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Ahem: We might have been a little premature in locking Illinois. This concern nagged at us early in the day Thursday, as we were looking over other leagues’ team sheets again; as Michigan hung tough in Champaign Thursday night, it became a low roar. By overtime, when Hunter Dickinson was taking every post touch and Terrence Shannon Jr. was suddenly double-clutching 3s on zero-pass Illini possessions, the idea was screaming in our face: Maybe Illinois wasn’t safe. Maybe Illinois wasn’t a lock.

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Then — not long before Michigan and Illinois went to overtime No. 2 — Minnesota hit a buzzer-beater to upset Rutgers.

This is the thing about most locks: Even if teams start to look vaguely unsafe, even if we get a little overenthusiastic and lock someone before it’s totally certain, even if we get needlessly anxious about this weird and totally self-imposed rule, it usually ends up fine. Know why? Because there are always a bunch of other teams below the ostensibly endangered lock, teams who are even more prone to trade wins and losses, tread water, or fall apart entirely. These are teams that are closer to the bubble, even if marginally, for a reason.

Illinois ended up winning that second overtime, but the Rutgers loss almost meant they didn’t need to. Everything is relative; this applies to everyone. Between now and Selection Sunday, some teams with “work to do” might do that work, might accomplish whatever hypothetical “they need to win X and Y!” proclamation we make for them, only for another team to go on an even more massive last-ditch at-large run. And then there are the bid thieves, which Brian discussed in his intro today, which will shrink the bubble through no fault of any bubble team’s own.

Sometimes, in the high-strung heat of tournament qualification season, folks get hyper-focused on whatever their team is doing, with win-and-in scenarios they invent for themselves. No team is an island. Every team is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Here’s the state of that continent as it stands today:

Automatic bids from non-Bubble Watch (i.e. one-bid) leagues: 23
Locks: 33
Should be in: 3
Work to do: 16

Housekeeping:

• Locks are generally reserved for teams that have zero chance of missing out on the NCAA Tournament, even if they were to lose every game the rest of the way; a lock should mean what it says on the tin. “Should be in” means your team would be pretty safely in if the field was selected today; “work to do” means nothing is guaranteed.

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• NET and schedule numbers are current as of Thursday morning. Records are fully up to date.

• As always, a million thanks to Warren Nolan for his amazing website. We would actually encourage interested new readers to go mess around with the team sheets there, to get a visual feel for what we’re talking about, so that it’s more concrete and less abstract.

ACC

We assume running Duke as a young, first-year head coach is a bit like captaining one of those giant modern container ships through the Suez Canal: Theoretically easy — the ship’s computer systems are designed to do 95 percent of the work — but with an extremely punishing threshold for mistakes. Jon Scheyer hasn’t made too many. His team was young, talented, injured and maybe just not as good as everyone thought, all of which is how we got the lowered seed expectations Duke currently carries. The Blue Devils were very rarely seeded outside the top two or three lines in Scheyer’s predecessor’s tenure, and they are looking at a No. 7 seed or thereabouts right now. But Duke is also healthy, congealing, playing its best basketball these last few weeks, and most of all a tournament lock. Scheyer’s first season could have gone a lot worse — and few top seeds will want to see this much talent line up opposite them in two weeks’ time.

GO DEEPER

With defeat of NC State, young Duke team grows into winner at home for new coach

Locks: Duke, Virginia, Miami
Work to do: NC State, North Carolina, Pittsburgh

NC State (22-9, 12-8; NET: 41, SOS: 76): The Wolfpack’s regular season is officially in the books. They finished Tuesday night at Duke, where the 71-67 final score looked a little closer than the second half really was, and where a win would have obviously been very helpful. Without it, NC State is basically where it was Tuesday afternoon when, following a home loss to Clemson, we started to get worried about these at-large odds for the first time in a long time. We have no dog in this fight, but it would be kind of a shame if NC State — a proud program with an intense fan base for whom success has been very fleeting for the past two decades — spent most of the season thinking it was going to play in the NCAA Tournament only to fall out at the last moment. The Pack are 2-6 against Quadrant 1 with wins over Duke (home) and Virginia Tech (away). They are 5-3 in Quadrant 2. Fifteen of their 22 wins lie in Quadrants 3 and 4. The team sheet weaknesses are all still here, and it may take a win or two at the ACC tournament for State fans to regain that “hey, we’re going to the tourney!” sheen they had for so much of the 2022-23 ACC campaign.

