Stomp The Lunatic

Well, I got home late from work today – not making it home until after 7 pm. It apparently shows. After dinner, I figured I would work on my bracketology for a while. I was going to watch the Georgia vs. Oklahoma game simply to realize I don’t get the games on the SEC Network. So annoyed at that.

Well, I kept going on the bracketology – to formulate my final version of the bubble. Was annoyed at the teams that might make it in that probably are not worthy of a bid. Still not a fan of a 6-12 SEC team making it in the tournament, but after looking at the bubble, I sadly believe it could happen.

Of course, when I finished the page – my formatting of my bracketology page got all messed up to the point that I can’t publish it.

With it being after 11 pm, I am fading fast and haven’t even been able to validate my box scores. So much to do – and so little time.

I will mention this – which might add to my disgust of this year’s bubble.

In the SEC, Vanderbilt lost to Texas making the conference even more confusing. It will get worse if Oklahoma can beat Georgia in the game I can not watch – its a two point game with about 9 to play. Ohio State, West Virginia and Cincinnati all lost.

It wasn’t all bad for the bubble – North Carolina won their game by 20. Baylor won by 14. But the Lunatic doesn’t know that he can make it much longer before slumber overtakes him. So, before going to bed, have to at least congratulate McNeese and American – who punched their tickets to the dance with victories in the conference finals.

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!

In the Northeast Conference Championship, regular season champion Central Connecticut on their home court found themselves down two points with under 30 seconds. With the game on the line, Joe Ostrowsky drove to the basket beating his man off the dribble and tied the game with a nice layup.

Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, St. Francis PA inbounded the ball to Daemar Kelly who took the ball all the way down the court, made a nice stop near the free throw line to get some space on his defender, and hit the jumper with 9 seconds left. After stealing the ball on the next play and hitting a free-throw, the Red Flash survived the defensive battle with a 46-43 victory. It wasn’t pretty, but it doesn’t matter – St. Francis PA is dancing despite the fact that they have a 16-17 record.

Meanwhile, Robert Morris was able to defend their Horizon conference regular season title by building a double digit lead with 5 minutes to play and never looked back. The Colonials beat Youngstown State for their 26th victory, and an invitation to the NCAA Tournament.

To finish off the early championships, Delaware’s John Camden hit a huge three pointer from the corner to cut UNC-Wilmington’s lead to 2. But UNC-Wilmington would not back down. With the shot clock running down, Donovan Newby hit a deep and well contested jumper to push the Seahawks lead back to 4. After some free throws, Delaware’s Izaiah Pasha continued to make it interesting by hitting a three-pointer to cut the lead to 2 with just 8 seconds left. After the foul to stop the clock, Newby with ice in his veins calmly hit nothing but net on both his free throws, and UNC-Wilmington would hand on for a 4 point victory and the Coastal Conference automatic bid.

I flip over to ESPN to watch the premier game of the night, and see that Gonzaga has jumped out to a 20-7 lead over ranked St. Mary’s. Will I make any more progress on getting the box scores cleaned up tonight, or will I fall into the trap of watching the West Coast Championship. Only time will tell.

Congratulations to St. Francis (PA), Robert Morris and UNC-Wilmington.

There were a couple upsets Monday, but not in the games that mattered to the bubble. So that sets up the big game at 9 pm where #19 St Mary’s will try to defend their regular season title against Gonzaga in the WCC championship game. Gonzaga is an interesting bubble case with a top 10 NET ranking but not a lot of substance once you dig in to that rating. I think they are safe, but it couldn’t hurt to take the decision out of the committee’s hands.

Three other conferences have their finals at 7 pm. In the Horizon, regular season champion Robert Morris (25-8) takes on Youngstown State (21-12). In the Northeast, regular season champion Central Connecticut (25-6) tries to stop St. Francis PA (15-17) from getting in with a losing record after they beat 2nd place LIU on Saturday. And the Coastal has a similar situation, with 2nd place UNC-Wilmington (26-7) trying to stop Delaware’s (16-19) hot streak after they took out the regular season champion Towson on Monday night.

