’s Charles Smith impression notwithstanding).

As for UConn, they had three possessions in the first five OTs to win the game, and each time they dribbled the ball around and forced up some horrible shot.  Even the play that gave them the tie to send it to OT before Devendorf’s absurd three at the end of regulation was off of a broken play.  This is indicative of the same problem that has plagued this group of Huskies since they got to Storrs – they’re just not clutch.  Here we are discussing a group of juniors that spent several weeks at #1 this year, and they’ve yet to win a postseason game.  Not one!  Husky fans are going to get angry at us and declare that they were able to win some meaningless game against Gonzaga or whoever during the regular season… but they’re UConn, an elite program, and they should know better than that.  Legacies are built in March (that’s how Calhoun built his), and this group of players remains suspect until they prove once and for all that they can play championship level basketball in tournament formats.  We’re still waiting on it.

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As part of our ongoing quest to provide you with the best college basketball coverage in the nation, we have enlisted the help of some of the finest team-specific bloggers on the planet to help us. With the NCAA Selection Show coming up on March 15th there are still several teams on the proverbial “bubble”. We figured it might be interesting to see what kind of nonpartisan arguments these bloggers could make for their team deserving a spot in the NCAA tournament. We welcome any discussion of their arguments and praise or criticism of their reasoning in the comment section. If your team is on the “bubble” and you would like to submit something, please contact us at rushthecourt@gmail.com.

Creighton– Submitted by Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball.

Creighton Profile
Record: 26-7
RPI: 40
SOS: 108
Record vs. RPI Top 50: 2-2
Record vs. RPI Top 100: 7-3
Best Wins: New Mexico (Home), Dayton (Home), Northern Iowa (Road), and Illinois State (Home)
Worst Loss: Drake (Home)

After last Saturday’s blowout loss in the Semifinals of the Missouri Valley Conference to Illinois State, Creighton is one of those teams that is sitting squarely on the bubble. I am going to state my case as to why Creighton deserves to go to the NCAA Tournament over other bubble teams.

Creighton was favored to win the Missouri Valley Conference this season, and even though they had a slow conference start at 5-4, they started playing better as a team and reeled off 10 straight wins (including a Bracketbuster win against George Mason) to tie Northern Iowa for a share of the MVC regular season title. The Bluejays extended their winning streak to 11 with a first round win in the MVC Tourney against Wichita State in dramatic fashion, but then turned around and got blasted by Illinois State.

Last impressions are hard to erase from people’s minds and the Illinois State loss will be a hard one for people to forget. However, statistical history is on Creighton’s side. There has never been a team with 26 wins in the RPI top 100 that missed the NCAA Tournament. Also, the MVC regular season champion has made the NCAA tournament the last 15 years.

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College Chalktalk is the RTC correspondent for the Atlantic 10 Conference.

By CCT Staff | March 2, 2009

PLAYER OF THE WEEK

Damian Hollis (Jr.), George Washington

Hollis had a memorable week in what has been a rather forgettable season for the Colonials, averaging 20 points and 14.5 rebounds over two contests.  The junior led GW to two wins, as he scored 25 points and pulled down 13 rebounds against Charlotte and then tallied 15 points and hauled in 16 boards against Richmond.  The junior showed off his hot hand by shooting 57% over the two games, connecting on 12-for-21 from the floor.  Hollis also was efficient from deep, hitting three of his five attempts from behind the arc.

HONORABLE MENTION:   Ahmad Nivins (Sr.), Saint Joseph’s; Kahiem Seawright (Sr.), Rhode Island

(Note: College Chalktalk’s week runs from the previous Monday through Sunday, given the release of ‘This Week in the A-10′ each Monday morning.)

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Welcome back to Boom Goes the Dynamite.  It’s Noon eastern and it’s Saturday, so that means we’re affixed to the couch for the rest of the weekend.  The day gets off to a little bit of a slow start, but keep in mind that RTC Live will be coming to you from Gampel Pavilion at UConn at 2pm, and we’ll be here for the rest of the action today (all 135 games).  Let’s get it going…

12:17pm. We’ve got Villanova – Georgetown on ESPN and Cleveland St. – Butler on ESPN2 right now.  UNC – Georgia Tech is on CBS, and if you’re really misogynistic, Depaul – St. John’s is on ESPN 360.  Here at the RTC compound we’re going to keep an eye on Butler right now because they don’t get much air time, tracking the others.

12:22pm. Has anyone else noticed that we’re only a week until the end of the regular season, but several of these “national” games are complete garbage?  Who’s making these schedules?  There’s no way UNC – Georgia Tech should be a CBS game on Feb. 28 this year.  Later we get the thrilling Oklahoma – Texas Tech game.  Oh well, at least Blake Griffin is due to return today.

