Wake breaks.
Bubble Action
Wake Forest looked like a safe NCAA Tournament team as recently as this morning. Now, they’re in the thick of the bubble. We’ll see what our model thinks following the loss to Boston College (an update is due in the morning), but Wake could well be headed to the NIT. Elsewhere in the lands of doubt:
- Xavier and Butler are well underway, with Xavier in a near-identical situation to the one the Deacs were facing: With a win, they’re probably safe. With a loss, they’re in a world of hurt.
- Virginia Tech plays Clemson in the early-evening slot (7:00 PM EST, ESPN2), and the Hokies aren’t out of it, but they need to win at least one, and probably two (maybe three, depending how things break). Clemson isn’t a pushover. At least on most nights.
- Virginia plays Louisville in the ACC’s late slot (9:30 PM EST, ESPN2), and Joe Lunardi is higher on them than our model is. Some of this may be because Lunardi is a where-things-stand bracketologist, whereas our model predicts where things will end, but either way, beating Louisville is unlikely to be the difference for the Cavaliers. What could conceivably be the difference is beating UNC tomorrow. This is an opportunity to keep that possible.
Bellarmine: Why?
The “why” here is not directed to Bellarmine. Bellarmine’s rapidly successful transition to Division I is very cool. The “why” is to the NCAA, because I, like many, don’t understand the NCAA’s ban on letting new Division I programs compete in official NCAA postseason play. Specifically, I don’t know why it’s four whole years, or however long it is. Is the idea to make Division I less desirable, and to keep teams from trying to bounce up in good years and down in bad ones? If that’s the goal, is this the best way to do it? And if that’s the goal, is it a good goal? What’s intrinsically bad about teams popping up and down? Someone explain this to me if they get it.
In the meantime, Jacksonville State’s going to the NCAA Tournament and Bellarmine’s likely headed to the CBI.
Getting to Know Your Auto Bids
Jacksonville State is from the Jacksonville in Alabama, a small-ish town up north in the state. They’re a great shooting team and they play clean, safe defense. In the right situation, they could make noise, and they do have three guys who’ve hit 63 or more shots from deep this year, so worth looking into when you’re filling out your bracket, but they aren’t as good as, say…
South Dakota State. The Jackrabbits held off NDSU last night, completing an undefeated Summit League performance across both the regular season and the tournament. Brookings’s finest can beat teams. Good teams. They play at a lightning-fast pace, which does hurt—the bigger the sample size, the lower the likelihood of randomness breaking the underdog’s way—but they’re a nightmare of a matchup, shooting 44% as a team from deep and scoring adeptly from the free throw line as well (for the record, playing up-tempo basketball isn’t a bad idea if that’s what works for a given team—it just has this downside compared to glacially-paced aspiring Cinderellas). They lead the nation in effective field goal percentage (thank you, as always, to KenPom for existing), and while their defense is a major weakness, they don’t foul much and they prevent offensive rebounds, meaning they at least make teams make shots, open though they may be. In KenPom, they line up in between Creighton and Rutgers, if that gives context on their ability. They also line up between Santa Clara and West Virginia, if that gives context on Creighton and Rutgers’s ability.
Bryant is going dancing, and as you may have heard, Peter Kiss scores a whole lot of points. Bryant, like South Dakota State, plays up-tempo. Bryant, unlike South Dakota State, does not run an efficient offense. The Northeast Conference champions gun threes despite making few, getting a lot of their points on second chances and from the free throw line. They’re fairly competent defensively, though their fast pace there may be contributing to weakness on the boards. There’s little reason to believe they can hang with a 1-seed or a 2-seed (they lost to Houston 111-44 back in December), but they’re fun.
Delaware’s in the tournament for just the second time since the Mike Brey years, with longtime Brey assistant Martin Ingelsby breaking through in his sixth year in Newark. The Blue Hens, led in a sense by Jameer Nelson (of that Jameer Nelson’s lineage), had uncharacteristic defensive success in the CAA Tournament. There’s little about them that stands out stylistically, but they’re generally an offense-first team.
Wright State is back, recovering from a 16-point deficit to beat Northern Kentucky in the Horizon League’s growingly traditional top-of-the-conference matchup. Loudon Love’s gone, but Tanner Holden and Grant Basile are a prolific duo. The Raiders started the season 2-7, but even with their recovery, they haven’t moved much in KenPom from where they stood coming out of that stretch. The Horizon League is not what it was in the good times.
Finally, of course, there’s Gonzaga. The Zags held off Saint Mary’s, and will almost certainly be a 1-seed. Quite possibly the top seed overall.
This evening, Colgate hosts Navy in the Patriot League title game. Colgate’s a sizable favorite in that one, playing at home. You can watch at 7:30 PM EST on CBSSN.
MLB Lockout: Getting Close?
The big hurdle right now in MLB/MLBPA negotiations is evidently the matter of a potential international draft. International players are opposed, with the thought seeming to be that replacing the free market system with a draft would cost international signees (and their countries’ economies) money. It’s interesting that the MLBPA isn’t rolling over on this, given they don’t actively represent upcoming international signees. We’ve pointed out before that the MLBPA has some incentives to hurt minor leaguers, and by the same token any active baseball player not on a 40-man roster, so credit to them in this instance for a somewhat humanitarian move, and for evidently listening to players for whom this is personally important. In the meantime, the season seems likely to get a bit shorter, and it’s hard to see 162 games happening. Might we see 154?
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Viewing schedule tonight goes Xavier/Butler now (on FS1), then the two ACC games following by probably Utah Valley and Abilene Christian at 10:30 PM EST on ESPN+. You might remember Abilene Christian from the chaos they created last year against Texas, effectively ending Shaka Smart’s time in Austin. They’re probably not going to be back, but this should be a wild, rough and tumble game with implications in a solid mid-major league’s tournament. Not bad for late on Wednesday night.
