It’s never too early to start examining teams resumes for the NCAA tournament. The bubble can be scary, all it takes is one bad loss to knock you off it. That being said, let’s take a look at teams that helped or hurt their bubble cases.
Northwestern: As bubbly as it gets.
As I’m typing this I’m currently asking myself, “why are we even debating about Northwestern?” There is no way they make the tournament, right? I’ve watched the Wildcats float on the bubble and lose every critical game down the stretch for too many years. I swear the program is cursed. However, for the sake of something crazy happening, I will still discuss Northwestern. This team is lacking a signature win on their resume. They have lost close games to Butler, Notre Dame, Michigan State and Minnesota. With this in mind, there is good and bad news for the Wildcats.
The good news is the Big Ten is very middle-heavy. There are not a lot of good teams and not a lot of bad teams. This means there is a huge opportunity to beat a lot of quality teams still on their schedule. The bad news is it means they will be lacking a big time win. The Big Ten’s only ranked teams are Purdue and Wisconsin and they are even outside of the top 15. I think Northwestern’s magic number for Big Ten wins is 11, but they will probably find some way to screw it up at the end of the year.
Georgia: On the outside looking in.
Georgia will have a tough time making the tournament this year unless they pull off a huge run to end the season here. The Bulldogs really only have four more shots at a quality win for the rest of the year, meaning there are more chances to hurt their resume than help it. Yante Maten and J.J. Frazier are very good players, but there is too steep of a drop-off to the rest of their team for them to be a tournament team.
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Minnesota: Dangerously approaching the bubble.
If any team hurt their case this week it was Minnesota. Sitting at 15-2 and ranked 24th in the country, they were smooth sailing. But an absolute blow-out loss to Michigan State and a loss to Penn State were not great performances. Minnesota is not a bubble team, yet. However, with their next four games being against Wisconsin, at Oho State, Maryland and at Illinois, they need to record a couple of wins to stay out of the bubble talk.
Kansas State: Trending downward.
Kansas State is in a similar situation as Northwestern. They are pretty much as bubbly as it gets, however the Wildcats had a rough week, and they are trending in the wrong direction. They had an opportunity to record a big win against either Baylor or at Texas Tech, but lost both those games. Even though those are two good teams and it won’t hurt their resume, they missed out on a chance to improve it. Another big opportunity is a date this week with the West Virginia Mountaineers. West Virginia can beat anyone (Baylor), but can also lose to anyone (almost Texas). A win there would put them on the positive side of the bubble.