According to ESPN’s Bubble Watch, both USC and Notre Dame are now NCAA Tournament “locks,” as is Tennessee. Joe Lunardi — who, incidentally, is promising daily Bracketology updates from now until Selection Sunday — has the Irish as a #6 seed (with a first-round matchup against my mom’s and Dmytro’s alma mater, Illinois), the Trojans as a #5 seed (against VCU in round one), and the Vols as a #9 (against Texas Tech … Bruce Pearl vs. Bobby Knight!).
Gonzaga remains a bubble team, according to the Watch, but is one of Lunardi’s “next four out” and probably needs to win the WCC Tournament this coming Sunday and Monday. The Zags can build momentum for that effort with a win tonight at San Diego (10:00 PM EST) in both teams’ regular-season finales.
And speaking of building momentum for conference tournaments: Central Connecticut State, which saw its 12-game winning streak snapped nine days ago, only to start a new streak on Thursday, hosts Wagner at 7:00 PM tonight in (again) both teams’ regular-season finales.
If Gonzaga and CCSU win their conference tourneys — they’ll both be favored — and if the projections of USC, ND and UT as “locks” are accurate, that’d be five of my seven favorite teams in the NCAAs (and all of my Big Three). Now if UConn and Buffalo could just make miraculous runs in the Big East and MAC tournaments, respectively… :)
Back to USC and Notre Dame… both teams are once again ranked in both polls this week. The Trojans are #23 in the AP poll and #24 in the coaches’ poll; the Irish are #22 in the AP poll and #17 in the coaches’ poll.
Ohio State, fresh off its win over Wisconsin yesterday, is #1 in both polls. Georgetown cracks the Top 10 after beating Pitt; Southern Illinois is almost there, at #11 in both polls; Air Force falls to #25 and #20, respectively, after losing 5 out of 6 road games and two in a row last week; and Winthrop, mighty mighty Winthrop, is damn near ranked, effectively #27 in both polls. If they win the Big South Tournament — which will be over by the time the next polls come out — the Eagles will surely crack the Top 25 (for the first time in school history, I’m assuming).
Incidentally, here’s what the Bubble Watch has to say about the Eagles:
Part of me is dying to see High Point take out the Eagles in the Big South final just to see what the committee would do. I would hope they could look past the numbers and acknowledge that Winthrop is a legitimate team worthy of an at-large bid.
Also on the Winthrop-watching front, here’s a New York Times article from yesterday’s paper. The Times acknowledges the cold, hard truth: “one slip-up in the conference tournament, and Winthrop will probably end up in the National Invitation Tournament instead of the N.C.A.A. tournament.”
Speaking of conference tournaments: ESPN may claim that “Championship Week” is next week, but the conference tournaments actually begin tomorrow. The Big South, Ohio Valley and Horizon League are first out of the gate, and by the end of Saturday, the first two of those, and several others, will already have crowned champions and awarded automatic bids. (The tournament-less Ivy League may beat them all to the punch, though; Penn can clinch a bid Friday with a win over Yale. The Bulldogs, on the other hand, can extend the race and make it very interesting by winning Friday, which would give them a season sweep of the Quakers and pull within one game in the standings with two to go.)
Anyway, for all of your conference-tournament schedule-watching needs, visit The Bracket Board’s One Stop Shop. Very, very helpful.
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Categories: Gonzaga, Tennessee & environs, Notre Dame, NCAA Basketball & Pools, USC, Connecticut & Newington
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February 26th, 2007 at 5:24:18 pm
Yep, ND’s a lock, but brey is a horrible coach. right BLoy?
February 26th, 2007 at 6:37:42 pm
Hey Brendan!
I have been reading your Blog. I like seeing your comments about Winthrop. I have seen them live on more than one occassion. They are the real deal. I go to ACC games at Clemson also. Clemson or any other ACC teams would struggle with Winthrop’s defense. The Eagles also have many offensive weapons. Did you know that Winthrop won on the road at Marquette last year and lost by two at Alabama? I hope that people are starting to give them the recognition they deserve!
