Drifting in and out of consciousness, the Lunatic was lying in bed with the ACC semi-final playing on my laptop. I had made as much progress as I would on my bracketology – which is currently a mess. And with my daughter’s rugby game Saturday morning in Washington, DC, I couldn’t afford to try to model deep into the night.

So, I turned on the game, got ready for sleep and started drifting away. It was the classic Virginia game of them holding the ball for the full shot clock trying desperately to score and then playing their trademark defense on the other side. It was enough for my eyes to close.

I semi-wake up as I hear the announcers talking about it is crazy that NC State is still in this game after a flagrant foul but the Cavaliers can still wrap it up here. I have no clue what happened but I glance up to see the score is 58-55 with Virginia’s Isaac McKneely standing on the free throw line with 6 seconds left.

Then I watch as the Cavalier’s best FT shooter of the season at 84.7% misses the free throw. The Wolfpack’s Casey Morsell grabbed the rebound and quickly sent the ball up the court to Michael O’Connell, and he starts dribbling as fast as possible down the sideline across half court. He gets as far as he can before the clock gets to one second, and throws up a three-pointer from right in front of his coach on the bench. The ball seems to go off the backboard, rattles around on the rim and falls through the basketball – sending the Wolfpack bench into a frenzy as the stadium erupts.

In the overtime, the Wolfpack simply kept giving the ball to big man DJ Burns Jr – who dominated the overtime with 7 points. Burns seemed to bully his way into the lane whenever he wanted and there was nothing that Virginia could do to stop him. Virginia would miss 4 three point shots in the final 30 seconds, the Wolfpack’s DJ Horne hit 4 free throws, and NC State went on to win 73-65 for their 4th straight win in 4 days and a date with #4 North Carolina to play for the ACC Championship Saturday night. They stated the week with a NET ranking of 83 and not in the bubble conversation. The Wolfpack are now at 68, forcing their way into the committee’s selection room, and one win away from stealing the ACC’s bid.

But NC State isn’t the only concern for the bubble and the Selection Committee. In the Pac 12 last night, Oregon upset #6 Arizona and Colorado upset #22 Washington State setting up a championship between two teams that certainly are not guaranteed to be in. In the Mountain West, San Diego St upset #18 Utah State while in a game that started after midnight – the weakest bubble team from that conference, New Mexico upset Colorado State to move to tonight’s final. We can’t leave out the SEC – where the top 3 seeds lost to Florida, Texas A&M and Mississippi State. And of course, we already knew the Atlantic 10 had a bid being stolen with the top 4 seeds all losing in the quarterfinals.

There are good reasons to take so many teams this year – there are also good reasons to choose a different one. The definition of the bubble always means you have some type of flaw. The best advice has always been to take the decision out of the Committee’s hands and win the conference tournament and the automatic bid that comes with it. But with so many bubble teams taking that advice to heart and playing on Saturday, it is tough to guess what the committee is thinking. Normally, the committee already has selected their at large teams and have started the topic of seeding by this point. I am not sure if they can possibly be at that point with so many teams making a late push.

At least I think that is what happened last night. Maybe it was all a dream. For many of these bubble teams, they probably want the Lunatic to keep dreaming. For those who lost early in the week, they are probably hoping for the dream to not turn into a nightmare. As for the Lunatic, any dream involving basketball is good – let the Madness begin!!!!