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North Carolina (19-11, 11-8; NET: 45, SOS: 48): There is a line of thinking about UNC we’ve seen a lot, and not just in the comments (which are usually really smart and fun and people should go mix it up down there if they’re so inclined), but also espoused by some people who do this whole bracketology thing professionally: That UNC will get in not just because its team sheet will be deemed satisfactory in a relative sense to the other teams on the bubble, but because it is UNC, because it nearly won the national title, because it’s “human nature” to see the preseason No. 1 and think the tournament is better with that team in it, because of the brand. To which we would say: That seems wrong. Or at least, we really hope that doesn’t happen. If the Tar Heels — whose win over Virginia (NET: 30) Saturday still resides in Quadrant 1, for now, making them 1-8 in Q1 and 6-3 in Q2, with no bad losses in Quads 3 or 4 — gets in the field, it shouldn’t be because it’s human nature to think Caleb Love and Co. could go another wild run. That’s dumb. Carolina has had a whole season to prove how good at basketball it is, and what it has proven to this point is that it is pretty average and not convincingly deserving of an NCAA Tournament bid. Screw human nature! Ignore the brand. Make UNC beat Duke Saturday and maybe even win a game or two at the ACC tournament to scrap its way in to the First Four, or whatever; if they can’t manage that, then the Heels missed their chance, and they don’t get a freebie just because they have cool uniforms that say “North Carolina” on them. Compare the actual team sheets. Be adults. It’s not that hard. No one is entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

Pittsburgh (21-9, 14-5; NET: 55, SOS: 97): Retiring Notre Dame coach Mike Brey had his farewell at the ’Backer Wednesday night, the unofficial end of a long, successful, memorable, and ultimately now fully petered-out tenure in South Bend — but not before taking down Pittsburgh in the farewell game that preceded it. Thus Pittsburgh fell victim, one last time, to the anchor effect in the ACC this season, whereas the bottom of the conference has consistently pulled the league’s better teams under water, grave hands snapping out from the abyss. It’s not just Boston College you have to worry about this season. It’s Boston College and Georgia Tech and Florida State and Louisville and Notre Dame, the latter three of which are all typically much, much better. Carrying those horrid NET rankings into conference play wasn’t good for the league as a whole; there is probably an anchor effect thing happening with the NET here. But the lack of elite teams at the top of the league has only gotten more exposed. Because here’s the thing: If you’re a really good team, you beat the bad teams in your league easily and reliably. Houston does it all the time. Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s, too. This year’s ACC is not much better than either of those leagues, and the reason you can’t simply chuck away Pittsburgh’s middling metrics is that the Panthers have had the opportunity to beat teams in ways that demonstrate their superiority all season and haven’t exactly done it.

Anyway: Where does the loss leave Pitt? Right back on the bubble, in our view. We were fairly certain the Panthers would get in earlier this week; the Notre Dame loss isn’t disqualifying in and of itself, but it puts them at real jeopardy if something goes totally haywire at the ACC tournament. In the meantime they should maybe consider beating Miami on the road Saturday. You’d take this collection of wins and losses over a fair amount of what’s on the bubble, but it’s not remotely the done deal some Pitt fans have been claiming of late — especially now.

GO DEEPER

Pitt basketball had nothing to lose. Now it has everything to gain

Clemson (21-9, 13-6; NET: 64, SOS: 105): If you didn’t watch Clemson play at Virginia Tuesday night, you might assume the 64-57 UVa win flattered the Tigers in some way. It’s not easy to go to Virginia and hang tough, all that. No. It was an awful game of basketball. Virginia is still deep in its offensive funk, Tony Bennett was experimenting with previously unthinkable lineups, and it still managed to keep Clemson at arm’s reach throughout. The Tigers can stay on the page again; they still have some decent wins. But with the 335th noncon SOS and all of those bad losses, they’re out on the very far fringe of the bubble picture.

