Want an NCAA Tournament bid? Go ahead. Step up. Get four of your friends with decent jump shots, put down ESPN’s bracketology chart and really participate in the Big Dance. Why not? Slots are available and no bubble team seems to want them.
Entering last week’s conference tournaments, the bubble carrying teams was so large it could have carried them all to this week’s first-round of NCAA games from Anaheim to Raleigh. Instead, it crashed and burned. Ohio State, Arizona State and Oregon lose. New Mexico, Virginia Commonwealth and Maryland flop. Massachusetts chokes like a gagging dog. Arizona looks awful. Florida looks worse.
But while they all sit home today wondering what went wrong, most don’t have to go to the movies tonight and watch their own season documentary: “Doomsday.” They do have reason to watch the NCAA bracket announcement at 4 p.m. Turns out, so many bubble teams lost, they didn’t all fall off the bubble.
The bubble just lowered in elevation.
Today’s No. 1 seeds won’t be a major mystery. Memphis will surely head to Little Rock in the South Regional, UCLA will likely go to Anaheim in the West Regional and North Carolina should go to Raleigh in the East. Today’s Texas-Kansas winner in the Big 12 Tournament championship game should get the top spot in the Midwest.
The real story is on the bubble, which ESPN analyst Dick Vitale said Saturday carries more teams than any in his career. An estimated 29 of the 34 at-large bids are probable locks. How will the committee fill the other five in what may be the most excruciating selection process in years?
The most interesting scenario is in the Pac-10. Two bubble teams, Oregon and Arizona State, lost their first games in the Pac-10 Tournament. But Arizona, which many have penciled into the field of 65, also lost in the quarterfinals. Here’s what the selection committee must decide: Will Arizona (18-14, 8-10 league), with an RPI of 39 and the second-toughest schedule in the country, get taken over Oregon (18-13, 9-9, 58) and/or Arizona State (19-12, 9-9, 83), teams that swept the Wildcats?
Will the selection committee consider that Arizona State on Thursday lost to NCAA shoo-in Southern California in the latest in the long line of awful calls in the Pac-10? Jeff Pendergraph’s apparent tip-in with 16.9 seconds left tied it 57-57, but he was called for an over-the-back foul that replays showed didn’t exist. Davon Jefferson’s two free throws iced it for USC and possibly iced Arizona State’s NCAA hopes.
“It’s hard to swallow,” Sun Devils coach Herb Sendek said.
It may be harder tonight, coach.
Another interesting development is in the Atlantic 10. Massachusetts blew an 18-point second-half lead to Charlotte, and Temple upset Saint Joseph’s in Saturday’s title game. With regular-season champion Xavier a lock, do UMass, Saint Joseph’s and Dayton stay home because of the A-10’s low national profile? Well, its RPI is seventh, one behind the Big Ten.
“People on television are talking about the Big Ten getting four or five teams in . . . but if you look at the RPI of our conference, it’s like one-hundredth of a point less than the Big Ten’s,” Xavier coach Sean Miller said after his team’s semifinal loss to Saint Joseph’s. “If that’s truly the case, and they get five and we get two . . . I don’t know about that.”
Also, whither Florida and Ohio State? Last year’s national championship finalists may be National Invitation Tournament-bound if fuming Florida coach Billy Donovan ever shows his underachieving players a basketball again. Florida will likely become the first defending champion to miss the NCAA Tournament since the 1989 Kansas team, and Ohio State is 46th in the RPI and is 2-10 against top 50 teams.
So get out your bracket, sharpen your pencil and get set for some real madness.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
