ESPN Men's Basketball

Editor’s note: This update does not include BYU-Gonzaga in the WCC tournament.

NOTABLE

• North Carolina moves up to top line as projected No. 1 seed.
• Belmont (Atlantic Sun) clinches fifth NCAA bid in seven years.
• Texas falls out of field, replaced by Xavier (“Last Team In”).

Last Four In
Xavier
Northwestern
South Florida
Colorado State

First Four Out
Texas
VCU
Oregon
NC State

Next Four Out
Miami
Tennessee
Saint Joseph’s
Dayton

BRACKET MATH

Take the “solid” at-large candidates (current Tournament Odds at 90% or better) and there are now 34 teams in the field. Add in the remaining automatic qualifiers and that’s another 20 spots. All told there are 54 of the 68 spots accounted for, with 14 still up for grabs among current “Bubble” teams.

S-CURVE PROJECTIONS

1-KENTUCKY 2-SYRACUSE 3-KANSAS 4-NO. CAROLINA
8-Ohio State 7-Missouri 6-Duke 5-Michigan State*
9-Marquette 10-Georgetown 11-Baylor 12-Michigan
16-UNLV 15-Florida 14-Indiana 13-Wisconsin
17-Louisville 18-Wichita State 19-Florida State 20-TEMPLE
24-CREIGHTON 23-Notre Dame 22-Murray State 21-Vanderbilt
25-Gonzaga 26-New Mexico 27- San Diego State* 28-MEMPHIS
32-Purdue 31-Kansas State 30-Iowa State 29-SAINT MARY’S
33-Alabama 34-Cincinnati 35-Virginia 36-Southern Miss
40-Connecticut 39-Washington* 38-California 37-Saint Louis
41-West Virginia 42-Seton Hall 43-Harvard* 44-LONG BEACH STATE
48-Colorado State 47-Mississippi State 46-Brigham Young 45-Arizona
49-South Florida 50-Northwestern 51-Xavier 52-IONA
56-NEVADA 55-ORAL ROBERTS 54-DREXEL 53-MIDDLE TENNNESSEE
57-Belmont 58-DAVIDSON 59-AKRON 60-VALPARAISO
64-UNC Asheville 63-UT ARLINGTON 62-MONTANA 61-BUCKNELL
65-LONG ISLAND 66-STONY BROOK 67-MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 68-SAVANNAH STATE
72-NC State 71-Oregon 70-VCU 69-Texas
73-Miami (Fla.) 74-Saint Joseph’s 75-Dayton 76-Tennessee

Bold - automatic qualifier; * - current conference leader.
ALL CAPS: Regular-season champion (NIT auto-bid if needed)

CONFERENCE BREAKDOWN

Big East (10)
Big Ten (7)
Big 12 (5)
SEC (5)
ACC (4)
Mountain West (4)
Atlantic 10 (3)
Pac-12 (3)
West Coast (3)
Conference USA (2)
Missouri Valley (2)

NCAA AUTOMATIC QUALIFIERS

UNC Asheville (Big South)
Murray State (Ohio Valley Conference)
Belmont (Atlantic Sun)

Believe it or not, a certain massive matchup in Durham, N.C., isn't the only college hoops game on the schedule today. Hard to believe, I know, but it's true.

Here's a look at much of the action -- bubble and otherwise -- that served as the appetizer to tonight's main course. Be sure to check back later this evening for our writers' reactions and analysis from across the country.

No. 7 Marquette 83, No. 12 Georgetown 69: When March calms down, and the offseason finishes out its usual assortment of draft decisions, coaching intrigue and off-campus arrests (and everything else), I'm going to sit down one week and calculate college hoops winning percentages on senior night. With the exception of Northwestern (which lost in heartbreaking fashion Wednesday), it felt like nearly every team in the country won its final home game of the season this week. A lot of that is just good, old-fashioned home-court advantage, and some of it is skill and so forth, but when you strip all that away, I'm still going to guess pretty much every college hoops team in the country sees a massive bounce in its winning in the final home game of the season. Quantifying emotion is never easy. This feels like a chance.

