2021 NCAA Tournament Bubble Watch (2024)

You know what’s fun? Checking Colgate’s NET. We’ve started to do this more and more. On Sunday morning, after we’d corralled the kids and carved out some sitting-down-at-the-computer-to-start-Bubble-Watch time, the first thing we did is navigate our web browser to warrennolan.com/basketball/2021/net-nitty, and the first thing we looked for was that maroon and silver C. Fifteenth. Ahh. Satisfying. Really satisfying. Antonio Banderas laptop gif satisfying.

You know what’s even more fun than that? Monday morning — when Colgate rose to 13th. Thirteenth!

Besides being our favorite fun little divergence, the whole Colgate NET thing is both weird and weirdly instructive. Colgate, while absolutely a quality mid-major team with just one loss this season, is absolutely no one’s idea of a top-20 outfit this season. As of this writing, KenPom.com has the Raiders at 103rd. What’s more, they haven’t even played since Jan. 31; how can their NET number remain so durable, even still ascending, when the team isn’t even playing basketball?

The answer has to do with the math behind the NET, and most likely with this year’s tweaks to the formula, which simplified the system into two-components: “Team Value Index,” which rewards teams for results, particularly away from home, and “efficiency rating,” which sounds like what it is, adjusted for strength of competition. What the NET does not do, like KenPom.com and ESPN’s Basketball Power Index, is consider preseason rankings or past program performance. It is a single-season metric. Which means that with a few highly efficient performances — including a couple of 40-point-plus wins over Boston U and Holy Cross — the Raiders were able to persuade the NET they were as good as, like, Villanova. With no nonconference games allowed in the Patriot League, and no new data to go on, the NET has steadfastly stood by its favorite Hamilton, N.Y., denizens, algorithmically unwavering.

But here’s where it becomes instructive, and actually useful to the process: Colgate is an outlier. It’s funny because it’s weird. Beyond that high-profile, highly strange example, the NET is doing really well.

Look up and down the top 50. Compare the NET to KenPom or BPI or even the AP Top 25, if you’re interested in a wisdom-of-the-crowd take. There’s really not a whole lot to complain about. Drake was 13th last week, before it lost at Valpo, which was notably high, but the Bulldogs were also 15-0. Having dropped that game, they have corrected into the high 30s, which feels much more reasonable. What’s the next super-outlier example? UC Santa Barbara being No. 52? Oh, well. Maybe you have a few quibbles here and there — the Gauchos are pretty good — but nothing truly significant.

By and large, for a metric that craves new data and doesn’t build off the rich data set of past seasons, the NET has stood up pretty well to the challenges of the pandemic, when information about teams is more scattershot and varied than anyone would have ever imagined it would be across any given season when the metric was designed. Last week we outlined all the reasons this has been a weird season. By and large, even in a year when teams are taking off large swaths of the calendar not to play basketball, the NCAA Evaluation Tool is living up to its stated purpose. It’s getting much, much more right than it does wrong, which is much, much more than we would ever have said for the RPI, even in the best of times. (Remember the RPI? Shudder.)

In the meantime, while it does an otherwise commendable job, just as a cool little Easter egg for the real ones out there, the NET is also giving us top-15 Colgate. Wait — top 13-Colgate! Seriously: Long live the NET. This thing rules.

Housekeeping:

• Our usual reminder not to stress about category distinctions until later in the process. Think, like, much later in February, let’s say. We still have a long way to go and a lot of games to get through before we start hammering home locks and hammering out the differences between teams safely in the field and teams that will genuinely make up the bubble. For now, just enjoy the ride.

• Résumé numbers are updated as of Monday night. Records are updated as of Tuesday morning. Massive thanks as ever to Warren Nolan, whose NET nitty-gritty page remains the best place to check Colgate’s NET rating when you wake up, roll over in bed, and pick up your phone for the first time that day.

• Please excuse dumb omissions and (especially) scheduling-related errors. A lot is happening, pretty much all the time. Just reach out, let us know, and we’ll get it fixed.

• If you’d also like to see a full bracket, our colleague Brian Bennett has you covered.

ACC

Duke is not an NCAA Tournament team. This much was already clear before the Blue Devils lost at home to North Carolina the other night. (Which was a rivalry game, in case you guys hadn’t heard. Had you heard this? Those two schools are rivals? Total rivals, bro. Really don’t like each other. Stressing this in the broadcast buildup is extra important when neither team is very good.) The competitive, reasonably well-played loss to UNC didn’t cost Duke a spot on the page; the Blue Devils might not have gotten on anyway. But it did push their chances at a late-season rebound to save a decades-long NCAA Tournament bid streak into pretty dire straights. At 7-7 with no high-quality wins (at Notre Dame is it), a No. 77 NET and two Quadrant 3 losses, it’s going to take like a two-loss finish and/or a win over Virginia for Duke to get close. A few weeks ago, we sort of assumed Duke would get it figured out. It better start soon.

Meanwhile, Georgia Tech held on to a home win over Notre Dame on Saturday, which kept it in the “hey, maybe we’ll take a look at Georgia Tech” category of teams that don’t quite belong on the page either. A home win over Virginia Wednesday would change that.

Should be in: Virginia, Florida State, Virginia Tech
Work to do: Louisville, Clemson, North Carolina, Syracuse

Virginia (13-3, 9-1; NET: 6, SOS: 84): Last week, which featured a 64-57 win at NC State and a 73-66 home win over Pitt, pretty much summed up where Virginia is right now. The Cavaliers are getting the job done, and doing some quality work on both ends, but they’re not exactly destroying people either. That’s basically true of their résumé too. There’s the high-end NET and no bad losses (although San Francisco on a neutral court is semi-close), but a merely so-so nonconference schedule from which UVa’s best win was at home (in overtime) over Kent State. And, given the state of the ACC, there are very few massive win opportunities left (at Florida State next Monday is the only real one). This is a really good team with a merely OK team sheet.

