Quite a bit of downward movement characterizes this week in the Never Been Kissed — those schools who have never made it to the Sweet Sixteen since the field was expanded to 64 back in 1985. SLU (not pictured) had a huge road win over Rhode Island, moving the Rams to the wrong side of the bubble, but improving the Billikens NBK standing. They may yet “pull a Furman” as the Southern conference runner-up earned a bye and got back on our radar.

This week’s NBK standings mark the return of Ken Pomeroy’s Log5 conference tourney projections, with Liberty‘s high probability of winning the Atlantic Sun conference standing out early.

North Texas clinched the Conference USA regular season title this weekend with an OT win over Western Kentucky. Creighton and Colorado stumbled with losses to St. John’s and Stanford, respectively.

UNC Greensboro dropped two straight, including a home loss to the aforementioned Furman, to lose the race for the bye in the SoCon and also drop off of our radar. They still have a 19.0% chance per Log5 of winning the conference tourney lottery ticket.

SLU travels to Providence to take on a Rams club that is working to solidify their NCAA position — Joey Brackets has them as a slippling 11-seed at the moment — while the Bills jockey with Duquesne, St. Bonaventure, Davidson, and VCU for the #4 spot in the Atlantic 10 tournament. The Bills swept in from the #6 spot to win the whole thing last year, so maybe the jockeying doesn’t matter so much.

The Rams feature Fatts Russell as the unanimous runner-up for A-10 Player of the Year honors — Obi Toppin of Dayton has locked up A10 POY and is in the running for National POY — but question marks for the rest of their Top Three. Cyril Langevine has been a stalwart but missed the last game with a lower-body injury. And Jeff Dowtin played but his minutes were limited. In short, the Rams are banged up. SLU catches Rhody at an opportune time, as the Rams will likely need Tyrese Martin or Jacob “Brother of Obi” Toppin to team with Fatts.

SLU’s Player history echoes a familiar poitical trope: the disappearing middle class. There is no longer any question that Javonte Perkins is one of the most explosive Billikens scorers we have ever seen, and Hargrove is an effective understudy. Do they sacrifice too much on defense for what they deliver on offense?

A top four of Goodwin, French, Hargrove, and Perkins seems intriguing but jankety once you add the fifth guy. Here are the candidates:

• JBJ gives you rebounding and rim protection, but huge sacrifices in ball-handling and shooting
• Weaver gives you shooting but shrinkage and no distribution
• Collins can run the show but his handling and assists are largely off-set by turnovers
• Jacobs is a utility guy, and maybe gets hot and hits a couple of threes. If not, he generally just gives you more of what is already on the floor.

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.

Checking out the movers and puckerers in the Never Been Kissed, those schools that have not made the Sweet Sixteen since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

Interesting happenings this year in the Southern Conference (SC in the grid below), where East Tennessee St grabbed the lead and jumped +10 in KenPom rankings. Joey Brackets has the Southern as a two-bid conference at the moment, with Furman projected as an at-large to join ETSU. Sandwiched in between is UNC Greensboro. Wofford losing Fletcher McGee and taking a step back has created an interesting void in the Southern.

Akron broke a two-game losing skid by beating Eastern Michigan. In the KenPom math-don’t-care world, they continued to slide in the rankings while squeaking out the win. The Zips thumped Bowling Green in their next matchup, so maybe they get things rolling again.

Winthrop barely beat lowly Longwood then lost to conference contender Radford to accelerate their slide. Radford is now one game back in the conference standings.

How about Colgate? I know nothing about the toothpaste stalwarts, so that is not a rhetorical question. So seriously: how about Colgate?

February is upon us, with March not far off. So it’s time for our semi-occasional regular look at the schools that have never made the second weekend of the NCAA tournament, never made it to the Sweet Sixteen, never been kissed (NBK). We started the NBK several years ago to track Saint Louis University’s progress or lack of same toward making their first ever Sweet Sixteen. With tonight’s loss to Duquesne, the Billies have a telescopic view of the bubble and are therefore not currently in contention. The dry spell seems destined to continue.

We’ll start ranking this year’s NBK simply by KenPom rank in Adjusted Efficiency. Colorado and Creighton sit in the Top 20 in KenPom but only project to 6-seeds per Joey Brackets, putting their odds firmly against making the second weekend. Of the automatic qualifiers, Yale leads the pack in the Ivy. Frankly, our methodology needs to be looked at if we are including a school like SMU – 6th in the American and seemingly going nowhere. We’ll need to tighten things up as Selection Sunday approaches. Liberty has the best current projected seed among the AQs at 11, and Vermont has been an NBK stalwart for years. Go Catamounts. As for Liberty…give me the other.

The Bills look to bust out of a five-way tie for third place (6-3) by beating up on Duquesne, one of the teams in said tie. The Dukes beat SLU handily in the first game of the conference season.

Joey Brackets has the A-10 as a three-bid league this year (Dayton, URI, VCU) so holding serve here is critical.

SLU fans may remember Frankie Hughes, who spent his freshman season at Mizzou before transferring to Duquesne. Hughes is described as Duquesne’s leading three-point shooter “by volume”, which is to say he shoots many and makes not so many. Alas, Frankie is out this season with a knee injury.

I spent fifteen minutes on the internet trying to figure out if Michael and Frankie are related. They do not appear to be, though I could not find anywhere that explicitly stated “no relation”. They love to say “no relation” wherever possible, so I thought. Frankie went to Mizzou for a season but is from Cleveland. Michael went to Akron for a season but is from Kansas City. He chose to follow the coach from Akron to Duquesne.

Can it really be called a “preview” if it’s posted at halftime? Age old question that we answer tonight.

La Salle not having a great year, and Lionel Simmons is not walking through that door. Top rated slugger Jack Clark has not played this year

SLU vs Fordham at Chaifetz Arena 1/26/2020. Fordham is in a rebuild, with no one on the current roster comparable to Eric Paschall — now with the Golden State Warriors — or other Rams of recent vintage.

Check this space periodically for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Division I head coaching jobs that change hands. We begin our list with the Rick Pitino firing before the 2017-18 games even got started, and will update periodically.

See Matt Norlander of CBSSports.com for commentary on the changes and speculation of who might go where.  Jeff Goodman of ESPN is also all over this stuff.

Spoiler alert — the Bonnies beat UCLA in the First Four tonight. So all our NBK hopefuls are alive going into Thursday’s general session.

Check out The Power Rank for their terrific interactive visualization tool of every team’s path to glory.

The Houston Cougars have the best chance of making the second weekend, followed by the TCU Horned Frogs. But the path to the Sweet Sixteen is a rocky one for a 6-seed, unless and until the 14 knocks out the 3.  Both Houston and TCU are rooting for fellow NBKers Montana and Bucknell, respectively.

Of the longer-shots, Buffalo has the best of the worst odds, as they are given a 7.1% chance of plowing through two sets of Wildcats.