In any case, Marquette followed this (presumably real, potentially imagined) trend Saturday, easily handling a Georgetown team that was itself coming off a dominant performance in its final home game of the season, a 59-41 victory over Notre Dame. In doing so, the Golden Eagles extended their Big East record to 14-4 and ensured the No. 2 seed in the Big East tournament next week. Meanwhile, Jae Crowder made one last-ditch pitch for Big East player of the year: He scored 26 points and grabbed 14 rebounds on 8-of-15 from the field and 10-of-12 from the free throw line. (Crowder missed all five 3-point attempts, a portion of his game that he's really improved this season. When your center can shoot 37 percent from 3-point range, you've got a very difficult team to guard.)

Can Crowder win the award? Because he should. With all due respect to Darius Johnson-Odom and like four or five different Syracuse players, Crowder's mix of offensive efficiency (offensive rating: 122.9; including 61 percent from inside the arc, a low turnover rate, and the aforementioned perimeter solidity), rebounding and defense (he's averaging 2.3 steals and 1.0 blocks per game) make him, to me, the most complete, most important player in the conference.

No. 9 Murray State 54, Tennessee State 52 (Ohio Valley Championship): With six minutes left in the OVC title game, bubble teams across the country were no doubt finding it difficult to establish regulated breathing patterns. Tennessee State was up 48-43, the Racers were struggling to find stops against the dish-and-kick action of the Tigers' 1-4 low sets, and even worse, Isaiah Canaan, Murray State's do-it-all star, was battling through an off night. A two-bid OVC -- and a suddenly shrunken bubble -- were very real possibilities.

But Murray State locked in on defense, stacking great possession after great possession, cutting the Tigers off and preventing easy shots in the paint, and eventually came back to seal the win. The final go-ahead basket was a matter of immediate controversy at the broadcast table; our own Fran Fraschilla was convinced Murray State guard Jewuan Long charged on his game-winning basket. The call was close, no question. But all due respect to Fran, who is way better than this than I am, I disagree that it should have been a charge. A few things here. Long shot the ball before contact was initiated; the defender was still slightly sliding under the move, rather than entirely in front of it; and, most importantly, it was the penultimate play of a one-possession game with the NCAA tournament on the line. The ref needs to swallow his whistle there. And, in general, college coaches and players -- frankly, this applies to the NBA, too -- need to stop coaching defense like this! It's bad for the sport. There are plenty of ways to defend a driving player without fouling or attempt to draw a foul. Choose one. Don't run to a spot and hope the ref gives you the benefit of a 50-50 call, especially when your season is on the line. In short: Play defense.

Maybe that's the pickup player in me coming out; I would have little sympathy even if Long committed a blatant charge. But it wasn't. The no-call couldn't have been more appropriate. And every bubble team in the country can breathe just a little bit easier as a result.

Illinois State 65, No. 14 Wichita State 64: On second thought, bubble teams, you can go back to freaking out now. Why? Because Arch Madness has yielded its first truly mad result of the tournament. Wichita State is the Missouri Valley's best team and No. 1 overall seed, not to mention everyone's pick to be this year's mid-major tournament darling. But that didn't stop the Redbirds -- thanks to Tyler Brown's two clutch free throws and two misses in the last six seconds from WSU's Toure' Murry and Garrett Stutz -- from shocking the Shockers all the same. (Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

Wichita State doesn't have much to worry about in the way of its NCAA tournament seed, of course. But every team along the bubble line, including many of those mentioned below, should be terrified. If Creighton suffers the same fate at any point this weekend, the Missouri Valley will send three teams to the NCAA tournament and steal one bid from a bubble that is destined to shrink even further down the stretch.

Could that third team be Illinois State? Why not? When you beat Wichita State on a neutral court, you deserve the benefit of the doubt.