Florida State (10-3, 6-2; NET: 22, SOS: 34): Florida State has been on a virus-related pause since Feb. 1, the day after its loss at Georgia Tech, after which a positive test required the Seminoles’ next three games (against BC, Pitt and Virginia Tech) to be postponed. Ideally, FSU is going to be back on the floor Feb. 13, at home against Wake Forest, but the real upshot is that we have nothing new to add to the Florida State blurb this week. OK, bye!

Virginia Tech (14-4, 8-3; NET: 35, SOS: 77): The Hokies showed just a little bit of frailty last week, following an 11-point loss at Pittsburgh with Saturday’s 80-76 overtime survival of a struggling and banged-up Miami. Tech’s efficiency rankings, including the NET, have always lagged behind their real-world perception as a top-20 team, and you can perhaps see a bit of that gulf manifest on the floor in weeks like the last. At the same time, Tech is 14-4 with a win over Virginia and a neutral-court victory over Villanova; if you’re into big wins, this is the best team sheet in the league.

Louisville (11-4, 6-3; NET: 34, SOS: 48): A couple of weeks ago, we were speaking to Official Friend of the Watch and bona fide Louisville hoops expert Jeff Greer about the Cardinals’ 54-50 loss at Clemson back on Jan. 27. Greer’s contention was that Clemson’s prior three-game losing streak was a real thing, that the Tigers were actually bad, and that Louisville would rue the day it dropped that offensive stinker. The good news for Louisville? After Clemson jumped more than a dozen NET spots last week, that loss no longer looks quite so bad. Still, it would obviously look much better as a win; Louisville’s only Q1 victory came at Pitt, and its loss at Miami (NET: 146) looks pretty ugly on paper, even if the Hurricanes are giving teams problems these days. The bad news about that Clemson defeat is that if Clemson reclaims its early-season mantle near the top of the ACC, the Cards’ opportunity cost will feel even greater.

Clemson (12-5, 6-5; NET: 46, SOS: 10): When the Watch went to press last week, the Tigers were ranked 59th in NET, and the thrust of our blurb was about the sudden and shocking downfall of a once-great defensive team. (That makes it sound like an E! True Hollywood story. It wasn’t quite that dramatic.) Perhaps the comeback is already here? Last week was an undeniably positive one for Brad Brownell’s team, which handled North Carolina, 63-50 (before North Carolina went to Duke and won, which helps), and Syracuse, 78-61, in the matter of five days. The defensive performances looked like December-era Clemson, and two dubs by a combined 31 points gave the Tigers a much-needed NET spike, to the point where this whole proposition immediately looks like a much safer bet.

North Carolina (12-6, 7-4; NET: 50, SOS: 87): Really nice win for North Carolina on Saturday night. For all the overheated UNC-Duke rhetoric, it is hard to dispute that the rivalry does bring the best out of both teams, relative to each’s personnel, and Saturday might have been the best, or at least the most cohesive, UNC has looked offensively all season. It helps when you go 10-of-15 from 3, especially when you average 32 percent from deep. Unfortunately, Duke is also 7-7, which makes the win more of a “yeah, you probably should win this game if you want to go to the tournament” type of deal. Also unfortunately, at least a couple of UNC players appear to have celebrated the victory in overly jubilant and irresponsible fashion. On Monday morning, the Daily Tar Heel posted a video of Armando Bacot and Day’Ron Sharpe partying maskless after UNC-Duke. On Monday night, two hours before tip-off in Miami, the ACC announced the game was postponed following “a meeting of personnel from both schools, who mutual ly concluded the game could not move forward today.” The Watch has zero interest in chastising young people for occasionally being slightly irresponsible, because so were we. One assumes Roy Williams, however, will feel somewhat differently.

Syracuse (10-6, 4-5; NET: 54, SOS: 73): We really wrestled with whether we wanted to keep Syracuse on the page today. “Why are you making that face,” our daughter asked. “Because I can’t decide what to do with Syracuse,” we said. “Hmm,” she said, before she went back to playing with her Bluey toy. Hmm indeed. We kept the Orange on, as you can see, but Saturday’s blowout loss at Clemson made SU 1-5 on the road and 0-5 against Q1 which, combined with a 1-1 record in Quadrant 2, isn’t a whole lot to work with. No, Syracuse has no bad losses (unlike Georgia Tech, which has two of them), but that’s not an exciting argument given the lack of everything else here. A loss Tuesday at NC State and that might be that.

Big 12

Just a(nother) reminder: For all of our talk about Gonzaga as a historically great team, Baylor remains No. 1 in NET and No. 1 in KenPom.com’s adjusted efficiency. Those two teams are well out in front of everyone else, sure, but it does bear mentioning that Baylor might be marginally better, whenever it is the Bears get back on the floor.

In any case, the Big 12 is a weird Bubble Watch league, which is to say that right now nobody is on the bubble. If things continue apace, all of the teams you see below should make the tourney without much of an issue — and none of the ones you don’t see will get close.

Locks: Baylor
Should be in: Texas Tech, Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kansas, Oklahoma State

Texas Tech (14-5, 6-4; NET: 12, SOS: 62): The temptation was to write the Red Raiders have put a nice little spell together the last couple of weeks, now that they’ve won three games in a row, but really the nice spell extends for most of the league season. Even when Tech has lost games, it has only barely done so. The loss to Kansas was by a point. The loss to Oklahoma State was in OT. The loss to Baylor was by eight points, which is about as close as any team can reasonably expect to play Baylor. And the road loss to West Virginia was an 88-87 shootout the Mountaineers won in the closing seconds. So, yes, Tech has put three wins together, but as a rule, the Red Raiders, if flawed in certain areas, have been really good overall. When results haven’t followed, the margins have been narrow.

