NBK Update: Sunday Before Selection Sunday

Did you ever Fall Back when you were supposed to Spring Forward? Yeah, me neither 🙂

SATURDAY RESULTS

St Thomas were stunned by North Dakota 67-66 in the Summit League semifinal.

SLU completely fell apart, losing by 29 (!) at George Mason. The Billikens’ minor struggles down the stretch have now metastasized into major problems portending total collapse. Robbie Avila had 2 points and 1 rebound and sat most of the second half (foul trouble, garbage time) in the worst game of his college career.

Big stumble for Hawaii as they lost a head-scratcher at home to Long Beach St and first year Gavin Sykes’ 34 points. Coming off a 39 point effort, Sykes is one to watch in the Big West Tournament.

SMU also failed to improve their resume, falling 91-78 at Florida St. The Mustangs’ Boopie Miller went for a career high 32 points but FSU shot 16-34 from long range to prevail. SMU go into the ACC Tournament on a four-game losing skid.

Utah St beat New Mexico 94-90. Utah Valley won a 20T thriller over Utah Tech 104-101. That wraps up our Utah update section.

Boise St with a nice 78-67 road win over Colorado St as both head to their Mountain West tournament openers on Wednesday.

TCU took care of business at home, beating Cincinnati 73-63. That makes 11 conference wins for the Horned Frogs, their most since joining the league in 2013.

Yale pulled away in the second half to beat Princeton handily 78-53. Nick Townshend led the way for the Ivy League champs with 17 points and 7 rebounds and leads the the Ivy KenPom Player of the Year (KPOY) standings going into the Ivy Tournament.

High Point rode a double-double from Senior Terry Anderson to a relatively comfortable 75-71 win over UNC Ashville in the Big South semifinal. They will take on Winthrop in the final on Sunday.

Liberty held off Sam Houston St 79-72 behind CUSA KPOY leader’s near-triple-double: 19 points, 9 rebounds, 9 assists.

SUNDAY SLATE

  • High Point (66% chance of winning per KenPom) vs Winthrop in the Big South FINAL – they split the regular season matchups
  • Illinois Chicago (40%) vs Northern Iowa in the Arch Madness FINAL – first-ever MVC final for the Flames
  • Santa Clara (80%) vs Pacific in the West Coast quarterfinal
  • Hofstra (64%) vs William & Mary in the Colonial quarterfinal
  • South Florida (90%) host Charlotte to close out the American regular season
  • Nebraska (71%) host Iowa to close out the Big Ten regular season
ESPN Bubble Watch & KenPom Rank through games of 3/7. ESPN Bracketology updated 3/7/26, 8:45pm ET . Rank in Conf is NOT the team’s place in the standings, but rather the team’s KenPom Rank in the conference – this is why many of our NBK squads are listed as #1 yet are not in the current ESPN Bracketology. Log5 % are from KenPom unless that team is in the final, in which case their final game odds are displayed (see the * for Hight Point and Illinois Chicago above).

Data courtesy Kenpom.com , ESPN Bracketology, ESPN Bubble Watch and Ken Pomeroy’s Substack