No. 2 Syracuse 58, No. 18 Louisville 49: This was always an uphill battle for Louisville for one obvious reason: The Cardinals can't score. Louisville can defend. It can rebound. It can get stops when it needs them. But when you have the Big East's 11th-best offense on a per-possession basis, when your effective field-goal percentage ranks outside the nation's top 200 teams, when you turn the ball over on 21.8 percent of your possessions (national rank: No. 241) and your task is to break down Syracuse's smothering 2-3 defense in the Carrier Dome, well, good luck. Syracuse played its typically potent brand of extended defense, forcing Louisville a downright awful 2-of-23 mark from beyond the arc, and that's pretty much your game right there.

It's going to be interesting to see how Rick Pitino tries to adjust this team as he heads toward the NCAA tournament. A few weeks ago, Pitino told ESPN Radio's Scott Van Pelt that he liked to speed the game up and take more risks in the tournament; in his experience, too many coaches slow down in the tournament, fearing disorganization and disarray. This might be his only course of action in March. The Cardinals can't find any offense, but they can press and trap and slap and claw and hope to get easy buckets from turnovers and bad shots in transition. At this point, with this anemic, predictable offense (prediction: Peyton Siva won't see a defense guard him over the top on another ball screen all season), does Pitino have any other choice?

Variously Questionable Bubble Losses

West Virginia 50, South Florida 44: The Mountaineers desperately needed this win. Before this week's victory over DePaul, WVU had lost seven of its previous nine games and seen its once-certain at-large tournament bid -- WVU was once a No. 5 seed in Joe Lunardi's bracket; now it's a No. 12 -- become an entirely precarious matter. This win obviously helps, and not just because it was a win: It also put a ding on one of WVU's potential bubble rivals, South Florida, which has surged into the bubble conversation in recent weeks thanks to a gaudy Big East record and consecutive victories over Cincinnati and Louisville. A win Saturday might have put the Bulls on the right side of the bubble in official fashion. As it is, their profile still looks much better than it used to, but with a 5-10 road record and a 2-8 mark against the RPI top 50, some positive results in the Big East tournament may well be necessary.

UCLA 75, Washington 69: First things first: This was a really nice win for UCLA. It hasn't been the easiest week for the Bruins (that's a candidate for understatement of the year), but with back-to-back good wins (a blowout of Washington State and this plucky victory over the league's standings leader) at least they finished on a positive note. As for Washington, the loss might well have cost the Huskies the outright Pac-12 title. Cal still needs to win get a likely but hardly guaranteed win at Stanford, but either way, the Huskies' argument -- that an outright regular-season conference title in a high-major, albeit really bad, conference should guarantee a spot in the NCAA tournament -- looks even more specious now. Washington, like the rest of this league, has nothing in the way of nonconference results to point to as proof that it is considerably better than the RPI's impression of the Pac-12 as the 10th-best league in the country. It will be fascinating to see how the committee treats UW, and the Pac-12 as a whole, but if I'm the Huskies I'm planning on making a very deep run through the Pac-12 tournament, just to be safe.

Marshall 79, Southern Miss 75: Will a loss at Marshall damage Southern Miss's bubble chances? Doubtful. Marshall is a quality team -- a deep fringe bubble candidate in its own right -- and a four-point loss in the Herd's building isn't, or shouldn't, be the kind of thing that damages a team's bubble chances. What's more, the Golden Eagles still own an RPI within the top 20. In the past 16 years, no team with an RPI of 20 higher has ever missed the tournament. (The closest was 2005-06 Missouri State, which didn't have nearly as strong a profile as this team.) They should be fine.

Maintenance-Minded Bubble Wins

Xavier 72, Charlotte 63: Xavier's final home win of the season wasn't what the Musketeers would have planned heading into the season. To wit, from the AP: "It was a bittersweet day for Xavier, which had grown accustomed to ending its final home game with a spray of confetti and a few celebratory snips of the net. The Musketeers' streak of five straight A-10 regular-season titles was snapped this season." That dream was over weeks ago. Xavier has bigger fish to slice now. The Musketeers are as close to the bubble as you can be (Lunardi's most recent bracket has them as the first team outside the field). A win won't necessarily change that, but a loss would have been disastrous, and Xavier is now in at least slightly better position as it heads into A-10 postseason play.