Texas (11-5, 5-4; NET: 18, SOS: 3): The Longhorns have spent most of the season ranked in the top 10 (and occasionally in the top five) in adjusted efficiency, a status that stayed affixed pretty much until last week. Three straight defeats have taken them down a peg, and their NET number reflects as much. Still, like skateboarding, losing to Baylor is not a crime. Nor is losing at Oklahoma State in double overtime. Nor is losing by a point to Oklahoma shorthanded and without your coach. It has been a rough little patch for UT, but none of these losses are remotely bad in their own right. Now, if they were to lose at Kansas State on Tuesday night …

Oklahoma (12-5, 7-4; NET: 19, SOS: 41): Saturday’s win over Iowa State was very Oklahoma. The Cyclones are struggling, the type of team other programs having a similar level of success as Oklahoma would probably try to blow out. Not that OU didn’t try, just that that’s not really how Oklahoma operates, particularly this year. Everything is about collective solidity, and everything follows from a certain sort of Krugerian steadiness — not too high, not too low, do your job, don’t foul, don’t turn the ball over, beat Iowa State by seven points without ever leading by a bunch or looking all that worried about the whole thing, rinse, repeat.

West Virginia (13-5, 6-3; NET: 20, SOS: 13): Miles McBride: really good at basketball. Who knew? OK, we did — he has been a frequent topic in the power rankings this season — but McBride did have himself something of a national coming-out party Saturday. Thirty-one points, seven assists, seven rebounds and three steals in a 91-79 win over Kansas will do that, you know? Anyway, McBride remains a huge reason why what was a rough-and-tumble team that relied almost entirely on offensive rebounds and free throws last season has become much more balanced offensively. This is now a better 3-point shooting team than an interior scoring one, thanks in large part to the star sophom*ore guard.

Kansas (13-7, 7-5; NET: 26, SOS: 8): The Jayhawks may not be ranked for the first time in forever, and they may have lost their last gazillion (OK, their last five) games on the road, but Bill Self is still Bill Self, and the Phog is still the Phog, and it remains very difficult to win in the latter against the former. The Jayhawks held off Oklahoma State on Monday night, making star guard Cade Cunningham work for everything and splitting the season series with Self’s alma mater. The win was just what KU needed to bounce back from Saturday’s 91-79 loss (in 75 possessions) in Morgantown — an entirely un-Selfian defensive display.

Oklahoma State (12-6, 5-6; NET: 37, SOS: 37): Monday night was not the Cowboys’ finest outing, but you know what? Oh, well. Winning at Kansas is really hard, no matter what the year. Also, when you knock off Texas in double-overtime two days before your visit to Lawrence, you’re playing with house money. Indeed, this OSU run to the tournament — which looks much more likely to happen than not now — is, given the Cowboys’ NCAA sanctions, currently delayed on appeal, a house-money affair. And you know what? Here for it.

Big East

OK, so maybe Providence isn’t going to streak straight into the postseason after all? We were, as always, totally in on the Friars’ eventual, inevitable phoenician rise, one they’ve managed to pull off more often than not the last couple of seasons. But that was before Providence lost at home on Wednesday to Seton Hall, 60-43. And it was also before Ed Cooley’s team lost again Saturday, also at home, this time to St. John’s. At 9-10 and with a NET of 94, now would be the time to start that incredibly unlikely late-season turnaround, fellas. Past time, even.

Should be in: Villanova, Creighton
Work to do: Xavier, Seton Hall, Connecticut, St. John’s

Villanova (12-2, 7-1; NET: 11, SOS: 157): We’re not a coach, granted, but we do have a few ideas about this old peach basket competition we’re all so intrigued by, and one of those ideas is “maybe don’t let Villanova shoot wide-open 3s in semi-transition.” On multiple occasions Sunday, we watched as the Georgetown Hoyas did this weird thing where they failed to pressure the Villanova ball-handler in the secondary break, then scrambled around to do so when they realized what was happening, then gave up an open, one-pass 3, like they were playing with four. It was very strange and very inadvisable. That aside, Georgetown played pretty well; Qudus Wahab presented a serious problem for Villanova’s small-ball personnel, and the Hoyas pushed the game late into the second half before it was fully decided. But eventually, it was decided, another workmanlike result for Villanova, even if Jay Wright will want to iron a few things out.

Creighton (14-5, 10-4; NET: 33, SOS: 160): For a squad that has spent pretty much of the season in the Associated Press top 15 (or, at worst, top 20), Creighton has a team sheet that is looking just a little bit soft. Not “miss the tournament” or “be on the bubble” soft, mind you. This is, after all, still a team with three Quadrant 1 victories and the general reputation of, like, a 5-seed. But with that just-OK NET, a nonconference schedule ranked in the low 300s and three Q3 defeats, Bluejays have an underbelly just soft enough that if things go horribly wrong down the stretch they could have a bit more worrying to do in terms of their seed than a team of their quality probably deserves to do.

Xavier (11-2, 4-2; NET: 34, SOS: 89): The biggest issue here? Xavier isn’t playing any basketball. After Jan. 10’s game against Providence, thanks to a batch of positive COVID-19 tests, the Musketeers shut down for 20 days, which is a long time, even by virus shutdown standards. They came back on Jan. 30, got a convincing win at Butler. They’ve now shut down again. Their next scheduled game is Feb. 11 against DePaul, which will be their third game in just over a month.