The Big 12 and ACC kick off their tournaments today. Anyone playing today is a long shot, with the best chances belonging to Cincinnati, Pitt and maybe Florida State – who all start the day at 17-14. If last year is an indication, none of these teams have a chance at an at-large bid, but there is always the possibility that they recreate some of the magic that NC State did last year when they won 5 straight games to claim the ACC title.

The bigger bubble games will start tomorrow and Thursday as the SEC, Big 10 and Big East kick off their tournaments. For now, you have 3 conference championships and some ACC and Big 12 games before the real showcase game begins in Las Vegas between the Gaels and Bulldogs.

Enjoy the games

I must apologize to my statisticians out there. I know that you all like getting the box score summary data. I thought I got all the data – but the codes I have are messing up what games are neutral court games based on some changes to the formatting on the NCAA site. I think I have figured it out, but I also don’t want to have to pull all 6000 box scores again.

So that will be an exercise for tomorrow – I run the schedule code each morning to give the NCAA time to load all the late evening games (for example, the Gonzaga vs San Francisco game is just starting).

I am hoping that my fixes will run tomorrow – and then I can use some IDs that I have in the files to clean up what is in all of the box scores without having to pull that data again – otherwise, I have to scrape their site for what will take 4-5 hours, which I am sure they would appreciate me not doing during championship week. So, hopefully by the time that the WCC championship is playing tomorrow, I will finally have the usual data that I provide everyone.

No promises – this has sadly not been going as smoothly as it normally does.

It is always important to finish a game strong. The Southern and Sun Belt conference championships were decided that way.

In the Southern conference, Wofford found themselves down 4 with only a couple minutes to play. But Kyler Filewich hit a layup to cut the lead to two, and after a defensive stop, Charles Johnston hit a three-pointer to give the Terriers a lead that they would not give up. They hit their free throws and finished the game on a 13-2 run to beat Furman for the title.

In the Sun Belt, Troy found themselves down 8 to Arkansas State with 10 minutes to play. Then, Tayton Conerway took over. Conerway scored 12 of the Trojans next 24 points, as they went on a 24-4 run over the next 8 minutes to claim the Sun Belt title.

Congratulations to Wofford and Troy on winning their conference tournament championships to earn their way into the NCAA Tournament.

There are only 12 games on Monday – if the Lunatic was sane, this would be a good day to make progress on his bracketology and get a good night’s sleep. We will see what really happens.

For these early days, I like to focus on the smaller conferences that are having their finals. Without the power conferences playing, this is their opportunity to shine as they have the spotlight.

So far, 5 teams have punched their tickets to the dance. Drake (MVC), High Point (Big South), Lipscomb (Atlantic 10), and Omaha (Summit) all won their conference title on Sunday to join SIU-Edwardsville (OVC) as teams with automatic bids. One thing the Lunatic liked about Sunday is that all 4 teams were either the regular season champions or co-champions.

If you are looking for what to watch on Monday, there are two more bids being decided – with both games at 7 pm. The Sun Belt conference was wild with a 4 way tie for their regular season championship. Two of those teams – Troy and Arkansas State – will play for the title tonight.

The other conference championship is the Southern Conference tournament – which has seen carnage to the top seeds. 5th place Furman will take on 6th place Wofford to earn the right to represent the Southern Conference in the NCAA Tournament.

As for the other games, the Southland quarterfinals, and the Big Sky, Horizon and Colonial semi-finals continue. But the games of most interest won’t start until 9 pm out in the West Coast conference. Their semi-finals have Pepperdine (who have upset Santa Clara and Oregon State to get here) against #21 St. Mary’s in the first game and Gonzaga tries to improve their bubble status when they play San Francisco in the late game.

If you are a fan of any bubble team, you should be rooting hard for St. Mary’s and Gonzaga – I suspect both teams are clearly in the field (although Gonzaga is a little bit complicated). If San Francisco or Pepperdine can win two more games today and tomorrow, they will clearly steal a big from the bubble (as St. Mary’s will need an at-large bid).

