NBK 2024: Championship Week – Friday

Let’s catch up on the latest since Tuesday.

New Mexico making a run for it
Our NBK #1 team New Mexico keeps moving closer and closer to the good side of the bubble, and they will take on NBK #4 Colorado St. in the Mountain West Conference Tournament Brought To You By The NBK late on Friday night. CSU seems comforably in the field, so NBK HQ is pulling for the Lobos in this one.

Nebraska still alive
Herbie is feeling frisky, sprinting out to a 50-27 lead over Indiana on Friday evening.

TCU goes down hard
The Horned Frogs ran into Houston on Thursday, or maybe “ran” is not the right term as the Cougs mucked things up and slowed the game to a painful crawl.

Not sweating it
These schools also bowed out relatively early in conference tournament season — Boise St, Northwestern — but will not be sweating it out Sunday.

McNeese becomes our 51st State!
Will Wade’s mob rolled through the Southland regular season and conference tourney and will go into the NCAAs as the strongest Southland entry since Stephen F. Austin back in 2016, featuring Nathan Walkup on lead guitar and Brad Underwood on drums.

South Dakota St: welcome back to the NBK!
No one finished within ten points of the Jackrabbits on their way to the Summit crown and their seventh trip to the tourney in the last thirteen years.

Middling three-letter schools fall
SMU & UCF lost their only hope and regroup for next year.

Like a New York Times Omega Man
NC State, North Texas, Yale & Akron are stayin’ alive (stayin’ alive).

The A-10 stole my bid!
With conference metrics leader, and NCAA shoo-in, Dayton going down as well as conference champion Richmond, none of the remaining semifinalists in the A-10 had a prayer of an at-large. So the A-10 is going to break someone’s heart – ISU’s? UNM’s?

NBK rankings the evening of Friday 3/15/2024. These include any school in the top 90ish KenPom OR are leading their conference in KenPom rankings AND have never made the Sweet Sixteen in the years since the tournament first expanded to 64 teams in 1985. KenPom rankings through mid-Friday evening, as are Bracketology and W-L records.

Data courtesy Kenpom.com and Basketball Reference
Game Score metric created by John Hollinger detailed here
Plot format by Aaron Baggett
Inspiration from Ken Pomeroy
Inspiration from Rock M Nation

Team colors courtesy:
Benjamin S. Baumer and Gregory J. Matthews (2020). teamcolors: Color Palettes for Pro Sports Teams. R package version 0.0.4