Are you like me and forgot today was Daylight Savings Time aka spring forward? I missed an hour of the Barcelona women stomping Real Madrid this morning due to that antiquated relic.

Also congratulations to Nuggetpalooza for their correct selection of Kansas & Arizona in Rush the Court’s College Basketball Survivor pool. Best CBB pool on the internet. Pick two teams from the top six conferences to win all their games that week, then you can’t use them again the rest of the season. Be sure to sign up next November.

SATURDAY
Boise St won the Mountain West title 53-52 over San Diego St. The Broncos survived two close-range SDSU shots and subsequent offensive rebounds in the final possession to escape with the win and complete the MWC double as both regular-season and tournament champs. The Aztecs have been the hegemon of the MWC, making their fifth straight tournament final, and BSU getting over on them had to feel cathartic.

SMU lost to Memphis 70-63 in the Very Long Name AAC semifinal. This result is a bit of an ink blot for the committee — (a) Memphis is a good team, and (b) seven points is not exactly pushing them to the limit. Both true statements, so whichever one you lean on more heavily says what you think about SMU’s chances of grabbing one of the last at-large spots today. Joey Brackets has SMU as the First Team OUT this morning, meaning SMU needs both a Virginia Tech (holders of the coveted Last Team IN slot) blowout loss to Tennessee AND a Richmond (no chance of at-large) loss to Davidson in the Atlantic 10 final. Our money is against the Mustangs, and not just because of what the Semi Ojeleye squad did to my bracket a few years ago.

Saint Louis was smoked by sixteen by A-10 regular season champ Davidson 85-69 in the semifinal. The NIT awaits my Billikens, while the Wildcats move on to an intriguing A-10 final. Dayton was expected to advance for another DvD showdown, but the Flyers were grounded by the Richmond Spiders in the second semi-final. Richmond goes into Selection Sunday as one of two bid-stealers still alive — Lunardi was not sufficiently impressed enough with Texas A&Ms win over Kentucky to make them safe today. He has the Aggies as the Last Team In – so does a blowout loss knock them out?

Vermont won big 82-43 over UMBC in the Vermont Invitational America East final. Good god Catamounts. More ink blots to interprest as you make your bracket: How you feel about Vermont is probably how you feel about Gonzaga — (a) their utter domination of their league means they are very very good and confident and relatively unstoppable, or (b) their league dominance leaves them completely unprepared for the challenges to come.

Princeton edged Cornell 77-73 in an entertaining morning battle in the Ivy League semifinal. I came away impressed with the Tigers first pass at my eye test — a super-talented point-forward surrounded by four three-point shooters? Yes, please. Sounds like a modern mathematical machine. I will be officially bummed if they lose to Yale on Sunday as I don’t believe I can root for Yale.

Montana St scored the first bucket of the game and never trailed vs Northern Colorado, cruising to an 87-66 victory and the Big Sky title.

Random thoughts:
Villanova are the Death Eaters of college basketball. They walk the ball up, swing it back and forth, and wear you out. Look for major depth as a requirement to beat them.

Boise St and Texas Tech are both so long. Why don’t we have a wingspan measure on all these guys? Would make it more interesting for a data dork like myself.

It crackes me up that the Big Ten final is going to be a fun, wide-open affair featuring two high-octane offenses Purdue vs Iowa, while the SEC is going to be a slow, fifteen-round brawl between Texas A&M and Tennessee.

Keegan Murray has an incredibly nice shot. I wonder why Jabari Smith from Auburn seems to have all the heat as shooter of choice.

Coach K is acting very strangely as the Duke ship starts to sink in the ACC final against Virginia Tech.

Very entertaining Pac-12 final between Arizona and UCLA. Both teams threw some big haymakers. UCLA played very very well but Arizona was too good.

SELECTION SUNDAY
Princeton (61%) vs Yale – 11 AM CDT

Only one NBKer game – here’s the full slate for Sunday:

Behold! Our final Never Been Kissed rankings on the morning of Selection Sunday. To this point in the season, we have relied strictly on KenPom ranking overall and in conference to sort the eligible teams on our table. Now that the field is mostly settled — ulcers for SMU and Princeton fans — we begin to overweight on seeding in general and avoidance of the #1 & #2 seeds in particular. We consider the #4 & #5 seeds particularly vulnerable, so it’s good to see no NBKers saddled with those at the moment. South Dakota St, Vermont, and Princeton will be hunting those marks. Colgate has shown better quality this year, but if saddled with a #15 seed they will be in the cross-hairs of a #2 seed right away. You can tell by our rankings, we do think Princeton will prevail over Yale today, and we do not think SMU is going to have all their Sunday prayers answered by all of Tennessee, Davidson AND the committee. Should the Mustangs prove us wrong and find their way into the field, they would likely be a #12 seed and subject to the First Four. Given these circumstances, 4 out of 5 NBK committee members recommend Colgate 🙂

Data courtesy Kenpom.com and ESPN Bracketology and ESPN Bubble Watch and NCAA.com