12:27pm. So far it’s a brickfest in Philly at the Georgetown-Nova game, while the UNC-Ga Tech game is (shockingly) lacking defense.  Cleveland St. is giving Butler all they want so far – love the Hinkle Fieldhouse.  Where are Coach Dale, Shooter and Jimmy Chitwood?

12:43pm. Yes, Bucky, it is definitely a whiteout there.  Speaking of white, could Gordon Hayward be the second coming of Adam Morrison (w/o the floppy hair and needle injections during games)?  They both have similar builds and games (from our viewpoint), but Hayward has the superior numbers as a frosh (GH: 14/6 on 48%/83%/46% vs. AM: 11/4 on 53%/73%/30%).  Granted AM played 20 mpg his freshman season versus Hayward’s 32 mpg, but still.  Butler takes a six-pt lead into the half.

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Zach Hayes is RTC’s  resident bracketologist.  He’ll regularly be out-scooping, out-thinking and out-shining Lunardi over the next three months.

What changed (just from Wednesday night)-

– Connecticut re-acquainted itself with the #1 overall seed by downing Marquette on the road last night. The way this season is going, that will last about a week. With the loss, Marquette drops to a #4 seed and allows Missouri to move up a line after their dismantling of Kansas State.

– Duke picked up a hard-fought road win at Maryland and stayed put as a #3 seed. Elsewhere in the ACC, Clemson’s shocking home loss to Virginia Tech does two things: drops Clemson to a #4 seed and pushes the suddenly alive Virginia Tech  to a #11 seed.

– South Carolina’s sound defeat of Kentucky puts the Gamecocks in a strong position as a #9 seed while Kentucky drops to a #11. They badly need to beat LSU on Saturday at home.

– Oklahoma State made the biggest jump since Tuesday, climbing from the Last Team Out to a #10 seed mostly due to plenty of bubble movement. Their 32 RPI and 15 SOS are certainly helping, but they need to pick up some quality wins down the stretch to feel safe.

– UNLV falls to Utah last night but stays as a #11 seed due to 4 wins against the RPI top 25, a number no other bubble team can come close to matching.

– Dayton‘s last second loss to Rhode Island drops the Flyers to 4th in the Atlantic 10. The wins against Marquette and Xavier are nice, but Dayton is now firmly on the bubble with Temple and Rhode Island making late runs for bids.

1 Seeds: Connecticut, Pittsburgh, North Carolina, Oklahoma
2 Seeds: Memphis, Louisville, Kansas, Michigan State
3 Seeds: Duke, Villanova, Missouri, Wake Forest
4 Seeds: Marquette, Clemson, Washington, Purdue
5 Seeds: Xavier, LSU, Arizona State, Illinois
6 Seeds: West Virginia, California, UCLA, Florida State
7 Seeds: Syracuse, Utah, Texas, Gonzaga
8 Seeds: Arizona, Minnesota, Butler, Boston College
9 Seeds: Ohio State, BYU, South Carolina, Utah State
10 Seeds: Tennessee, Oklahoma State, Wisconsin, Florida
11 Seeds: Siena, Kentucky, Dayton, UNLV
12 Seeds: Davidson, Creighton, Providence, Virginia Tech
13 Seeds: VCU, Western Kentucky, Penn State, Buffalo
14 Seeds: Weber State, North Dakota State, American, Binghamton
15 Seeds: Radford, Cornell, Robert Morris, Sam Houston State
16 Seeds: Jacksonville, Morgan State, Morehead State, Cal State Northridge, Alabama State

Last Four In: Penn State, Providence, UNLV, Virginia Tech
Last Four Out: Saint Mary’s, San Diego State, Maryland, Miami (FL)
Next Four Out: Southern Cal, Kansas State, Michigan, Cincinnati
Also considered: Notre Dame, Temple, UAB, Rhode Island, Northern Iowa, Texas A&M

College Chalktalk is the RTC correspondent for the Atlantic 10 Conference.

By CCT Staff | February 4, 2009

PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Lavoy Allen (So.), Temple

Allen had perhaps his best week as a collegiate player, averaging 19.5 points and 14.5 rebounds over a two game span. The 6-foot-9 sophomore was sensational from the floor, shooting a sparkling 74% (14-of-19) during the stretch. In his most impressive game of the season, Allen shot 8-of-8 from the floor, scoring 20 points and grabbing 18 rebounds in a win over St. Bonaventure yesterday. The two double-doubles this week were the ninth and tenth of the season for Allen, as he helped lead the Owls to two victories.