Seton Hall (11-8, 8-5; NET: 46, SOS: 22): Don’t look now, but the Pirates may be making moves. A week ago the Pirates were 9-8 with wins at Penn State and Xavier as their best accomplishments, which is about the bubbliest any team has sounded in a single sentence we’ve written this year. Saturday’s win at UConn — which followed the 60-43 smothering of Providence, the type of performance you don’t normally associate with this edition of Kevin Willard’s setup — added another Quadrant 1 victory to a résumé that desperately needed it. At 11-8, with a 6-4 road record and a solid schedule, Seton Hall looks a lot more like the kind of team you feel OK about having in the field.

Connecticut (8-4, 5-4; NET: 55, SOS: 101): More than any other, the Huskies are now the 2021 bubble team with the most riding on the selection committee’s interpretation of an individual absence. Which is to say: There will be a lot of “but we didn’t have this guy!” one-off scenarios for the committee to look at this year, but none quite so traditional, or cut and dry, as Connecticut without James Bouknight. By all accounts, the injured Huskies star is on the verge of returning to the lineup. Coach Dan Hurley told reporters that Bouknight put “a lot of pressure” on the team’s medical staff to let him play last weekend. He didn’t, but he’s close. If UConn notably improves with him in the lineup, and it should, the committee might have to take UConn’s record without him (3-3, with losses in three of their last four) with at least a pinch of salt. We’ll see.

St. John’s (13-7, 7-6; NET: 65, SOS: 126): Hey, it’s St. John’s! Welcome, guys. The Red Storm arguably could have been on the page last week, after a superb win over Villanova, wherein St. John’s merely didn’t get a lucky bad shooting night from the favorite but also actually dominated, imposed their style, forced a turnover-allergic team into a ton of mistakes, and controlled the contest all around. But after Saturday’s win at Providence, there’s no question. It’s not so much the Providence win tipping the scales; the Friars may or may not be good. It’s more that Mike Anderson’s team just won its sixth straight, a stretch that also includes wins at UConn and Marquette. Whether the Red Storm are in the bracket right now — and we could go either way — what’s for sure is they are officially in the conversation. Even a couple of weeks ago, that would have been hard to imagine.

Big Ten

First things first here: We’re thrilled to present not one but two Big Ten locks this week. Congratulations to Illinois and Ohio State, both of whom have built Quadrant 1 records that are the envy of the rest of the country. Illinois is 7-4 against the best teams on its schedule. Ohio State is 8-3. The two best teams in the country, Baylor and Gonzaga, are both 6-0, and while losses obviously matter, there is something to be said for the quality wins the Buckeyes and Illini have racked up. No other top team in the country comes close.

Another shout out for Penn State, which is, by all available metrics, a bubble team, except for the part where you can’t have a losing record and get into the NCAA Tournament as an at-large. It simply isn’t done. If and when the Nittany Lions get to the appropriate threshold, they’ll slot in nicely on the page, with a decent case for inclusion. But they’re not there yet.

Finally, much of the ado about Monday’s AP Top 25 — how it was the first since 1961 Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Kansas and UCLA were not included, how none of the 13 winningest programs in history were ranked — typically missed another key absence: Michigan State. The Spartans may not have quite the legacy of the old-world blue bloods, but they are one of the premier programs of the past 20 years. There’s a reason they’re in the Champions Classic, after all. And their total absence from these lists, not to mention even a place on the Bubble Watch page, only adds to the profound weirdness that is the 2020-21 season. Michigan State’s NET is 91! Just strange.

Locks: Illinois, Ohio State
Should be in: Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Purdue, Rutgers
Work to do: Maryland, Indiana, Minnesota

Michigan (13-1, 8-1; NET: 3, SOS: 101): In the process of writing this blurb, we went scouring YouTube for a good clip of elevator music. Why? The idea was that because Michigan was still on its extended pause — a pause that now includes its Feb. 11 game against Illinois — we had nothing of note to add about the Wolverines, so instead would insert some placeholder muzak for your listening pleasure. (Note: This was a half-baked concept for a joke at best.) But then in the process of looking for said elevator music, we found this extremely chill live stream … which is accompanied by cool, cozy art on a constant loop, which reminded us of long, quiet days spent studying and enjoying random music with randoms on the Internet. It was totally pleasant while we worked on Bubble Watch. So, um, thanks, Michigan!

Iowa (13-6, 7-5; NET: 9, SOS: 93): If Iowa fans are having a minor freakout right now, well, could you blame them? It’s February again, the month in which multiple previous high-achieving Iowa teams have seen their seasons start to erode out from under them, and the Hawkeyes have now lost two of three games in the month, and four of their last five overall. Last Thursday’s loss to Ohio State helped the Buckeyes usurp Iowa’s position in the league hierarchy, Sunday’s defeat at Indiana did the Hoosiers a massive at-large favor, and together both defeats almost ruled out Iowa’s chances at winning a long-awaited Big Ten title, one it was the clear favorites (or at least co-favorites) to win entering the season. Focusing on the positive probably seems difficult right now. But Iowa fans should probably try to do it. After all, this is still a top-five team in KenPom and — not for nothing — a top-10 team in NET, one that struggles defensively (duh) but is still scoring at crazy per-trip rates, and one that still has the best player in the country at its center. Things could be better, maybe, but they could also be worse, right? Right? Does that help, Iowa fans? No? Cool. We’ll stop talking now.

Wisconsin (14-6, 8-5; NET: 16, SOS: 90): The Badgers need to find their outside shot again. For much of the season, this was a really effective perimeter shooting team, with seemingly effective offensive balance. If anything, Wisconsin was better off shooting from outside the arc than inside it. Since the start of league play, though, 3s have gone cold: The Badgers are making just 32.9 percent from 3 in their 13 league games, as opposed to the excellent 66-of-151 they made in nonconference play. The result is a lagging offense that also hasn’t finished all that well around the rim, not to mention nights like against Penn State and Illinois, both losses, when the Badgers do score it OK inside the arc but finish, say, a combined 11-of-52 from 3. Not ideal.