Big 12

Iowa State fans: deep breaths, and focus on the lock. The Cyclones have been in free fall on the floor for a few weeks now, and frankly even longer than that — they’ve lost six of their last seven, yes, but going back to Jan. 14 they’re just 4-10. Granted, those four wins came over Texas, Kansas State, Kansas and TCU. Still, the fact is that a team that was once battling the elites of the Big 12 for a No. 3 seed has been fading badly toward the end of the conference campaign, to the point that we’ve seen some discussion about whether Iowa State is getting close to the bubble.

Simple answer: Come on. No. Iowa State has eight Quadrant 1 wins, against some of the very best teams in the country. Its metrics are all top 35, both in predictive terms and in the strength of their results. The Cyclones have slipped down the S-Curve accordingly — Brian has them as a No. 6 seed today — and we aren’t exactly expecting big things once they do arrive in the tournament, because they look totally sapped. (Losing Caleb Grill this week for violations of team policy won’t help.) But making the field? It’s never been remotely in doubt.

Elsewhere, Texas Tech is off the page. You feel for the Red Raiders: Once they figured this season out, they were really good. The two losses that knocked them off the bubble (likely for keeps) were an 83-82 home defeat to TCU and Tuesday’s 67-63 battle at Kansas. Extremely respectable performances, both, after a 6-2 remontada got them back in the picture in the first place. Unfortunately, when you lose eight straight in the middle of your season, you don’t end the campaign with much margin for error.

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Locks: Kansas, Texas, Baylor, Kansas State, TCU, Iowa State
Work to do: West Virginia, Oklahoma State

West Virginia (17-13, 6-11; NET: 24, SOS: 4): Cue that gif of Ronaldo crying celebrating: West Virginia finally made good on the promise of its metrics and beat a good basketball team on the road! AHHHH!!!! The validation! We’ve been pretty convinced that WVU is good for like four months now, and the Mountaineers metrics have remained top-tier, even as they have consistently failed to back up their predictive numbers with actual quality wins on the floor. Of course, they also haven’t lost to a bad team, either. Just one of their losses has come outside Quadrant 1 (at home to Texas Tech), and just three of their losses (plus at Oklahoma and Oklahoma State) have come against teams ranked outside the top 20. They have consistently lost to top teams. OK, fair enough. No one’s saying West Virginia is a title contender. But they’ve always been a bit better than their wins and losses have fully expressed, too. That it took a trip to a free-falling Iowa State to finally get over the hump is a fact we are now going to elide. West Virginia is pretty good, probably better than most of the other teams on the bubble. Put them in, we say.

Oklahoma State (16-14, NET: 47, SOS: 8): Oklahoma State’s team sheet continues to be a lot like West Virginia’s, but worse. The blend of wins and losses in Quadrant 1 is similar, down to the way they are ordered in terms of strength on the team sheet. The difference is that Oklahoma State’s metrics are worse — from the NET on down, but also the noncon SOS (192nd) — and the Cowboys lost to Virginia Tech, UCF (both neutral, Quadrant 2) and at home to Southern Illinois (Quadrant 3). Those details are the reason why we’d have West Virginia in the field right now, whereas with Oklahoma State we’re not quite so sure. The Cowboys really just needed one or two of these past five games to make us feel better about it. Instead, though they’ve played well (versus Kansas State and Baylor at home this past week especially), they’ve only slid closer toward missing the field in the end.