The WCC this year also adds an interesting fact that I am sure will get missed by many including the committee. We constantly hear the argument that we should select the below .500 team from a power conference (like Georgia or Vanderbilt) over a mid-major champion who lost in their conference tournament, because clearly if that power conference team played in the mid-major, they would dominate – while the mid-major champion certainly would not have 27 wins playing in the SEC.

The reason the WCC conference is interesting is because of the demise of the Pac 12. Left without a conference, Washington State and Oregon State joined the WCC in basketball so they could play in a conference as they try to rebuild the Pac 12. So we should have our test case to the comment above – obviously Washington State and Oregon State are going to dominate – after all, Washington State finished 2nd in the last year of the Pac 12 and won their first-round game in the tournament before losing to #2 seed Iowa State in the Round of 32.

Well, that dominance never happened. Washington State finished 6th in the conference at 8-10 (despite going 10-3 in the non-conference schedule) and lost by 11 in the quarterfinals to San Francisco. Oregon State finished 5th in the conference at 10-8 (despite also going 10-3 in the non-conference schedule) and lost their first round game to Pepperdine by 4.

You could say that the WCC isn’t the same since Gonzaga and St. Mary’s are tourney teams each year. Well, if you take those teams out, the two Pac 12 schools still lost 10 regular season games to other WCC schools (as well as both their WCC tournament games). You could argue that they were destroyed by the demise of the Pac 12 – that might be accurate but you would expect a power conference team would have held on to enough talent to be able to handle teams like Pepperdine (no offense meant to the Waves but they are 12-21 on the season).

There is a lot of good basketball that is being played in the non power conferences. The next time a 28-5 team like last year’s Indiana State loses in their conference championship game, maybe we can look at that team a little bit differently than simply assuming that they would lose most of their games against power conference teams. Based on the Pac 12 teams, it looks like those sub-500 power conference teams might not dominate the mid-major conference like you would expect.

They were likely on the outside looking in to begin the week. On February 16th, they beat Northwestern to go to 17-9 (7-6 in the Big 10). They were clearly in the race to make the tournament. They also only had Michigan left in their schedule of the front-runners in the conference, so a chance to get to 21-10 was very realistic. But then they lost on the road to Penn State. They fought Michigan at home in a defensive battle but lost by 3. They then got shocked at home by Minnesota as the Gophers’ Brennan Rigsby hit a three pointer with 4 seconds to win by 2.

But with a NET ranking in the 50s, Nebraska at 17-12 and 7-11 in the Big 10 conference still was in the conversation. Their toughest games in conference were done and so while Ohio State and Iowa were not easy wins, they certainly weren’t like having to play Michigan State and Maryland. They also had Quad 1 victories against Creighton, UCLA, Illinois and Oregon – so they had some big wins.

On Tuesday, they travelled to Columbus, but lost in double overtime to the Buckeyes 116-114 in a crazy game. Today, the Cornhuskers took on the Iowa Hawkeyes for their last home game of the season. And the Hawkeyes went on a run in the second half to beat Nebraska 83-68.

It never is good to go on a five game losing streak before the conference tournament, but that was not the worst news for the Cornhuskers. That is because their losing streak moved them from the middle of the standings to a five way tie for 12th in the conference. And after all the tie-breakers were done, Nebraska found themselves in 16th. Unfortunately, the Big 10 decided that only 15 teams would travel to Indianapolis for the conference tournament.

About a month ago, Nebraska looked like a team that had serious chances to make the tournament. Then, they finished on a 5 game losing streak, got eliminated from their conference tournament before it even started, and have lost any chance to improve their resume to the committee next week – there is no way they take a team that fell to 16th in the conference.

Some bubble teams have lost crushing games – such as Cincinnati losing to Oklahoma State on Saturday. But they still have games next week – they have another chance to show they should be at the dance. Meanwhile, the Cornhuskers lost by 3 to a ranked team, lost on a last second three-pointer, and the lost in double overtime – and now, their season is over. Their record is good enough to be considered for one of the post-season tournaments, but that won’t be the NCAA Tournament.