February 26th, 2007 at 7:18:34 pm
WU Fan, thanks and welcome! I really hope Winthrop gets in, and does well. Unless of course they get matched up against one of my teams. Lunardi had them paired with USC in the first round in a recent bracket… I didn’t like that at all. :)
Anon, boring. I’ve already addressed the Fire Brey business in considerable detail:
Have I been more impressed with his coaching this year than the last two? Yes, absolutely. But one good season does not a good coach make, or have you already forgotten Ty’s first year?
I’ll eat crow if the time comes to do so… in fact I’ll do so quite happily, since I want to see the Irish succeed. The question is, will you, and all the rest of your fellow Anonymi, eat crow if the coming weeks and years ultimately prove that I was right all along? Past experience, coupled with the inherent lack of accountability implied by your anonymity, suggests that you will not. After the Syracuse win, I got the same sort of grief from anonymous commenters about my past “Fire Brey” comments… and then those same commenters went eerily silent after the road losses to South Florida and DePaul. Now the Irish win a few home games and you’re back. Lame. And people call me a bandwagon fan!
Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t you grow a pair and leave a name and e-mail address so you can be held accountable for your opinions if they later end up looking foolish? I do that with everything I write on my blog, and at times, I do indeed end up looking foolish… and I freely admit it when that happens. I’m putting myself out there, stating an opinion and leaving it here for posterity for all the world to see, so I can be held to account if it later appears that my statements were foolish. Not so with you Anonymi. By sniping at me anonymously and then disappearing when the going gets tough, you simply prove that you have no backbone and no willingness to stand by your beliefs. Exceedingly lame. Me 1, You 0.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:22:12 pm
As the guy on The Wire says:
Sheeeeeeeeeeiit.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:37:48 pm
Me 1, You 0.
Also exceedingly lame.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:54:06 pm
brendan must be getting extremely desperate when he actually tries to compare willinghams first season to anything mike brey has done. mike brey after this year will have made the ncaa tournament 50% of the time as nd head coach. take a look at what this program did before brey got here. its absolute lunacy to call for his head, and it was last year too. the team was flat out unlucky last year (as jeff sagarin and ken pompey have vehemently argued, close games are mostly decided on luck), and putting the blame solely or even mostly on brey for it doesn’t make sense. brey has done a great job with this program, which has meager resources and extremely strict academic requirements which impair recruiting far worse than they do for football. i hate seeing a really great guy like brey get thrown in the mud, especially when its unwarranted.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:55:25 pm
also brendan, its impossible for you to be right all along, the irish can lose all the games they play the rest of this season and you would still be wrong.
February 26th, 2007 at 8:29:52 pm
I just want to clarify one point about my comment above. I’m not saying that all anonymous comments are bad or wrong. If I thought that, I could make it impossible for people to comment anonymously on my blog. However, I think anonymous comments do have their place, and I believe that allowing them keeps the discourse free-wheeling and uninhibited, which is (mostly) a good thing, and that’s why I (unlike many bloggers) allow them.
What I object to (not enough to censor them, but enough to complain) are anonymous personal attacks and anonymous “gotcha” comments. This is an example of the latter, where an anonymous commenter is addressing a non-anonymous commenter and saying, “ha ha, you were wrong.” I find that sort of thing to be exceedingly lame, because it’s a person holding another person accountable while subjecting themselves to no accountability whatsoever. If you want to hold my feet to the fire for something stupid that I’ve said in the past, the least you can do, in all fairness, is give me the opportunity to do the same if your comment ends up looking stupid later on.
Just wanted to clarify that. I’d get more into the substance of the Brey debate, but I have to get back to my ConCrimPro reading. I’m on call tomorrow at 8am, a fact for which I blame Mike Brey and demand his immediate firing. :)
February 26th, 2007 at 8:31:26 pm
P.S. For the record, I have no objection to the 7:54pm comment by “anon” (as opposed to the earlier comment by “Anonymous”) because the latter isn’t a sarcastic “gotcha” comment, but is actually substantively engaging and debating an issue.
