St. Mary’s fought all the way back to make it a 1 point game with about 12 minutes to play. A pretty impressive comeback considering how hot Gonzaga started. The Gaels found themselves down 5 with about a minute to play, when the Bulldogs ended any hopes of a final comeback.

First, Ryan Nembhard got a layup to extend the lead to 7. On the next possession, the Zags played awesome defense, finalized by a steal from Khalif Battle. Battle quickly passed the ball to Nolan Hickman who rushed down the court, and lobbed the ball towards the basket back to Battle for a thunderous dunk. At that point, the celebration could get started. Gonzaga will not need to worry about whether the Selection Committee will take them – they claimed the WCC automatic bid.

So, while I am congratulating the Bulldogs, lets get ahead of the blog. From an administrative standpoint, I think I am close with the statistics page. I have the data in a good format – I just need to do a final validation that the records match up. So, I have confidence that the statisticians will get their data – even if it is several days late. To be fair, I know that I would want my final model to have all the games – of which there is still 5 amazing days of games to be played. So, while it feels late for the Lunatic (since normally he would be worrying about his bracketology by this point in the week), it will all work out.

And since I am awake, I might as well give you all the Wednesday viewing guide. Lets look at what is in store. We have three more conferences deciding their representatives in the tournament. The Southland Conference tips off at 5 pm as McNeese (26-6) will try to defend their regular season title against 2nd place team Lamar (20-12). At 7 pm, Patriot regular-season co-champions American (21-12) will try to stop Navy (15-18) from joining St. Francis as teams with losing records to make the tournament. And for the nightowls at 11:30 pm, the Big Sky could see their co-champions Northern Colorado (25-8) and Montana (23-9) play each other in the final after splitting their two games in the regular season. However, Montana must first beat Idaho (14-18) in the semi-final that just started. I hope that I am not still awake when they finish to update this post.

For the locals here in Richmond, you might be interested in seeing the Spiders start their Atlantic 10 tournament against Davidson, or the Cavaliers kick-off their ACC tournament against Georgia Tech.

As for the bubble, all the major conferences are kicking off their tournaments (or moving to the 2nd round for the Big 12 and ACC).

In the ACC, North Carolina and SMU have must win games. The Tar Heels play Notre Dame at 2:30 pm, and the Mustangs play Syracuse at 9:30 pm – if the ACC wants to see a 4th or 5th team make the tournament, they can’t afford to have their bubble teams lose to teams that are not in the bubble conversation like the Irish and Orange.

In the Big 10, Ohio State plays an Iowa team at 6 pm that upset Nebraska to get into the conference tournament. The Buckeyes are 17-14, and considering that I think only 2 teams have received at-large bids with a record only 2 games over .500, they can’t afford to lose to the Hawkeyes. OSU’s NET ranking at 36 is competitive, so they will certainly be one of the most interesting bubble teams – but I think a loss to Iowa might be too much to overcome.

Villanova kicks off their Big East tournament against Seton Hall at 9 pm. With a NET of 53, they might be on the outside looking in – but a strong Big East tournament might get the committee to notice them.

The Big 12 has a lot of fun match-ups. Cincinnati got revenge of their regular season finale against Oklahoma State, but they now have to play #12 Iowa State. Next, West Virginia needs to avoid a bad loss against Colorado. Baylor might be safer with a NET of 31, but would feel better if they beat Kansas State. And the 2nd round ends with the 9:30 pm game of Kansas trying to get some momentum going against UCF.

But lets face it, if you want to watch the biggest bubble games, you simply need to turn the TV onto the SEC Network and leave it there. With as many as 14 teams trying to make an argument they belong, watching the teams in the most danger of missing the tournament play each other should lead to tons of drama.

We kick things off with Arkansas playing a South Carolina team that has been trying to play spoiler over the last few weeks. At 3:30 pm, Vanderbilt plays Texas in an intriguing game – the Commodores are safer, but don’t want to lose their third straight. The Longhorns have lost 8 of their last 10, so they really must win on Wednesday to stay in the picture.

The 7 pm game has Mississippi State taking on LSU. The Bulldogs are probably safe – but having lost 4 of their last 5 and falling out of the polls, they would like to get past the Tigers. And the SEC might have inadvertently saved the best for last as Georgia tries to keep riding the momentum of their 4 game winning streak when they play the Lunatic’s most confusing bubble team Oklahoma. The Sooners looked like they were done heading into last week, and then beat #15 Missouri and Texas to stay in the bubble picture.

I will continue to say I just don’t know what the committee does with the Sooners. The committee always says that they don’t look at conference records, but the entire resume for a team. At 19-12 and 6 Quad 1 victories, it seems like the Sooners should be in. But at 6-12 in the SEC, there are 12 teams who are 2 games or more ahead of Oklahoma in the standings. The worst conference record a team has had and still got an at-large bid was 7-11 – going from 4 games under 500 to 6 games under might be a blemish that the committee can’t look past. To say that beating Georgia is a must win game might not be 100% accurate, but they certainly have very little margin of error.

Lots of fun basketball games. A few conference titles from the non-power conferences, and exciting bubble matchups in the power conferences. Enjoy the games!