All of us have probably watched rough patches for our teams – it can be agonizing. But no one has had a worse 5 game stretch than Nebraska.

Tonight, we have a cautionary tale of how magical March can be, but that for every magical story, there tends to be utter heartbreak. Maybe it was appropriate that I just got home from seeing Moulin Rouge.

In Evansville, Indiana, the Ohio Valley Conference hosted the first championship game of Championship Week, as regular-season SE Missouri State played 2nd place SIU-Edwardsville. The Cougars jumped out to an 11 point lead at half-time, watched as the regular season champions came all the way back to be down 41-40. And then SIU-Edwardsville would outplay the champs the rest of the way, finishing the game on a 28-8 run to win the Ohio Valley Championship.

The magic is the stories that will follow as this is the first time ever that SIU-Edwardsville will be heading to the NCAA Tournament. The heart-break is obviously what happens to SE Missouri State. The Redhawks don’t have the luxury that teams like Auburn, Duke, Houston, Michigan State and St. John’s have. If one of those regular season conference champions lose in their tournament, they are still likely going to get a top 2-3 seed in the NCAA championship. There will be no dancing for the Redhawks – the Selection Committee is not going to be giving the OVC regular season champion who went 15-5 in their conference an at-large bid.

What makes this sadder is realizing what happened in the regular season. In December, the Redhawks played to Cougars at home and won by 16 points. 9 days ago, they made the trip to Edwardsville, and beat SIUE by 15 points. They dominated the Cougars in two games in the regular season. But it can be tough to beat a team three times in the same season, and unfortunately for SE Missouri State, the only game that matters is the one that they lost.

Over the next several days, the other 30 conferences will be determining who gets their automatic bid from their tournaments. But some of the most important ones will be over the next few days. And that is because for these conferences, they have no margin of error. Dominance in the regular season gets thrown completely out, and all that matters is how you play over 3-5 days.

Congratulations to the SIU-Edwardsville Cougars on being the first team in 2025 to earn their invitation to the NCAA Championships.

If the Lunatic had a second and third passion outside of college basketball (and of course, anything his kids or wife are doing), it would be golf and Broadway musicals.

Sometimes, timing happens where I get to enjoy all three. Today, it was finally warm enough to try to go golfing, so I rushed out to Mattaponi Springs for my first round of 2025 – and I actually played well for myself. Very pleased.

I got home in time to watch Alabama upset Auburn in overtime, as Mark Sears drove to the lane and hit a floater to give the Tide the victory over their in-state rival. I watched a little of the Kansas game as I tried to figure out pulling the box scores – I switched quickly over to watch SMU get beat by Florida State. Katie asked me if I cared about who won, and I said mainly just want to know for my bubble watch. And she said, Oh, its for the blog because you’re a nerd. I had no response to that.

Now, the family is getting ready to see Moulin Rouge at the Altria Theater. Katie is excited since she has inherited my love for the theater, and as she is sitting next to me, she is also thrilled that she made the blog. She loves being in the blog – especially for when she says something silly about college basketball – like her dad being a nerd.

So, rapid style – what can I add about the bubble.

• North Carolina is giving Duke in a battle they really need to have for more than bragging rights.
• Arkansas pulled off a huge victory against Mississippi State – defending two shots in the lane in the last seconds to preserve their win.
• Georgia beat Vanderbilt to continue to boost their resume
• Colorado State beat Boise State in a big Mountain West battle.
• Indiana came back to beat Ohio State – giving the Hoosiers a sweep over the Buckeyes, which might be important when comparing the two bubble teams.
• West Virginia won an important game for them against UCF to get to 10-10 in the Big 12
• Meanwhile, Cincinnati’s bubble might have lost as they were upset by Oklahoma State.

And so much more, I am sure I will catch up with everything tomorrow. But for now, it is time for Katie and me to enjoy some great music. Moulin Rouge is ready to begin.