Big East

One commenter called us a “gutless coward” for not locking Providence Tuesday. Well guess what, very rude guy? You were totally right. WE ADMIT IT. Fine. Providence isn’t missing the tournament. We assumed they would go ahead and beat Xavier at home in dramatic fashion to seal the deal Wednesday night, which didn’t happen, and there are some soft areas to this team sheet that don’t fill us with immense confidence. The noncon schedule (285), the lack of high-end road wins, the fact that they could pick up another Quad 3 loss if Seton Hall beats them Saturday, all of these are why we held off for so long. But the more we dig really deep into the other teams between the Friars and the bubble, the more we can’t imagine a team with wins over UConn, Marquette and Creighton (albeit all of them at home) actually missing the field.

Congratulations to Providence, to their fans, and to the top half of the Big East for dividing itself so neatly between the haves and have-nots. Now which one of those bottom half teams is winning the AQ in MSG next week? Butler? Is that Butler’s music? (Georgetown remains the funniest possible outcome.)

Locks: Connecticut, Marquette, Creighton, Xavier, Providence

Big Ten

Last Saturday, Michigan State and Iowa participated in one of the best games of the season, defined as much by its hilariously unlikely finish — one of the most statistically unlikely probabilistic finishes in, like, ever — but also by Fran McCaffery weirdly staring down a ref for like 30 seconds. That game had everything. Less than a week later, both teams are a lock. Michigan State would have gotten there had it managed to hold on at Iowa, but it has been in solid shape for a while now. Iowa took its crazy win over the Spartans and parlayed it into a road bludgeoning of Indiana three nights later — Iowa’s best win of the year, and one of the most impressive true road performances any team has given all season.

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Those additions to tournament certainty have brought a more streamlined feel to the Big Ten’s Bubble Watch section, and mercifully so. This thing has been a bear all year. Good riddance to all of the “should be in” teams projected to be No. 6-8 seeds. The current crop is much more manageable, and frankly much more representative of where the actual bubble stakes in this league remain.

Locks: Purdue, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan State, Iowa, Illinois, Northwestern
Should be in: Rutgers
Work to do: Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin

Rutgers (18-12, 10-9; NET: 32, SOS: 40): Uh, yeah. Not good. The Scarlet Knights already had one of the stranger team sheets in college hoops, one filled with quality wins but also an unusual number of Quadrant 3 losses. On Thursday night, they added their worst loss of the season to that group. Rutgers is now 2-4 in Quadrant 3 with a 313-ranked nonconference strength of schedule, both factors that will weigh it down. The question is whether they’ll weigh Rutgers down enough to counteract all of the good work they did at the other end of their team sheet, where they are 6-6 in Quadrant 1 with a win at Purdue as the star of the show. We would guess no, even after Thursday’s disaster in Minneapolis. But they’re as close to the bubble now as they’ve been all season.

Michigan (17-12, 11-8; NET: 54, SOS: 34): Say this much: The Wolverines are playing like a tournament team. They were great again Thursday night, Hunter Dickinson (31 points, 16 rebounds, three blocks) dominating every touch and making every right read on the low block, Kobe Bufkin yet again playing like one of the best guards in the country, Jett Howard playing good catch-and-shoot stuff out top. The final few possessions in the second overtime didn’t go Michigan’s way; whatever, it happens. The performance was enough to prove, not for the first time, that this is a tourney-quality team right now. The question is whether it has a tournament-quality resume. This is the key distinction.

The Wolverines spent a big chunk of their season not looking remotely like a tournament team, and so this late run can merely attempt to paper over all of the flaws of their early work, which, as recently as Jan. 29, had them at 11-10 and in the 80s in the NET. It’s been a great few weeks, and the Wolverines have convinced us they can play with anyone — they feel like a fantastic pick to get out of the First Four and make a Sweet 16 run — but the lack of truly elite wins (3-11 Quadrant 1, with a road win at flailing Rutgers and a home blowout of Maryland being the main attractions) means you could understand the committee thinking they haven’t done enough to get back in the field, despite all this late brilliance. Fortunately for them, they have a big chance at Indiana Saturday, and they’re close enough now that the Big Ten tournament might just make the difference. We’ll see.