Northwestern 70, Iowa 66: It was very easy to imagine Northwestern -- which missed marquee wins (Michigan, Ohio State) in soul-crushing fashion twice in the past two weeks -- losing at Iowa. The Hawkeyes beat Wisconsin and Indiana at home in recent weeks, Northwestern would no doubt be feeling the historic tournament pressure, and so on. But this was an impressive victory, or at least as impressive as a victory over Iowa can ever be. This is a little like Xavier's win: It doesn't provide a bubble bump, but it does prevent a potentially disastrous move in the wrong direction at the worst possible time of the season. Is Northwestern in right now? I'd guess yes. But it's hardly a done deal. Like nearly everyone else on the bubble, the only way for Bill Carmody's team to enter Selection Sunday with any measure of confidence is to play well in next week's conference tournament. That much is clear.

Miami 77, Boston College 56: Same situation here: A loss would have been a dream-killer. A win doesn't move the needle. Miami basically has two tourney-worthy qualities on its profile: A win at Duke (huge) and a home win over Florida State (slightly less huge, but still important). But other than that, there's not much there. Can the Hurricanes knock off one of this league's top four teams -- especially Duke or UNC -- on a neutral floor next week? That might be the baseline requirement going forward.

Connecticut 74, Pittsburgh 65: The Huskies have spent much of the past three weeks looking downright determined to overcome their computer numbers (a top-five overall strength of schedule and a top-20 nonconference figure) and somehow, some way, miss the tournament. This week's loss to Providence was an apparent punctuation mark on a pretty much horrible Big East season, or at least horrible relative to this team's elite talent. After this win, though, it looks like UConn will -- just barely -- hold on to a spot above the bubble fray.

Joe Lunardi breaks down the Big East and who is on the outside looking in.

We know you can't wait until Monday morning, so here's an abbreviated version of Joe Lunardi's latest bracket projection:

THE HEADLINES

• No. 1 seeds after today (Kentucky, Syracuse, Kansas, Michigan State).
• Last team in the field is Saint Joseph's, which beat Temple tonight.
• UConn is still in despite a loss to Syracuse that drops the Huskies to 7-9 in the Big East.
• Xavier, Texas and Northwestern hang on to "Last Four In" positions with narrow victories.
• Huge Sunday games for Miami (vs. Florida State) and South Florida (vs. Cincinnati).

TOP SEED PAIRINGS

SOUTH/Kentucky vs. WEST/Michigan State (1 vs. 4)
EAST/Syracuse vs. MIDWEST/Kansas (2 vs. 3)

BUBBLE BATTLES

Last Four In
Xavier
Texas
Northwestern
Saint Joseph’s

First Four Out
Colorado State
Miami (Fla.)
VCU
South Florida

Next Four Out
Dayton
UCF
Oregon
NC State

BRACKET MATH

Take the "solid" at-large candidates (current tournament odds at 85 percent or better) and there are exactly 34 teams in the field. Add in the remaining automatic qualifiers and that's another 19 spots. All told, 53 of the 68 spots are accounted for, with 15 still up for grabs among current "bubble" teams.