HONORABLE MENTION: Kevin Anderson, (So.) Richmond; Ahmad Nivins (Sr.) Saint Joseph’s; Damian Saunders (So.), Duquesne

(Note: College Chalktalk’s week runs from the previous Monday through Sunday, given the release of ‘This Week in the A-10″ each Monday morning.)

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Zach Hayes is RTC’s resident bracketologist.  He’ll regularly be out-scooping, out-thinking and out-shining Lunardi over the next three months.

We kick off this week’s edition of Your Bubble Has Burst with a fitting segment: teams whose bubbles have successfully burst since last Thursday. These teams can begin making NIT/CBI reservations barring an unprecedented conference tournament run:

Note: all computer numbers prior to Tuesday’s games.

Georgetown– The Hoyas had two great opportunities to get right back into the thick of the bubble race by at least splitting two home games against Marquette and Louisville. Instead, they hung around with Marquette and were dismantled by Louisville, dropping both games and sending the spiraling Hoyas to a 5-10 conference record. Their next game: @ Villanova, meaning the best case scenario is 7-11 in the Big East. They’ll have to reach the Big East Tournament final now. Good luck.

Baylor– The disappointing Baylor Bears finally broke a six-game losing streak at home against Texas A&M before falling to Oklahoma State and dropping to 4-8 in the Big 12. Even if they should win 3 out of their next 4, a 7-9 record in the #4 RPI conference won’t be enough to make the field. They’ll have to make a run in Oklahoma City, but how can anyone expect that the way this team plays defense?

Seton Hall– The Pirates had an outside chance to at least put themselves in a position to earn bubble consideration with a late-season run. That went up in flames with their close loss to St. John’s on Sunday night. They have some bad losses out-of-conference and now welcome Pittsburgh to the Prudential Center. The Pirates should be a threat in the NIT.

Northwestern- The schedule gods were not kind to poor Northwestern, who finishes their Big Ten campaign with four out of five on the road. They were thrashed at Minnesota and trips to Purdue and Ohio State still remain. At 5-9 in the conference, their bubble has officially burst.

Mississippi State– How can a team with a 7-5 record in conference make this list? 1) when you’ve lost your last two games to Auburn and Alabama (home win in the middle), 2) you play in this year’s SEC, 3) you have 1 win against the RPI top 50, 4) you have an 84 RPI. The Bulldogs needed to win at Alabama on Saturday and didn’t. There’s no way the committee considers a team with their resume.

Nebraska– Their computer numbers are horrible and they saw their NCAA chances end last night with the home loss to Texas A&M. Simple as that.

On to the conferences:

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1:00pm. Welcome back to another day of BGTD.  There are only 2o games today, but there are five of particular interest that we’ll be tracking.  Villanova @ Syracuse and Illinois @ Ohio St. at 1pm, Wisconsin at Michigan St. @ 3pm, Wake Forest @ Duke at 7:45pm, and Arizona at Arizona St. at 10pm.  Pretty strong day.  Let’s get it started in upstate NY…

1:02pm.  Before we get going, we want to touch on this story from the LA Times yesterday that UCLA has stopped recruiting local 6’11 prep star Renardo Sidney even though by mid-last week the Bruins were still considered the front-runner.  Certainly UCLA could use a big man with guard skills such as those that Sidney has, so what gives?  Color us jaded, but all we could think of when we heard that UCLA so abruptly dropped Sidney was this story written by Gregg Doyel about a Pac-10 recruit who was charging $10k per on-campus visit a few years ago.  Did Sidney finally give UCLA his price?  Was there a package deal that Ben Howland wasn’t willing to stomach?  Not surprisingly, USC (of OJ Mayo, Daniel Hackett and Reggie Bush) is now considered the leader. Let’s see what happens later today when Sidney announces his college choice at 4pm PDT.

1:13pm.  Villanova looks fantastic thus far, with seven scores in eight possessions, including three threes from Dwayne Anderson.  If you’re still reflecting on yesterda’s wild Saturday, here’s Andy Katz’s article focusing on how quickly things can change.

1:23pm. Nova is getting whatever it wants offensively, and the Syracuse crowd still looks asleep (the players aren’t much better).  Uh-oh alert – Clemson is already down double-figures at Georgia Tech – remember the Tigers lost a road game last weekend at bottom-feeder Virginia.

1:45pm. Cuse is coming back here just before the half, now down 2, behind Devendorf, Rautins and Flynn.  Clemson is also back in the game, after getting down by as much as 15 to Ga Tech.  Illinois appears like they’ll hit their total from the Illini’s last game vs. OSU in the first half (up 26-24 with 2:30 left).