Penn State (18-12, 9-10; NET: 56, SOS: 31): Penn State: Still alive! Not unlike Michigan, the Nittany Lions looked like their quality late-season work might have fallen just slightly short Feb. 26 at home to Rutgers, when they lost something close to a must-win game 59-56. Surely Wednesday night’s trip to Northwestern wouldn’t yield much sorry what’s that? Penn State won at Northwestern? And Jalen Pickett didn’t score it well? Hot damn. That win gave PSU its fourth Quadrant 1 victory of the season, though its best wins are probably still at Illinois and at home over Indiana, and in case it hasn’t been a truly elite team home or away all year. Meanwhile, Penn State is also still 4-5 against Quadrant 2. No bad defeats is nice, but when you toss out the 10 Q3 and Q4 wins, you have a team with eight wins, 12 defeats, a highly questionable nonconference schedule (where the best win was a neutral floor victory over Furman), and yet more work to do. They host Maryland at home Sunday night.

Wisconsin (16-13, 8-11; NET: 75, SOS: 11): If you had to pick a time to play Purdue, well, now is the time you’d pick. After arriving at February 22-1, the Boilermakers came into Thursday night having lost four of their last six, including twice to Indiana (including at Mackey Arena last weekend, unthinkably) and at Northwestern and Maryland. The freshman guards have looked tired — not, like, “we just went for a 30-minute Peloton ride” breathy tiredness, but, like, shattered, the kind of tired keeps you from even thinking about getting on the bike at the end of a long day of working and taking care of the kids, having not slept much for the past three weeks, that kind of existential exhaustion that makes you not even want to play video games* — and even Zach Edey has looked a bit less imperious than usual at moments, too.

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(*It’s possible we’re projecting here.)

Anyway, Wisconsin didn’t finish the job. Purdue wasn’t its usual self offensively again, but the struggle fest that is the Badgers’ offense in 2022-23 didn’t produce anything beyond Max Klesmit’s 19 and Chucky Hepburn’s extremely hard-earned 13 points on 12 field goals. Offensive woes are the reason the Badgers are where they are, which is to say in the heart of the bubble mess with six Quadrant 1 wins, a win at Marquette, a 4-5 Quadrant 2 record, and honestly no idea in these parts of what exactly to do with them. And they go to Minnesota Sunday, too. Gulp.

Pac-12

Were you so inclined, you could go back and grind tape of UCLA’s win over Arizona State at Pauley Pavilion Thursday night; you could find all of the subtle nuances of UCLA’s performance, and lay out with eight dozen screenshots how and why they were so much better than bubble team Arizona State. Or you could watch this 39-second clip of Jaime Jaquez dunking. Do you want the horrible truth, or do you want to watch Jaime Jaquez do sick dunks! Ja-quez, Ja-quez!

Jaquez has never been a player we think of when we think of high-flying finishes in transition. His specialty, beyond defense, is more about versatile operation from the middle of the floor offensively, with a lovable whiff of old man game. For as good as he is, if Jaquez is doing this to you multiple times in one game, something has gone very badly wrong.

Locks: UCLA, Arizona
Work to do: USC, Arizona State

USC (21-9, 13-5; NET: 44, SOS: 59): ‘Twas a solid night of Conference of Champions men’s basketball Thursday night, including an impactful 11 p.m. ET tip between Arizona and USC, with Dave Pasch and Bill Walton on the mic and, not for nothing, featuring some truly tremendous navy blue vintage Arizona unis. Walton did his typically endearing thing — which is to say he talked about his favorite topographic features of Los Angeles and also Dave Cowens equally frequently — but perhaps the wildest take of the night came from Pasch, who said that if it weren’t for USC’s opening-night loss to Florida Gulf Coast, that USC would be a No. 5 seed. Oh word? If you go down the rabbit hole far enough, you can sort of give the benefit of the doubt here: Maybe if USC doesn’t lose a Quadrant 4 game at home by 13 so early in the season, its NET number stabilizes in a more advantageous place early on, or … something. OK, it’s a stretch. Bad losses are bad in and of themselves, of course, but even without it USC would be closer to the bubble than to a No. 5 seed. As it is, FGCU included, they remain a double-digit-ish seed that could have used the home win over Arizona to feel more solid heading into the final eight days before Selection Sunday. They’ll play a desperate Arizona State at 11 p.m. ET Saturday.