S-CURVE PROJECTION

1-KENTUCKY 2-SYRACUSE 3-Kansas* 4-Michigan State*
8-Ohio State 7-Missouri 6-North Carolina 5-Duke
9-Marquette 10-Baylor 11-Georgetown 12-Michigan
16-Indiana 15-Wisconsin 14-Florida State 13-Louisville
17-Florida 18-Notre Dame 19-WICHITA STATE 20-UNLV
24-Creighton 23-MURRAY STATE 22-Vanderbilt 21-Temple*
25-New Mexico 26-Gonzaga 27-San Diego State 28-Purdue
32-California* 31-Memphis* 30-Virginia 29-SAINT MARY'S
33-Iowa State 34-Kansas State 35-Southern Miss 36-Saint Louis
40-Washington 39-Connecticut 38-Alabama 37-Cincinnati
41-LONG BEACH STATE 42-Arizona 43-Harvard* 44-Seton Hall
48-Xavier 47-Brigham Young 46-West Virginia 45-Mississippi State
49-Texas 50-Northwestern 51-Saint Joseph's 52-ORAL ROBERTS
56-Akron* 55-MIDDLE TENNESSEE 54-DREXEL 53-IONA
57-Nevada* 58-BELMONT 59-DAVIDSON 60-VALPARAISO
64-LONG ISLAND 63-UT ARLINGTON 62-Weber State* 61-BUCKNELL
65-UNC ASHEVILLE 66-Stony Brook* 67-MISS. VALLEY STATE 68-Savannah State*
72-South Florida 71-VCU 70-Miami (Fla.) 69-Colorado State
73-Dayton 74-UCF 75-Oregon 76-NC State
*Current conference leader.
ALL CAPS: Regular-season champion (NIT auto-bid if needed)

CONFERENCE BREAKDOWN

Big East (9)
Big Ten (7)
Big 12 (6)
SEC (5)
ACC (4)
Atlantic 10 (4)
Mountain West (3)
Pac-12 (3)
West Coast (3)
Conference USA (2)
Missouri Valley (2)

1. Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said on ESPNU’s "The Experts" on Tuesday that Ohio State is still probably the best team in the Big Ten. Izzo was playing politics and clearly had no reason to boast. But check the results: Michigan State already has road wins at Ohio State and Wisconsin. Yes, the Buckeyes also won at UW this season. But unless OSU can go into East Lansing on March 4 and win, the Spartans are the team to beat.

2. ESPN.com Bracketologist Joe Lunardi made a strong argument about the other two No. 1 seeds outside of Kentucky and Syracuse. The other two will likely be the champions of the Big 12 and Big Ten. Missouri and Kansas will play one more time, possibly twice if they meet in the Big 12 title game. The winner of that game may just get the third or fourth No. 1 seed. Michigan State and Ohio State play one more time, as well, and could easily face each other in the Big Ten title game. The winner of that game will likely get the third or fourth No. 1 seed as well. The top six could easily shape up to be Kentucky, Syracuse, Kansas, Ohio State, Michigan State and Missouri. The other two top-eight schools could be North Carolina and Duke. All eight have the makeup to get to New Orleans.

3. Kentucky is technically closer to St. Louis than to Atlanta, but the latter is an SEC city and the selection committee will likely lean toward placing the Big 12 winner in the Midwest (I’m banking on Syracuse in the East in Boston and the Big Ten winner in Phoenix in the West). If Kentucky continues on its roll, the Wildcats are set up for quite a March run through SEC country with Big Blue Nation ready to pack New Orleans Arena (SEC tournament), Louisville (second and third round), Atlanta (Sweet 16 and Elite Eight) and back to New Orleans for the Final Four in the Superdome.

On College GameDay, Joe Lunardi talks about the latest movement in his bracket.

ESPN.com's Joe Lunardi -- perhaps you've heard of him -- just released his first Bracketology of 2011. The results are, as always, both enlightening and surprising. Some scattered thoughts therein:

• The photo and headline you see on the men's home page pretty much says it all. (Our editor, Brett Edgerton, is the best in the business for a reason, kids). In a year that both the Virginia Tech Hokies and Northwestern Wildcats pegged as the one they'd finally get over the NCAA hump, both teams currently sit precariously on the bubble. Virginia Tech is smack dab on the bubble, and Northwestern is one of Joe's first four out. This is about right, considering each team's nonconference performance. Virginia Tech has been massively disappointing, losing pretty much every major nonconference test Seth Greenberg scheduled in the wake of last year's cupcake schedule, while Northwestern has itself gone the cupcake route and lost its only game against a marginal NCAA tournament team (St. John's). The result is what you see now. Both teams have a lot of work to do in their respective conferences -- and Northwestern, already 0-2 in the Big Ten, could start tonight win a win over Michigan State at home -- if either is going to achieve their respective preseason goals.
• Speaking of St. John's, the Red Storm are currently Joe's biggest January RPI outlier. Steve Lavin's experienced but inconsistent bunch is No. 6 in the RPI, which explains why a team with losses to St. Bonaventure and Fordham nabbed a spot on the No. 11 seed line.
• Cincinnati, which has gone undefeated thus far, also gets a nod in Joe's bracket. That's as precarious a spot as any in the bracket, however, because the Bearcats have yet to play a team in the current bracket or bubble this season. Cincinnati is going to have to notch a few quality wins if the selection committee is going to take it seriously come March; too many ugly losses or a bad finish in Big East play will doom Mick Cronin's team in a hurry.
• Thanks to the two aforementioned Big East teams, the conference currently has 10 -- yes, 10 -- teams in Lunardi's bracket. That would break the record of eight teams in a single NCAA tournament set by the Big East in 2006 and 2008. Meanwhile, Marquette is one of Lunardi's first four teams out, which means the Big East could theoretically get 11 teams in the dance if current projections hold or improve.
• That sounds insane, sure, but it makes sense when you look at the lack of depth in the rest of the high-major conference picture. Lunardi has Northwestern and Michigan just missing the bubble, meaning the Big Ten would get merely six teams. Same goes for the Big 12. The ACC currently has five teams in the mix, but that projection feels slightly optimistic, while the SEC only has four squads in the bracket.
• Then there's the Pac-10. Good news, Pac-10 fans: As of right now, the league is still not in a one-bid bind. Still, the only team on solid footing in the Pac-10 is Washington; Arizona's loss to Oregon State Sunday night throws its bid into question, while Washington State has to continue to pile up good wins if it wants to hold onto its current No. 11 seed. USC is on the bubble, while UCLA is one of Joe's next four out.
• On the opposite end of things, your No. 1 seeds are pretty straightforward. They're Duke, Ohio State, Kansas and Syracuse. Talk about usual suspects. Meanwhile, Kentucky is already on the No. 2 line, with plenty of improvements yet to make. If the Wildcats do enough to deserve a No. 1 seed, and push Ohio State out in the process, we could have the first repeat No. 1 seeds in the history of the NCAA tournament. Wacky, wild stuff.

Bracketologist Joe Lunardi shares his surprises and disappointments from the early season:

Kansas State's upset loss to Iowa State coupled with Duke's rout of rival North Carolina has moved the Blue Devils into the fourth No. 1 spot. A look at where I've got things as of 11 p.m. on Saturday.

NO. 1 SEEDS

• MIDWEST: Kansas
• EAST: Kentucky
• SOUTH: Syracuse
• WEST: Duke

AUTOMATIC QUALIFIERS (4):

• CORNELL (Ivy League)
• WINTHROP (Big South)
• EAST TENN ST (Atlantic Sun)
• MURRAY STATE (Ohio Valley)

"LOCKS" (33 teams)

• Big 12 (7): Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, Texas A&M, Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma State
• Big East (6): Syracuse, Villanova, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Georgetown, Louisville
• ACC (4): Duke, Maryland, Clemson, Florida State
• Big Ten (4): Purdue, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan State
• Atlantic 10 (3): Temple, Xavier, Richmond
• Mountain West (3): New Mexico, BYU, UNLV
• SEC (3): Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tennessee
• Horizon League (1): Butler
• Missouri Valley (1): Northern Iowa
• West Coast (1): Gonzaga

Additional automatic qualifiers: 17 conferences.

TOTAL SPOTS CLAIMED: 54

"BUBBLE" (22 teams for 11 spots)

IN (11, in S-Curve order): Marquette, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Florida, Illinois, Notre Dame, Saint Mary's, Memphis, San Diego State, Arizona State

OUT (11, in S-Curve order): Washington, UAB, Ole Miss, Wichita State, Rhode Island, Seton Hall, Dayton, Mississippi State, Minnesota, South Florida, Connecticut

OFF THE BOARD: Cincinnati