Mid-February Bubble Guide

Consider this the next installation in the series that began with Welcome to the Bubble and continued with the February Rooting Guide...

Right now, we are exactly where we were afraid we'd end up -- squarely on the bubble.

With tired legs, shaken confidence, rebounding struggles, a tendency to cough up costly turnovers, shooting woes, scoring malaise, and the top-notch defense looking suddenly second-notch, our worry is totally and completely appropriate.

The Resumé
The good news is that our profile remains strong.  A decent RPI ranking, a very good 7-3 record against the RPI top 100, solid scores in Pomeroy and Sagarin ratings, and the injury excuse in case we start getting banged on for our recent losses.  Mike Scott gives us star power, Tony Bennett gives us coaching cred.  Our win over Michigan gives us a signature win to pimp, and two home games against ACC elite gives us two more chances for marquee victories.  More good news: the bubble, from a big picture perspective, is softening.  There aren't a whole lot of slam-dunk at-large contenders, and there aren't so many vogue mid-majors, which is good.

The bad news is our weak out-of-conference schedule is going to be a major sticking point for the committee, and the fact that we're stuck at 6 ACC wins, and a 6-10, 7-9, or even 8-8 conference record isn't going to earn an at-large bid.  I could see us getting in with an 8-8 finish and a win on Thursday in the ACC Tournament followed up by a loss on Friday to Duke, UNC, or FSU.  But I think that scenario is the absolutely worst we can finish and still have hope for a tournament bid.  Please know that it's going to be important that we at least get to a game against one of the ACC's "big three" in the ACC Tournament, as that extra game against an RPI top-25 squad will help buoy our own RPI and strength of schedule metrics.

Tomorrow's game at home against Maryland is about as must-win as a must-win gets when it's not literally an elimination game.  We're already a little bit behind the 8-ball, but a loss tomorrow makes that 8-ball the size of a small jupiter moon.

Maryland
@ Virginia Tech
North Carolina
Florida State
@ Maryland

Winning three of these games (especially if one of the wins is against UNC or FSU) puts us in the Big Dance, I believe.  Therefore, I am changing the "magic number" to 3 in our resumé window to the right.

Consider the Possibilities
Ask yourself this honest question: Which of the following scenarios would you rather see play out?

• We scrape into the Tournament as an 8- or 9-seed, with Syracuse or Kentucky looming as the 1-seed we'd face in the 2nd round.
• We scrape into the Tournament as a 10- or 11-seed, face a solid Notre Dame / Vanderbilt type of team in the 1st round, with the chance to earn a potential 2nd round date with a team like Michigan State, Marquette, or Baylor should we spring the 1st round upset.
• We scrape into the Tournament as one of the last at-large teams, and play a play-in game in Dayton on Tuesday or Wednesday night.  Play a team like Illinois or Washington in the play-in, then advance as a 12-seed to face a 5-seed like Gonzaga or Murray State in the 1st round, with a team like Indiana or UNLV looming in the 2nd round.
• We miss the Tournament, but make the NIT, where we host two or three games on our way to the semifinals in Madison Square Garden, with Joe Harris' hand and Assane Sene's foot healing nicely along the way.

Obviously, we want to rally down the stretch, knock off UNC and/or FSU in our home games against those two, and surge into the NCAA Tournament as a 6- or 7-seed.  But right now, I don't see that as being very likely.  One of the above four scenarios are much more realistic, I'd say.  (But the lifelong Virginia fan inside of me half expects an epic collapse down the stretch and an explosive triple-overtime flame-out in the first round of the NIT, probably against a team I hate, like VCU.  I've been conditioned - like a beaten dog - to expect the worst as a Virginia fan.)

Bracket Math

68 teams make the NCAA Tournament.  33 of those teams make it in with auto bids by way of winning their conference or conference tournament.  That leaves 35 at-large spots.  Obviously, we need to hope for very few conference championship upsets, especially from mid-major leagues that have a team or teams that are locks for an at-large bid.  (An example of this is the Ohio Valley Conference, where Murray State is a lock but the rest of the conference needs to win the championship in order to go to the Big Dance.  If Murray State loses in that conference tournament, they'll still get an at-large, while some shit-eating mid-major crap team like Tennessee Tech would steal one of the auto bids, thus effectively reducing the number of available at-large bids for the bubble teams... like us.)

Essentially, we want teams from the list of tournament locks [below] to win their conference tournaments.  Meanwhile, let's add up those tournament locks to see how many at-large bids are left for teams like UVA...

• ACC -- Duke, North Carolina, Florida State
• Big 12 -- Kansas, Missouri, Baylor
• Big East -- Syracuse, Georgetown, Marquette, Louisville, Notre Dame
• B1G -- Ohio State, Michigan State, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin
• SEC -- Kentucky, Florida, Vanderbilt
• Atlantic 10 -- Temple
• Mountain West -- UNLV, San Diego State
• Missouri Valley -- Wichita State
• C-USA -- Memphis, Southern Miss
• WCC -- St. Mary's, Gonzaga
• Ohio Valley -- Murray State
• Ivy -- Harvard
• Sun Belt -- Middle Tennessee State

That leaves 20 conferences that will only put one team - the conference champion - into the Tournament.  Add those 20 to the 30 teams I listed above, and that's 50.  That means 18 bids are available to bubble teams and/or any teams that upset the above-listed teams to win those conference championships.

Assuming at least one or two of those unfortunate [for us] conference tournament upsets, we're looking at trying to make it in as one of the 15 or 16 bubble teams that are extended a bid.  We will be competing for those bids with:

• Miami
• NC State
• Iowa State
• Kansas State
• Texas
• Seton Hall
• UConn
• Cincinnati
• West Virginia
• Illinois
• Minnesota
• Purdue
• Northwestern
• California
• Washington
• Colorado
• Arizona
• Oregon
• Alabama
• Ole Miss
• Arkansas
• St. Louis
• Xavier
• Dayton
• UMass
• St. Joe's
• New Mexico
• Creighton
• BYU

Folks, this is not rocket science.  Pull against those teams listed above, as there are 15 or 16 available bids for us and those 29 teams.  We need to finish in the top 50% of those teams.  We need to see our sweet cream rise to the top in that milkshake.

Meanwhile, pull for the teams we've played and especially the teams we've beaten -- it never hurts to have that RPI bolstered at all times.

And pull against VCU.  Just because.