February 26th, 2007 at 8:44:58 pm
I think Winthrop has a very reasonable shot at getting an at-large bid if they wind up needing it. Obviously they will be a judgement type decision but my gut tells me they will be in the field one way or another. I know they have a bad RPI and really only one quality win, but I still feel they would get it. It’s too early to issue a blanket statement either way on them or any number of other teams.
I don’t really feel that Notre Dame is a lock. I think they are real likely, but something short of a mortal lock as of this moment.
February 26th, 2007 at 8:48:24 pm
I sort of agree, Andrew, just because if Notre Dame loses its next two games, and if Syracuse gets the #4 seed ahead of them, the season-ending losses would both be very “bad” losses. You don’t want to end your season with a loss to Rutgers and a loss to the #12 seed in the Big East Tournament (probably St. John’s, which oh by the way, might have a little bit of a home-court advantage at Madison Square Garden, but I doubt the committee would notice that).
Win at Rutgers and then I’ll agree that ND is a mortal lock.
February 26th, 2007 at 10:42:36 pm
Fire Mike Brey.
I think Mike Brey and ex-coach Bibby have a lot in common. Mediocrity, for one.
Whine and bitch about bad luck all you want. Good coaches and good teams make their own luck. It falls out of the sky and wafts by, entirely unlike the clouds of marijuana smoke that totally f*cked up ND’s season.
There’s just not much to say about Brey. He really hasn’t done anything remarkable at Notre Dame and for an avid basketball fan, unremarkable is painful to endure. I’d like to see this team do something amazing, but with Mike Brey masterminding it, I doubt it will.
February 27th, 2007 at 12:02:45 am
“It falls out of the sky and wafts by, entirely unlike the clouds of marijuana smoke that totally f*cked up ND’s season.”
Beckles, maybe you should save the throwaway comments such as these for discardedthought.blogspot.com. A 10-5 record in the Big East following Kyle McAlarney’s arrest, as well as the emergence of Tory Jackson as a solid solution at point guard, shows that the incident you referred to did not “totally f*** up ND’s season.”
February 27th, 2007 at 12:33:11 am
Rebecca Loy’s remarks show a complete ignorance of the history of ND basketball. Mike Brey has done something remarkable at ND, he has taken a team to the NCAA tournament 3 of the six years that he has been the head basketball coach at this university. This year will make 4 out of 7 trips including one “sweet sixteen” trip. Can you tell me the last time ND made it to the tournament before Brey arrived in South Bend? Try 1990! 1990 folks, the ability to get the team to the point it is now is testimony to his hard work and coach prowess. ND suffers from a poor facilities; this includes an inadequate practice facility and home court. Brey was promised these upgrades years ago, but has never complained, he has only done his job. Even last year when the team was snake bite, did he ever make excuses? In order to create a strong, successful program, one of the ingredients that is needed is time and a patience by the university administration. If you look at UNC and Duke, both Coach K and Dean Smith could have been fired in the infancy of their careers, but the administration did not make a rash decision, they stuck with their coaches and over time and with a committment by the university to throw money to the basketball team, truely great programs were formed. With the two freshman that ND now has and the upgrades that are coming, the future of ND basketball looks bright.
Please, I dont have a problem with people stating an opinion, I do however, have a problem with ignorance and simply mean statements. The pot incident was an unfortunate event, but how can you say it f##ked up the season? They have won over 20 games, are fourth in the league, and are headed to the NCAAs with a good seeding. If you take a closer look at the situation,this incident provides more evidence at the coach accumen of Brey. He keep the team together, they have been successful and because of his relationship with McAlarney, the kid will be back this summer.
As for Henry Bibby, I agree that is was probably a good decision to remove him as the head coach at USC, but he did take the team to the tournament and an elite eight showing in 2001.