2:00pm.  Nova goes into the half with a six-pt lead, 46-40.  Neither one of these teams is playing much defense – both sides are shooting 55% from the field.  The key difference is that Villanova has been able to get to the line eight more times than the home team.   Clemson fought back to tie things up at Georgia Tech, and Xavier is ripping GW 36-20 at halftime.

2:05pm. Seth Davis just got on board the RTC train with the Duke Swoon at halftime of the Syracuse-Nova game, predicting that the Devils will be the highest ranked team to lose early next month.  Not sure if Duke will lose tonight, but there are two things in Wake’s favor…  1) Duke will play man-to-man, which helps Wake penetrate to the rim; and 2) Wake has shown this year a propensity to take ranked teams seriously, home or away.  The Deacs get into trouble when they’re playing teams they don’t respect.

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It’s BracketBuster Saturday, and we’re back with another compelling edition of Boom Goes the Dynamite.  We don’t know how it is where you live today, but it’s rainy and chilly here at the RTC Western Compound, which means it’s a great day for huddling up on the couch, firing up the three tvs, ordering up some pie and watching hoops all day.   There are some pretty strong games on the slate today, starting with Butler v. Davidson early and finishing with BYU v. UNLV late.  Settle in and feel free to make your own observations in the comments section.

12:08pm. Oh no, Steph Curry’s mom is NOT at the Davidson game today!!!!  Who will the cameras show in the crowd?!?!!?  Oh yeah, Dell’s there.  Ok.  Whew.

12:10pm. Wonder how ESPN decides who gets to host these games?  Seems like a pretty big decision considering Butler and Davidson are so tough at home, and the loser could drop a seed line or two based on this game.  Curry doesn’t like quite as quick as normal so far – the ankle is probably a little tender.

12:17pm. Our new uber-intern sent over some interesting news today – looks like Patrick Patterson might go for Kentucky today against Tennesee (coming up at 1pm), and surprise of all surprises, the NCAA is investigating USC with respect to recruiting Daniel Hackett.   His dad is the strength and conditioning coach at USC (which is legal, btw).

12:30pm. There are a couple of other BB games that started at 11am, and the most interesting one is Northeastern at Wright St., which is on ESPN2.  NE is leading by six right now, while CAA sibling ODU is crushing Liberty and Seth Curry.

12:46pm. How many games this year have we watched Davidson only to hear some announcer talking about Steph Curry having an “off” game.  It would be nice if he’d just come out and blow up one of these nationally-televised games.   As it now stands, he’s 1-10 and 0-6 from three.

12:50pm. Interesting stat from Brad Nessler there – that if Curry continued his 30 ppg pace for another season-plus at Davidson, he could conceivably catch Pete Maravich’s all-time scoring total record.  Of course, Pistol Pete did it in three years, but that would be a phenomenal record to approach.  We’ll see if we can figure the math and get back on that.

12:52pm. Early afternoon bubble watch.  Miami is smoking BC in S. Florida at halftime (up 12) and ND is also up 12 at halftime on Providence.  These are both pretty much must-wins, although Notre Dame needs it a little more than Miami.

12:57pm. Somehow three of the top four CAA teams drew road games in the BracketBusters event.  So far, the CAA looks good.  VCU only lost by one at Nevada last night, and Northeastern is finishing off Wright St.  ODU already won, and it’ll be very interesting to see what George Mason can do at Creighton later this evening.

1:02pm. Wow, Doug Gottlieb just eviscerated Jay Williams as to why Georgetown was going to make the tournament.  He must have thought he was back on that motorcycle there.  No inside presence?  Except the best freshman big in the country, Greg Monroe.  We get his point about frontcourt depth, but we’re with Gottlieb here – we think Georgetown makes a run to get to 9-9 in the Big East.

1:06pm. We’ve got some 1pm games starting here, incl. Bruce Pearl’s orange blazer at Kentucky (speaking of bubbles), Buffalo at Vermont on the deuce, and the second half of ND-Providence on ESPN FC.  Oh, and did we mention Gus Johnson is in Lexington today.  Oh yes.

1:11pm. Thanks CBS for showing me a graphic telling me that UK is on a 5-0 run in the last 3:20…  or, to start the game.  Brilliant.

1:18pm. Ok, here’s the deal on Curry catching Maravich.  Curry had 2414 coming into today.  Maravich ended with 3667 pts.  If we assume eight more games this year (three regular season; three SoCon Tourney; two NCAA Tourney), and 35 games next year, that’s 42 games.  He’d have to average 29.84 over that stretch to pass him.  Since he’s averaging 29.0 already this season, this is eminently possible should he stick around another season.  That would be fairly cool to track next season – let’s hope he returns.

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