Purdue (13-7, 8-5; NET: 23, SOS: 30): Lost at Maryland on Tuesday and won at home against Northwestern on Saturday, but the real work came in January, when the Boilers snuck out of the fortress that is Value City Arena with a 67-65 win. Since then, Ohio State has gone up a level, catapulting into the league’s clear elite, and the residual benefits will accrue to Purdue — which has swept the Buckeyes this season — more than anyone else.

Rutgers (11-6, 7-6, NET: 25, SOS: 20): Rutgers: still back! Sometimes teams just go through bad periods — again, if you’re Iowa, this is annually referred to as “February” — and Rutgers undoubtedly went through one in January, when it lost five games in a row. Granted, all of those losses were on the road or to good teams or both, because such is life in the Big Ten, and the past four games the schedule has been a bit more forgiving in terms of opposition. But still, for a little while, it looked like Steve Pikiell’s team was headed off the rails. Instead, it has won four in a row and re-established itself as an extremely likely tournament team.

Penn State (7-8, 4-7; NET: 28, SOS: 4): So, yeah, um, actually, believe it or not, for the first time in the history of Bubble Watch, we were wrong about something. (Note: might not be the first time.) It turns out you totally can get an at-large bid with a sub-.500 record. Indeed, the NCAA Competition Oversight Committee announced this allowance back in October, to apply to the winter sports for the upcoming season, as a sort of compromise for the vagaries of mid-pandemic scheduling: “Teams in winter sports are not required to have an overall won-lost record of .500 or better, which is normally required for teams to be eligible for at-large championships selections.” We totally missed this in the fall. Very good to know. (Thanks to commenter Bart T. for the heads up in last week’s BW comments.) What does this mean? It means that our old habit of immediately ignoring any team with a sub-.500 record does not apply to this season. It also means that Penn State, with its actually-quite-good combination of NET and SOS numbers, which excuses its record to some degree, totally merits a spot on this page. The Nittany Lions are 3-7 against Quadrant 1 and just 2-1 in Q2, but they have no bad losses, and they’ve yet to play a Quadrant 4 opponent. They’re very much in this mix.

Maryland (9-10, 4-9; NET: 39, SOS: 2): The whole “don’t need to be .500” thing also hugely benefits Maryland, which fell to 9-10 (in games the committee counts, that is, against Division I opposition) on the season with Monday’s obviously understandable home loss to Ohio State. That’s sort of the thing about all of Maryland’s 10 losses: You can understand them. This team has played a brutal schedule — 14 of its 19 games have come against Quadrant 1 foes — and has lost to a bunch of generally really good teams. The closest thing to “bad” losses Maryland has are at Clemson and at Indiana. Neither actually qualify. Some slightly gentler portions of the schedule are coming up, including games against Nebraska, Michigan State and Northwestern, which could help the Terps pad out their record just a tad bit more.

Indiana (10-8, 5-6; NET: 48, SOS: 70): Indiana will always have its regular-season sweep over Iowa. We’re not being facetious either. Whatever happens to the rest of their season, the Hoosiers will be able to point to the fact they beat one of the best teams in the country twice, home and away. They are far from flawless; their defense has really struggled in the league, to the point they are allowing opponents to score more per trip than they are scoring, which is usually not an ideal underlying indicator of a team’s quality, at least relative to its own conference. Indiana has struggled to close out games, to get good shots in high-leverage moments. But the Hoosiers have come up with two high-level defensive performances, and two close-outs, against Iowa, and for whatever that says about Iowa it now becomes the cornerstone of Indiana’s at-large résumé — at least until, or if, the Hoosiers accomplish more.

Minnesota (12-7, 5-7; NET: 55, SOS: 23): Say this much for Nebraska: The Cornhuskers play hard. We know that might sound like a backhanded compliment, but we really don’t mean it that way. It’s genuinely impressive. Fact is, the ’Huskers simply aren’t very good. No one would pretend otherwise, not that there are any fans around to do so. Worse yet, they’re playing in a league where basically everyone else is good, and where the penalty for being in the early part of a rebuilding process is getting worked on a semi-nightly basis. It can’t be fun. It doesn’t look fun. And yet, even in Monday night’s 18-point loss at Minnesota, you could see real effort, togetherness, and a genuine collective spark. Those guys are trying. It’s worth shouting out, even if it means spending all of Minnesota’s blurb talking about a team that has no chance of making the tournament. Don’t worry, Gophers fans. We’ll be talking about Minnesota plenty in the weeks to come.

Pac-12

We know we kind of ragged on the Pac-12 last week, but it bears noting: Were Arizona eligible for the 2021 NCAA Tournament — the Wildcats removed themselves from consideration as self-punishment for an NCAA violations case that might be settled by the time humans freely walk on Mars — the league would have six viable NCAA Tournament teams. Not to say all six would get in, but all six would be close, which, for a league that has struggled for depth at times in recent years, and which only did so much in nonconference play to prove its bona fides, would be a nice little improvement. Heck, even Utah looks all right.

Should be in: USC, Colorado, UCLA
Work to do: Oregon, Stanford

USC (15-3, 9-2; NET: 15, SOS: 29): Don’t look now, but USC is … good? Maybe really good? This admittedly kind of snuck up on us. The Trojans have always been solid this season, and with Evan Mobley, they’ve boasted one of the most effortlessly gifted players we can remember watching in quite some time, the kind of guy who basically does everything right and makes doing everything right look really easy, like why would anybody ever do anything differently? But other than a neutral-court win over BYU, USC didn’t leverage Mobley’s excellence into impressive nonconference wins, so it has taken a healthy chunk of the league season to figure out where this team stands. After Saturday’s 66-48 demolition of UCLA, wherein the Bruins scored 0.77 points per trip, where this team stands appears to be at the very top of the Pac-12.