Arizona State (20-10, 11-8; NET: 63, SOS: 75): Thursday wasn’t all bad news for Arizona State. No, the Sun Devils didn’t play particularly well, and if you want to beat a now-fully-gearing-up-for-the-postseason-level 2023 UCLA on its own floor, you have to bring something special. The good news is that Arizona State already did something equivalent last Saturday, when it won at Arizona, and if you had the Sun Devils in the field after that thrilling buzzer-beater in Tucson, are you really trying to take them out for losing in Westwood? The margins are narrow here, undoubtedly, and ASU didn’t look great Thursday night. But there is the USC game Saturday still, and there’s always the possibility that the Arizona win was enough.

SEC

We’re making Missouri a lock. Based on results, there is no good reason to keep the Tigers out now. The only reason we’ve been cautious — and it is a fair enough reason, honestly — is that Missouri’s predictive metrics have never quite matched up with the actual wins and losses on their resume. The BPI thinks this is the 63rd-best team in the country! Strength of Record, on the other hand, has this team ranked 18th. Even if you split the difference, Missouri is in good shape, and in any case a little close analysis (see all the single-digit wins over Quadrant 3 and 4 teams like South Carolina, Southern Indiana, Southeast Missouri, and Penn) can help the committee untangle why Missouri could have the record it has (and the dearth of bad losses) and still not rate out all that highly in the core NET. The Tigers’ actual seed might be hampered by some of these numbers, but it would be crazy for the committee not to select them.

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The same is true for Arkansas, but for totally opposite reasons. Arkansas is like the anti-Mizzou. Inverse Mizzou. Mizzou with an evil goatee. The metrics here are all fantastic, except for Strength of Record, which breaks with the top 15 team vibe given out by the predictive stuff and instead ranks Arkansas 40th. The wins and losses are a good bit less flattering. The Razorbacks have three Quadrant 1 wins: neutral-court versus San Diego State, at Kentucky Feb. 7, home versus Texas A&M, plus a just-OK Quad 2 record (4-2) and a road loss to LSU in Quadrant 3. Still: Those wins are probably enough for a major conference team with underlying numbers this good. It’s really hard to imagine Arkansas missing out in the end.

Locks: Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas Kentucky, Texas A&M, Missouri
Work to do: Auburn, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt

Auburn (19-11, 9-8; NET: 37, SOS: 27): The Tigers played great at Alabama Wednesday night, as well as they’ve played all season, and in an environment and atmosphere — not just among the fans but between the two sets of players, too — that made Alabama-Auburn feel like one of the college hoops game’s great rivalries. We’ll take all of that they got. Unfortunately for Auburn, the fantastic performance did not result in a win, which is all that really matters at this stage of the season, particularly for a team with so few quality victories on its resume thus far. Auburn beat Arkansas at home. It beat Northwestern on a neutral floor. Those are the two Quadrant 1 wins, and the rest of the victories in other quadrants don’t get any more impressive from there. The Tigers have lost eight of their last 11, and desperately need to change the pattern Saturday at home against Tennessee.

Mississippi State (20-10, 8-9; NET: 43, SOS: 49): Mississippi State continues to head — haltingly, sometimes imperceptibly — closer toward the NCAA Tournament. Beating South Carolina Tuesday night doesn’t exactly change the game, but avoiding losing to South Carolina kept the Bulldogs where they were before the night began, which is maybe the First Four? Maybe the last four byes? This team’s mix of nonconference performance (albeit against a bad noncon schedule) and late-season performance in the SEC (and against TCU) has made it one of the strongest finishers on the 2023 bubble. It has just one more regular season game to keep things moving, Saturday at …

Vanderbilt (17-13, 10-7; NET: 84, SOS: 17): Vanderbilt?! Yes, Vanderbilt. Talk about strong finishers: The Commodores have won seven of their past eight, including wins over Tennessee and, as of Wednesday night, at Kentucky. All of a sudden, they’re at least worth a bubble look. That NET number is pretty rough, sure, and the bad losses (two in Quadrant 3, one to Grambling State at home in Quadrant 4) are pretty gross. But this team has won three high-level Quad 1 games and is 4-1 against Quadrant 2, with a chance to pick off Mississippi State Saturday and head into the SEC tournament with some real bubble momentum. It would take some real doing; this is probably the farthest end of our bubble right now. But stranger things have happened.

