Checking on on the Never Been Kissed — schools who have not made the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985. Let’s start with the good news as two of our NBK ranked teams had their tickets punched for the Big Bubble Dance in Indy. Winthrop blazed through the Big South in convincing fashion, winning the conference tourney and automatic bid for the second year in a row, moving up 13 spots in the KenPom ratings in the process. Joey Brackets has them as a 12-seed and they are sure to make many a prognosticator’s Upset Team to Watch this Sunday. Liberty limped through the Atlantic Sun and won a meaningless final. Big woop.
The Drake lost to the Sister Jeans on Sunday and thus begin an agonizing week of scoreboard watching and bracket begging. Lunardi has the Bulldogs (and NBKers Boise St. and Colorado St.) as the Last Four In along with Xavier. Utah St. has been downgraded a bit by J Brackets and at the moment are the first team out. They still have basketball to play in the Mountain West tourney and a 21% chance of making Sunday celebratory. SLU is likely cooked, and SMU is even further back. The grey dregs beckon both.
As for Conference Tourney odds, the NBK features a strong pack of favorites — Abilene Christian (61% odds per KenPom.com), St. Bonaventure (59% in Sunday’s A-10 final vs VCU), and Colgate (59%). Of those three, however, only the Bonnies appear to be safe should they fall short of an automatic bid. UCSB has a reasonable shot at 43% to take the Big West, and Toledo (32%) & Buffalo (27%) should tussle for the MAC bid. Then there’s the milky trio of NC State (2%), Rutgers (1%) and Northwestern (skim, or 0.08%). Name brand schools all, but their hopes of graduating from the NBK this year are sure to read like dank cloudy water to a lactose intolerant selection committee.
Notes
Data courtesy Kenpom.com , NCAA.org, and ESPN Bracketology. For “Conf Tourney Odds” Ken Pomeroy’s conference tourney forecasts are used until the team advances to the conference tournament final, in which case the heavy-bordered cell contains the KenPom odds ($) of winning the final itself.