Colorado (15-5, 9-4; NET: 17, SOS: 82): For a team ranked healthily outside the top 100 in both NET and adjusted efficiency, Oregon State has been OK in Pac-12 play, starting 6-6 with wins over USC and at Oregon. At the very least, the Beavers are not the easy out their three-game losing streak in December — to Washington State, Wyoming and (gulp) the 321st-ranked Portland Pilots — might have suggested. And on Monday, Colorado just rolled them. The “best team in the Pac-12” title has been changing hands for most of the season, and right now, with Mobley playing like this, we might give the nod to the Trojans. But Colorado is still right there.

UCLA (13-4, 9-2; NET: 38, SOS: 97): All things considered, when star wing Chris Smith went down with an injury, the Bruins did extremely well to keep their season on the tracks. Smith’s last game was Dec. 31. UCLA won its next six outings, including a home win over Colorado and wins at Arizona State and Arizona; their first loss post-injury was in OT at Stanford. Forgivable, to be sure. Really, it wasn’t until Saturday that UCLA genuinely looked out of its depth without Smith in the lineup, overmatched and like it didn’t really have a plan on the offensive end. That probably has more to do with USC and/or Mobley, but it is worth watching.

Oregon (10-4, 5-3; NET: 58, SOS: 196): It’s still really hard to know what to make of Oregon, in large part thanks to the pandemic. The Ducks have now had a couple extended stoppages. Before the first, they were 9-2 and looking like a top-20-ish team, not far from where the likes of Colorado generally finds itself ranked. When they returned from that first pause, they promptly lost to Oregon State at home. Then they paused again and returned just in time to lose to Washington State at home. Not great! Those are brutally bad back-to-back losses, even if you consider some of the personnel that was missing at various points (Eric Williams missed Washington State and Chris Duarte missed Oregon State), the likes of which have totally torpedoed Oregon’s NET rating, not to mention the evaluative balance of its wins and losses. Only so many games are left to repair the damage.

Stanford (12-7, 8-5; NET: 57, SOS: 46): Just ask Drake: Beating the same team twice in two games is not easy. It wasn’t hard to imagine Stanford’s consecutive games against Bay Area rival Cal as being one of the trickiest two-game stretches on its schedule, a double dose of chances to lose a potentially devastating game to a team that could only hurt your chances of getting into the tournament. To wit, when Stanford beat the Bears in Palo Alto on Sunday, that win registered as Quadrant 4. (Cal is not very good, you see. Though, to the Bears’ credit, they have played 21 games already, which is pretty impressive in its own right.) Anyway, Stanford held on for a six-point win, saving itself from one of the worst losses any bubble team will have the opportunity to take the rest of the season. Well done.

SEC

Various fans of various other programs might disagree, but at this point we almost feel bad for John Calipari. At one point late in Saturday’s 82-71 loss to Tennessee — Kentucky’s third straight down-the-stretch collapse against a Top 25 team — Calipari spent the entirety of a late timeout and pretty much all of the precious seconds before Tennessee inbounded the ball explaining the press to his players, even tweaking their positioning just so. It was a nice bit of coaching. And just like that, Cal’s aggressive full-court press generated a crucial turnover for UK … which a Wildcat immediately threw right back to Tennessee. At which point, Calipari, so existentially beyond anger by this point, beyond being able to generate rage, simply set his whiteboard on the scorer’s table and crossed his arms. He wasn’t mad. He was just disappointed. And Kentucky’s season was pretty much cooked.

Should be in: Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri
Work to do: Florida, Arkansas, LSU

Alabama (15-5, 10-1; NET: 9, SOS: 17): The offensive performance isn’t just about whether the Tide hit 3s. Yes, Nate Oats wants to take a bunch of 3s, but most of all he wants his team to get layups, and when those don’t fall, the offense can really struggle. The Tide finished 13-of-41 from 2-point range at Missouri on Saturday, a number that won’t get it done no matter what kind of shot diet you want your players to prioritize. Indeed, the Mizzou loss followed a now four-game-old pattern in which the offense hasn’t scored more than a point per possession. The Crimson Tide are a great defensive team too, but they are 2-2 in their last four games for a reason.

Tennessee (13-4, 6-4; NET: 10, SOS: 109): For a while there, it looked as if Kentucky was finally going to fully self-actualize and get a heartening win over a quality SEC foe. Then, of course, the Wildcats combusted down the stretch. The final score of UT’s win Saturday doesn’t note how close the game was for most of it — Kentucky led by 10 with a dozen minutes left — but it does nicely summarize just how far off the pace Kentucky fell by the final few minutes. Anyway, the Vols’ résumé took a slight knock last Tuesday, with a tight road loss to Ole Miss, but the Rebels’ NET being in the 60s makes that a Quadrant 1 loss, which is hardly a big deal.

Missouri (13-3, 6-3; NET: 25, SOS: 7): Credit where it’s due. For most of the season, we’ve been a bit skeptical of Missouri, if only relative to really elite teams, but still skeptical all the same. The Tigers, after all, have never been convincing on a per-possession basis in the same way as Tennessee or Alabama. They’ve spent most of the season in the 40s and high 30s of the KenPom.com rankings. When they win, they rarely blow people out. But they do keep winning, Saturday’s massive home win over Alabama was merely the latest example, and at some point you have to get over your early-season notions and let a team’s performance tell you the story. Missouri is that team, at least for us.