Others

With all due respect to the American Athletic Conference, we need to get Houston out of there as soon as possible. This isn’t fair, and it isn’t nice:

Wichita State is shooting 71.4 percent.

Wichita State is losing by nine.

Houston, man.

— Brian Hamilton (@_Brian_Hamilton) March 3, 2023

Sheesh. Get Houston into the Big 12 tomorrow.

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Locks: Houston, Saint Mary’s, Gonzaga, San Diego State
Should be in: Florida Atlantic, Boise State
Work to do: Utah State, Nevada, Memphis

Florida Atlantic (25-3, 17-2; NET: 18, SOS: 169): For all of the ACC teams complaining that the Louisvilles and Notre Dames of the world have dragged down their NET numbers, please look at Florida Atlantic and have some shame. The Owls are 18th in the NET despite — mostly by necessity — having played 20 games against Quadrant 3 and 4 opponents. They haven’t blown all of those teams out, but they’ve done it to enough of them to make their point, and in the meantime, they racked up enough Q1 and Q2 victories to make the metrics count. Barring a loss to La Tech and an early-round C-USA tourney loss next week, we think they’re getting in pretty easily.

Boise State (22-7, 13-4; NET: 27, SOS: 74): Have a day, Max Rice. The Boise State wing went 5-of-8 from 3 against San Diego State Tuesday night; it felt like he hit every big shot in what was, almost inarguably, the biggest win of the season for the Broncos, one keyed by late 18-3 run. At 64-60, he also had a steal and a breakaway layup that gave Boise the decisive edge. It was an incredible individual performance in front of a rabid sold-out crowd, and it set Boise State up to feel fairly confident about their chances of getting in the field. They have but a trip to Utah State left in the regular season — where a loss to the team with the No. 22 NET wouldn’t be disqualifying by any means — and the Mountain West tournament, which will feature enough good teams that Boise State should be able to avoid a bad loss there. No guarantees, but if you want to go to the tournament from the bubble, you have to win games like Tuesday’s. Boise State did.

Utah State (22-7, 12-5; NET: 22, SOS: 87): A fascinating case study in the value of Quadrant 1 wins. Utah State still has none of them. They’ve had four opportunities to date, three on the road and one at home to San Diego State, which they lost by a bucket. How much does that matter? How much will the committee care? How much will they take note of how well Utah State actually plays, how good its metrics are, and not for nothing how well it has performed against every other area of its resume, including an 8-1 mark in Quadrant 2 (a couple of questionable losses down the team sheet aside).

Nevada (21-8, 12-5; NET: 34, SOS: 57): No change from Tuesday for Nevada, which began the week looking pretty likely to make the field and then lost at Wyoming. It is the kind of loss that doesn’t need to kill you — we still think Nevada is on the top end of the bubble, above the First Four spots — provided you don’t follow it up with a home defeat to UNLV.

Memphis (23-7, 13-4; NET: 38, SOS: 80): We’ll be honest: We sort of feared for Memphis Thursday night. The Tigers were coming off two wins, yes, but they hadn’t exactly played super well at Wichita State or at home against (a suddenly frisky — look out AAC tournament!) Cincinnati. Both were escapes of a kind. Put up a similar performance at SMU, a bad team playing with zero pressure, and you never know what disasters can befall you. Nevermind that. Memphis handled the Mustangs without issue, and maintained their precarious but still very viable position close to the bubble cut line — just in time for Houston to arrive at high noon Sunday.

(Top photo of Dereck Lively II: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)

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