Since we last spoke, Creighton has gone on a crushing assault and vaulted to the top of the Big East standings, at least as they are expressed in KenPom ratings. Joey Buckets has taken notice and elevated them to a 3-seed, meaning if the tournament started today they would be favored to make the Sweet Sixteen. March approaches rapidly.

NC State did themselves and America a favor by beating Duke, which served as a vinegar bath to wash the stink off the Pack losing to Boston College earlier. They then hung with Florida State but could not get over on the Noles. Buckets has them as the very last team in the field.

For our automatic qualifiers: the shine has come off the Southern Conference of late, as Furman dropped out of our rankings completely and UNC Greensboro dropped a bit. ETSU remains in first but margins are slim. This should be a conference tourney to watch. UC Irvine has strung together four straight wins and stands to win their last three to have a head of steam going into the Big West tourney. Hofstra has (have?) a series of convincing wins behind it (them?) and have seized control of the Colonial. And then there’s Winthrop, coming up small in the Big South. A horrific home loss to woeful #322 Hampton puts the adorable red-head on the brink of dropping out of the NBK.

Furman illustrates the cruelty of math by dropping out of our rankings following a win, a tepid one-pointer over Wofford. SMU lost an OT thriller to Houston that was math-friendly before Tulane and Tulsa delivered the right-left combo to knock them from the NBK.