Florida (10-5, 6-4; NET: 31, SOS: 73): Florida had been on a pretty nice run — four straight wins, including a blowout of Tennessee and a win at West Virginia in that impressive mix. Had the Gators made it five against South Carolina on Wednesday, we would have moved them up to the should be in category. Alas, they did not. Thus they were not. This feels like a pretty Florida thing to do, given the last few years of Florida men’s basketball; for every step forward, there is always at least a quarter-step back.

Arkansas (14-5, 6-4; NET: 30, SOS: 82): Speaking of good runs, Arkansas’s only loss in its past five games came last weekend at Oklahoma State, which is a tournament-quality team, and to whom the Razorbacks gave a real test. Sure, those four wins have come over Auburn, Vandy, Ole Miss and Mississippi State, but that’s the kind of solid business you have to handle if you want to play in the NCAA Tournament. Arkansas still doesn’t have a non-Quadrant 1 loss either. Like we said: solid.

LSU (11-6, 6-4; NET: 42, SOS: 21): The theme of the work to do portion of this section has, totally accidentally, become a review of these teams’ past five games, and we might as well stick with it for LSU, which 1-4 in its last five. Sure, two of those defeats came to Alabama, although LSU was competitive in neither of them (combined ‘Bama margin of victory: 48 points). They did give a better game to Texas Tech, but still didn’t come up with a win, and the Jan. 23 82-69 loss at Kentucky marks LSU’s worst of the season — the only non-Q1 defeat on their sheet. LSU is directly on the bubble, both in terms of results and performances; this one could go either way.

Others

If you look at this game probability chart, you’ll notice a serious dip at around the 15:00 mark of the second half that was the high water mark of Pacific’s upset bid against Gonzaga last Thursday. It was a real thing for a while there; the Tigers led until there were 12 minutes left. At the 10-minute mark, naturally, Gonzaga went on a 15-2 run, and that was that, Mattress Man. But big respect to Pacific, which has played just 10 games this season, for playing that well, and even pulling that much off, in the first place. It was an impressive run.

Locks: Gonzaga
Should be in: Houston
Work to do: Loyola Chicago, San Diego State, BYU, Drake, Boise State, St. Bonaventure, VCU, Saint Louis, Colorado State, Utah State, Richmond, Toledo, Winthrop

Houston (15-2, 10-2; NET: 5, SOS: 85): Last week was a good example of why it’s going to be hard to lock Houston up as quickly as some of its similarly successful brethren in the top tier of the sport: Losses will just hurt them more. When you’re playing East Carolina, a defeat drags you down far more than, say, a loss at Penn State, or whatever. The Cougars have nonconference wins over Texas Tech and Boise State, but the American has plenty of bad losses lying in wait. Of course, the Cougars would have to lose about every one of their remaining games to miss the tournament, so they’ll be a lock sooner or later anyway. But they do have a more difficult cost-benefit balance on a game-to-game basis than most other elite teams.

Loyola Chicago (15-3, 12-1; NET: 14, SOS: 227): Needless to say, this is a big week for the Ramblers, and thus of course a big week for purveyors of Ramblers Fever™, among whom the Watch reigns supreme. (OK, maybe Sister Jean has us by a smidge.) Why? It’s Drake week. On Saturday, Loyola will play the first of a back-to-back, Saturday-Sunday doubleheader with a one-loss Drake team that already desperately needed a win over the other quality outfit in its league before it lost to Valpo last weekend. Loyola needs at least one of those games too, but two would be ideal; it would be extremely hard to keep a team with this high a NET rating and two quality true road wins out of the at-large spots.

San Diego State (13-4, 8-3; NET: 21, SOS: 15): With all due respect to the Spartans and their legendary court design, San Jose State is, in bubble terms anyway, the kind of team that offers absolute no benefit to its opponent. If you win, so what? Your NET/SOS numbers might end up worse. If you lose, the sky is falling. Fortunately for San Diego State, the first of two matchups with SJSU went totally to plan; the Aztecs didn’t have to work all that hard for the blowout, and in the second half Keshad Johnson got to flash some serious athleticism (on consecutive dunks midway through the second half, specifically) without much defensive resistance. Until Boise State comes to town on Feb. 25 and 27, continued avoidance of bad losses is the primary directive here.

BYU (14-5, 6-3; NET: 27, SOS: 52): With a couple of minutes elapsed in the Cougars’ massive home game against Gonzaga on Monday night, the Zags, already leading 11-3, were running to their bench. BYU had called timeout, and the broadcast cut to Gonzaga freshman guard Jalen Suggs, who was practically jumping off the court, screaming something along the lines of “get them out of here.” That was pretty much the end of that. It’s one thing for Gonzaga to get complacent on the road at lowly Pacific; it’s another thing entirely when you were the last team Gonzaga lost to, late last season, in a 91-78 defeat that several of the Zags wouldn’t have forgotten. So, alas, the Cougars couldn’t beat the co-best team in the country. No biggie. Mark Pope’s team might not have gotten its marquee win, but as long as it finishes strong (which is to say avoids bad losses, like the Jan. 27 slip-up at Pepperdine), BYU should be fine.

Drake (16-1, 9-1; NET: 32, SOS: 286): The Bulldogs’ No. 13 NET number this time a week ago always felt considerably too high, if not quite Colgate-too-high. Still, fact was Drake was 16-0 and playing some really good, efficient basketball, albeit frequently against bad teams, pretty much every time it stepped on the floor. Credit where it’s due, and all that. Unfortunately, that unblemished record has since been blemished. After narrowly escaping Valparaiso in their first game last Saturday, the Bulldogs fell hard to the Crusaders, 74-57, in their second true road game in two days, which, considering the circ*mstances, it’s probably a surprise neither Drake nor Loyola had lost before last weekend. Beating the same team two days in a row, on the road, is really freakin’ hard. As for what the loss means for Drake’s situation, well, it’s obviously not good, but the chance to play two against Loyola could totally change the at-large outlook here — a split would be handy, but Drake will be hunting for a sweep.

