I was going to write a viewing guide for today when I realized it would simply be too long. Everyone can go to ESPN or CBS or FOX and look up the television schedule for the day, and if I was to talk about what games I want to see, I would need to create a post that simply copies that entire schedule.

The power conferences have all begun their tournaments either yesterday or today. If I counted correctly, 18 games today involve teams that were listed in my bracketology page as bubble teams that are not locks for the tournament. These teams are not going to punch their ticket to the dance today, but they could certainly create a bad lasting impression if they lose.

The truth is fans feel that the tournaments are more important than they probably are. The honest answer is all the tournaments do is give every team a path to the NCAA Championship – so to be fair, they still mean a lot. But if you don’t claim you automatic bid, the fans put more weight on the games than the committee.

We think that if a bubble team loses early, they are eliminating themselves while if a bubble team gets to the semi-finals, they have earned their bid – of which neither are completely true.

Lets take Stanford’s heartbreaking loss to Pitt yesterday on a crazy tip-in at the buzzer. It is easy to say because they ended poorly that they are going to not make it. But the committee does a good job of viewing every game as a single game. Stanford still has victories over Q1 teams like UNC, Louisville, SMU, Virginia Tech and St. Louis (which is a lot more than fellow bubble teams). All it does is it gives them a bad Q3 loss. But it is the same as if they had lost to Pitt in January. The committee doesn’t care that they lost in March. They might care that they have 4 Q3 losses (Pitt, Notre Dame, UNLV and Seattle) that might be more than other bubble teams. Stanford is the classic bubble team – an inconsistent team that can beat UNC or Louisville one day and lose to Seattle the next.

We can also take a hypothetical win streak. Lets say the Big East top part of the bracket blows up and Butler or Providence upsets St. John’s and super bubble team Seton Hall takes advantage and beats Creighton and Butler to make the Big East championship before getting crushed by UConn. Fans want to believe that Seton Hall has done enough to earn their spot because they made it to the final. But here is the problem – Seton Hall’s biggest blemish on their resume is that they have only one Q1 victory (NC State). Beating Creighton and Butler will give them a couple more Q2/3 wins against teams bubble teams are supposed to beat. And then the one Q1 opportunity for them still crushed them in the final. They got all the way to the final but since the committee just looks at it as another game, they didn’t really improve their resume. Now if they made the final by beating St. John’s the tournament helped by giving them an additional win against a fellow tournament team.

In some of the conferences, there are more opportunities. In the Big 12 today, Arizona State gets Iowa State today with Texas Tech awaiting the winner. That would mean 2 major wins to show the committee you belong – of course, that also means you have to beat Iowa State and Texas Tech on back-to-back days.

Anyways, if you want to watch fun meaningful basketball games today, you can turn on ESPN for either the ACC or Big 12 tournaments, Peacock and the Big 10 network for the Big 10 games or the SEC Network for the SEC tournament. Every game has some intrigue whether it be a situation like Auburn drawing against a Mississippi State team that would give them a bad loss or a SMU vs Louisville that could be a win that helps both teams.

I will certainly give you the times of the three games where a win means you are in the tournament and a loss means you are out.

• 5 pm on ESPN2 is the Southland final between 1 seed Stephen F Austin (28-4) and 2 seed McNeese (27-5). So you have this year’s regular season champ against the defending 2-time champion. To be the best, you have to beat the best!!! If it is anything like last night’s triple overtime semi-final, it will be the game of the day.
• 7 pm on CBS Sports Network is the Patriot final between 2 seed Lehigh (17-16) and 4 seed Boston University (17-16)
• 11:30 pm on ESPN2 is the Big Sky final between 4 seed Montana (18-15) and 7 seed Idaho (20-14) as these two teams were responsible for eliminating all of the top 3 seeds in the Big Sky.

If I had to pick the best games from each of the times in the power conferences, I would probably pick the following. (Note – this isn’t necessarily the most critical game. That will clearly be the teams the closest to the actual bubble cut line. For example, Auburn vs Mississippi State would be the most influential if Auburn loses. But since I don’t think this is the game that Auburn gets tripped up on, there are other games I think will be closer (although to be honest, I could just be happy watching the bubble games from the ACC)

• 12:30 pm – I would pick the 12:30 pm game between LSU and Kentucky in the SEC. I think the SEC is more competitive than people realize and I am interested to see how the Wildcats play against a team with nothing to lose since LSU has too many losses to be an at-large team.
• 2:30 pm – this is one of the best time spots – you can’t go wrong with any of the 4 games. But I will pick SMU vs Louisville in the ACC – I think both these teams could be playing next week so this could be the calibur of your classic 7/10 battle.
• 6:30 pm – I am biased here. I want to see Indiana vs Northwestern in the Big 10. First, it is the team that Purdue will play tomorrow. Second is that Indiana clearly needs a win right now and Northwestern is talented enough to upset anyone (as they almost did to my Boilers last week).
• 9:30 pm – I will spread out the love and choose TCU vs Oklahoma State in the Big 12. TCU should be in and Oklahoma State is likely too far down the NET rankings to make it without some major scalps in the Big 12 tournament. But TCU won both games in this series by 3 points (with the second one in overtime), so it should be a great battle.

Enjoy the games today. And if you’re a fan of a bubble team that loses today, don’t lose hope. The committee just treats this as one game and not a season-defining moment. I am sure that the media will build up the hype as every game is a must win game, and I might even make comments on my bracketology that this game was the final straw. But the only people that matter are the 12 members of the selection committee and they will be inviting 37 teams that lost during their conference tournaments. Hopefully, your bubble team will be one of those 37 teams.