March 9, 2012
Easy Bubble Solver
Projecting the Field

by Jeff Nusser

Much virtual ink is spilled this time of year by bracketologists attempting to look into their crystal balls to figure out which schools are going to secure one of the 37 at large bids for the NCAA tournament. For weeks, my Twitter timeline has been filled with this guy or that guy telling me the impact a win or loss has on a team's resume.

But as our own Drew Cannon showed about a month ago, figuring out who's in and who's out really isn't rocket science. (Seeding, of course, is a totally different story. But given the variance in performance from year to year of all of the tournament forecasters, I'm not really convinced there's any particular skill to that, either.)

Cannon's Easy Bubble Solver really is this easy: Add together a team's RPI and Ken Pomeroy ranking, order them, and take the top 37 teams.

The EBS would have correctly picked 162 of the possible 173 at large teams over the past five seasons, a 93.6 percent success rate. Or, about what the bracket experts generally pick correctly after studying the committee for years and watching hundreds of hours of basketball each season.

So, without further ado, here is our look at the NCAA tournament bubble, via the EBS.

Total bids: 68 -- 31 automatic, 37 at large

Automatic bids claimed so far: 15 -- Belmont (Atlantic Sun), Montana (Big Sky), UNC Asheville (Big South), VCU (Colonial), Detroit (Horizon), Harvard (Ivy), Loyola Maryland (Metro Atlantic), Creighton (Missouri Valley), LIU Brooklyn (Northeast), Murray State (Ohio Valley), Lehigh (Patriot), Davidson (Southern), South Dakota State (Summit), Western Kentucky (Sun Belt), St. Mary's (West Coast)

Bids remaining to presumed one-bid conferences: 6 -- America East, Mid-American, Mid-Eastern, Southland, Southwestern, Western Athletic

Remaining bids ostensibly still up for grabs: 47

First, here are the top 37 teams, who we would presume are "in":

Now, for the bubble. Top 10 teams here are above the cutoff mark of 47; next 10 in italics:

Quick observations... Fans of Washington who are worried, should be. After Thursday's unexpected loss to Oregon State -- although, really, is any loss in the Pac-12 truly unexpected at this point? -- the Huskies have now dropped below the line. That's a presumably unprecedented position for the regular season champion of one of a major conference to be in.

As you can see, this Pac-12-as-one-bid-league talk isn't crazy. And although Oregon looks to be on the bubble, one would assume the Ducks are dead in the water. (Sorry for the terrible pun.) Arizona is close to the line, but a win over OSU isn't going to do much. The Wildcats' best opportunity for an RPI booster would be in the championship against Cal, so it's pretty much auto bid or bust for Sean Miller's squad.

Despite the skepticism of Pomeroy's laptop, Southern Miss is looking good. Of course, the Golden Eagles can make that moot with two more wins in the Conference USA tournament.

Northwestern's quest to make its first NCAA tournament appears incredibly precarious. Couldn't the Wildcats have just beaten Minnesota and made it all moot? And they're in serious danger of getting passed over by teams such as Xavier and Saint Joseph's.

How about Marshall's late push? Will the Thundering Herd have anything left in the tank after their triple-overtime thriller? A win over RPI wonder-team Southern Miss would boost their resume significantly.

Today's Tennessee-Ole Miss tilt in the SEC tournament should be pretty important to both teams' fates. For what it's worth, Pomeroy's laptop has Tennessee at about a 60/40 favorite in that one.

Iona is going to make an interesting test case for this. Could the Gaels be this year's VCU? Then again, maybe Drexel, which lost to VCU in the CAA championship, is this year's VCU.

Jeff Nusser is the Editor of CougCenter and a regular contributor to Basketball Prospectus. Follow him on Twitter at @NussCoug.

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