Boise State (13-4, 10-3; NET: 36, SOS: 108): Speaking of the difficulty of winning two road games in quick succession against the same team, Boise State went to Nevada last weekend and ended up 0-2. Whoops. The good news is the Broncos were in pretty strong bubble position before the weekend began, what with wins at BYU and Colorado State buoying a résumé that had just two defeats (at Houston, at CSU) to date. The Nevada defeats aren’t ideal, but they fall in Quadrant 2, which also isn’t enough to knock Boise out of the projected bracket right now. Provided this weekend — two home games against UNLV — goes better, the Broncos will feel good going into their final four matchups with Utah State and San Diego State.

St. Bonaventure (9-2, 7-2; NET: 40, SOS: 65): We’re still mostly fascinated with the underlying math behind St. Bonaventure’s nonconference schedule strength, which was fifth in the country last week and currently stands at No. 10 despite the Bonnies managing to pull off exactly two nonconference games, versus Hofstra and Akron. Quality over quantity, we guess? Anyway, in a season fraught with minimal chances just to get on the floor, the Bonnies let a pretty major one slip Saturday at Saint Louis, which itself fell at La Salle earlier in the week. Hardly fatal, but that win would have been nice.

VCU (13-4, 6-2; NET: 41, SOS: 133): VCU is playing defense again. Two years ago the Rams won the A-10 going away with elite, top-10 defense, the kind that challenged first shots extremely well and did the classic VCU turnover-generation thing too. After bringing almost everybody back a year ago, the defense (and the team, in many ways) sort of fell apart. Not so this year. These Rams are back in the top 15 in adjusted efficiency defense, generating a top-five turnover percentage and the nation’s best steals rate, while also not giving away many easy looks. The offense comes and goes, and depends a lot on how Bones Hyland is going on any given night, but these dudes really guard.

Saint Louis (8-3, 1-2; NET: 43, SOS: 200): At one point this season — and it’s not just due to the number of SLU-related questions in our weekly mailbag, we’re sure of it — the respect for Saint Louis was extremely high. After all, the Associated Press poll voters kept the Billikens ranked for weeks while on one of the lengthier COVID-19 pauses any program has had all season. There was real belief in Travis Ford’s veteran team and star guard Jordan Goodwin, and rightfully so. Now it’s just hard to know what to make of this team. Last weekend’s win over St. Bonaventure was nice and absolutely necessary, mostly because it followed a loss at La Salle, which as of this writing ranked 172nd in the NET, and which added a third (and just really bad all around) Quadrant 3 defeat to Saint Louis’s already flimsy résumé. The Billikens need some time to figure things out, because they simply haven’t played all that much, but the number of chances they’ll have to shore up a tourney-worthy team sheet is very much up in the air.

Colorado State (14-4, 11-3; NET: 47, SOS: 42): The Rams entered last week’s inaugural 2021 Bubble Watch being pretty much smack dab on the bubble, and so they remain today. Disaster nearly struck Thursday, when CSU needed max effort to dispense with NET No. 189 Wyoming. Laramie is always a tough place to visit, even if you’re used to the elevated air. Anyway, by getting out of that game alive and finishing the second with a little bit less drama, Colorado State at the very least held firm.

Utah State (13-5, 11-2; NET: 49, SOS: 175): Don’t look now, but this is the 10th-best defensive team in the country, per KenPom.com’s adjusted efficiency, and by far the best in the Mountain West, by a massive margin. The Aggies are holding MWC competition to 0.818 points per possession; the next-best defense in the league, Boise State, rates out at 0.934. That’s a huge gulf and combines nicely with the scads of offensive boards the Aggies collect. Sneaky-good team.

Richmond (10-4, 4-2; NET: 51, SOS: 114): Saint Louis can feel good about one thing anyway: It’s not the only team A-10 tourney hopeful to lose to La Salle. Richmond managed that feat on Jan. 23, and did so at home to boot, although Richmond has its neutral-court win over Loyola to help take the sting out of its bad losses. Anyway, the Spiders’ next scheduled game is Feb. 17 against rival VCU. That is a big one for plenty of obvious reasons.

Toledo (16-5, 11-2; NET: 60, SOS: 158): We hemmed and hawed over whether to keep Toledo on the page today. Typically, most teams from mid-major leagues down this far on the Bubble Watch page can’t survive road losses to teams like Ball State, which, of course, is exactly what Toledo suffered last Saturday. But the Rockets do have their Quadrant 1 win at Marshall, and a win at Kent State, so there’s at least something to hold on to. But another league loss probably seals the deal.

Western Kentucky (13-4, 6-2; NET: 78, SOS: 126): Ahoy Hilltoppers! Thanks to a couple of commenters, who wondered below the line why we had stiffed Western Kentucky this week, Western Kentucky now makes its late debut on the page. Simply put, we forgot them. Or at least we forgot that this team — whose NET number is a slight stretch, particularly for a team with four losses — actually won at Alabama back in December. That’s a massive, massive win, the kind capable of lifting up an otherwise merely decent resume into something worth considering for an at-large spot, at least for the time being.

Winthrop (16-1, 13-1; NET: 81, SOS: 314): Winthrop hasn’t played since before last week’s update, so we can’t really take it off the page (we could, because we are the law ’round these parts, but we don’t like to ‘perate in such a manner) but its NET did worsen by four spots in the exchange, to the point where it now looks totally unpalatable as an at-large possibility. Teams with 80+ NET rankings don’t get at-large bids. It’s just how it works. And it’s hard to figure out how Winthrop improves that figure — to say nothing of its schedule strength. Best bet: Be the automatic bid.

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic)