NCAA Tournament 2021: Stock Watch for Men's Bubble Teams with 1 Month Remaining
Kerry Miller@@kerrancejames
College Basketball National AnalystFebruary 12, 2021NCAA Tournament 2021: Stock Watch for Men's Bubble Teams with 1 Month Remaining
Gonzaga and Baylor have eliminated most of the typical annual debate surrounding projected No. 1 seeds for the men's NCAA tournament, but the bubble is in a constant state of flux.
While teams like Arkansas and BYU are diligently working to solidify their spots in the field, others like Oregon and Minnesota are in free-fall mode, losing games left and right.
The candidates for this list were the teams either projected for no better than a No. 8 seed in Wednesday's Bracket Matrix update or listed among the first 10 "other at-larges."
From that list of 30 candidates, I compared their KenPom.com ranking to the ranking they had at the time of their fifth-most recent game. (For some teams, that contest was barely two weeks ago. For others, that game was well over a month ago. Welcome to the 2020-21 season.) Teams that moved at least a dozen spots in either direction—the equivalent of three seed lines—were deemed the true candidates.
Not every squad that meets that description will appear on this list, but the most noteworthy ones do.
Stock Up: St. John's Red Storm
Five Most Recent Games: L at Butler, W at Providence, W vs. Villanova, W at Marquette, W at DePaul
KenPom Change: +16 (84 to 68)
The overtime loss to Butler on Tuesday night was, obviously, not a positive step for St. John's.
After what the Red Storm have accomplished since mid-January, though, that game wasn't a deal-breaker.
Less than a month ago, St. John's was 7-7 without anything close to a quality win. Basically, it was where Duke is right now, minus all the "What went wrong?" and "Can they turn it around?" articles.
Then, the Red Storm pulled off a come-from-behind victory at Connecticut, blew out Utah Valley and DePaul and then picked up three more impressive wins, most notably the 70-59 victory over Villanova. Out of seemingly nowhere, the Johnnies have two Quadrant 1 wins and two Quadrant 2 wins and have surged into the at-large conversation.
So, yes, even with the loss at Hinkle Fieldhouse, this team's tournament stock has gone way up.
The Red Storm will need at least one more win over a projected tournament team. They are scheduled to host Xavier on Tuesday, play at Villanova the following Tuesday and then end the regular season at home against Seton Hall.
If they can go 1-2 in those contests while also winning the home games against DePaul and Providence, they would likely enter the Big East tournament just barely in or just barely out of the projected field.
Stock Down: Connecticut Huskies
Five Most Recent Games: L at Providence, L vs. Seton Hall, W vs. Butler, L at Creighton, L vs. St. John's
KenPom Change: -22 (21 to 43)
After Connecticut spent seven years in the AAC, fans were thrilled that their Huskies were finally going back to the Big East this year.
It turns out they might have been better off staying in the AAC for at least one more season.
After losses in four of their last five games, the Huskies are 5-5 in Big East play—and not one of the five wins was noteworthy. They swept DePaul and Butler, neither of which is anywhere close to the at-large conversation. And while the road win over Marquette looked respectable at the time (Jan. 5), the Golden Eagles have lost five of their last six to sap that result of all value.
In the opposite column, Connecticut has been swept by Creighton (understandable), lost at home to Seton Hall (ehh...), lost at Providence (oof) and lost at home to St. John's (ouch).
The neutral-site victory over USC in early December is the only thing keeping this team afloat.
A significant X-factor exists, though. Connecticut's biggest star, James Bouknight, has not played since the second half of that game against Marquette more than a month ago because of bone spurs, and there's no question this team has been less effective without him.
What we have is a 2017-18 Notre Dame situation. That was the year the Fighting Irish started well for the first two months before dropping games left and right after losing their star player, Bonzie Colson. But when he came back at the end of February and played well, so did Notre Dame, sneaking into the at-large conversation in spite of a weak resume.
Bouknight should be back soon, perhaps this weekend at Xavier. And if Connecticut can turn things around once he does return, perhaps the selection committee will be more willing to discount the impact of this recent rough patch.
Without factoring that in, the Huskies might need to go 6-1 down the stretch, which is quite the tall order with road games remaining against Villanova, Seton Hall and Xavier.
Stock Up: Loyola-Chicago Ramblers
Five Most Recent Games: W vs. Evansville, W vs. Evansville, W at Missouri State, W at Missouri State, W at Bradley
KenPom Change: +17 (31 to 14)
We can argue about whether the primary sorting metric (NET) for NCAA tournament selection and seeding should have as much of an emphasis on margin of victory as it does.
What we can't argue about, though, is whether Loyola-Chicago is capitalizing on that state of affairs, because the Ramblers clearly are.
When the initial NET rankings came out Jan. 4, Loyola-Chicago was ranked 58th. One week later—after a loss at Indiana State—the Ramblers were ranked 50th on KenPom. They have played 10 games since then, none of which were against teams currently ranked in the NET or KenPom top 100.
Yet, here the Ramblers are in the top 15 of both metrics.
How did they do it?
Nine of those 10 wins were by double digits, most notably the 42-point victory over Northern Iowa and the sweep at Missouri State by a combined 46 points. When they have won, they have typically done so in blowout fashion. And that's the name of the game this year.
Despite the remarkable rankings in the predictive analytics, Loyola-Chicago remains very much on the bubble. Its only Quadrant 1 game was a 14-point loss at Wisconsin, and its only game in the top half of Quadrant 2 was a two-point loss to also-bubbly Richmond on a neutral court.
If the Ramblers don't win at least one of their two games at Drake this weekend, they might be in "Auto-Bid-or-Bust" territory.
In both 2016 and 2018, Saint Mary's was left out of the tournament with just five losses despite ranking roughly 30th on KenPom. In each of those years, the Gaels had at least one win over Gonzaga too. It takes a lot to convince the selection committee that mid-major teams are worthy of at-large bids, and that's why a no-show at Drake would be such a massive problem.
Stock Down: Oregon Ducks
Five Most Recent Games: W at Arizona State, W vs. Washington, L vs. Washington State, L vs. Oregon State, W at Utah
KenPom Change: -24 (17 to 41)
Some teams have been hit harder by COVID-19 than others, and Oregon is of the former category.
The Ducks started 9-2 with acceptable away-from-home losses by single digits to projected single-digit NCAA tournament seeds Missouri and Colorado. They didn't have any stellar wins, but it looked like they could be destined for a No. 4 seed. (This despite not having Will Richardson available until February because of thumb surgery and losing N'Faly Dante to a torn ACL in mid-December.)
Then came a COVID-19-induced pause.
The Ducks went two weeks between games and returned for a short-handed home tilt against in-state rival Oregon State. In addition to not having Richardson or Dante, they were without two of their biggest stars, Chris Duarte and LJ Figueroa, and that was a bridge too far. Oregon lost by 11 points.
After that, the Ducks had to go on another pause and went almost two more weeks between games. This time, they came back without Eric Williams Jr. (12.3 PPG, 6.3 RPG) and suffered another bad home loss to Washington State.
Considering the circumstances, you can understand those losses. However, NET and KenPom don't consider the circumstances, and so many similar situations are playing out around the country that we probably shouldn't expect the selection committee to appropriately consider the circumstances.
If the committee tried to put asterisks on games in which teams were coming out of pause or didn't have a key player or two, there would be too many asterisks to keep straight.
Now, if Oregon turns things around and finishes strong, maybe the committee takes a closer look at those two weird Quadrant 3 losses, asks what the heck happened there and decides to give the Ducks a mulligan. But if they continue to hover in their present NET and KenPom range and fail to win the games against Arizona and Colorado, this resume might not even be deemed worthy of a deeper inspection.
Stock Up: Arkansas Razorbacks
Five Most Recent Games: W at Kentucky, W vs. Mississippi State, L at Oklahoma State, W vs. Ole Miss, W at Vanderbilt
KenPom Change: +19 (43 to 24)
Following the nail-biter road win over Kentucky, Arkansas is 15-0 against teams outside the NET Top 50 and is moving up a bit in bracket projections.
Most of those have been blowouts, like the 16-point win over Mississippi State, the 15-point win over Ole Miss and the 21-point win over Vanderbilt in the past three weeks. Similar to Loyola-Chicago, the Razorbacks have done a great job of not only avoiding bad losses, but also using those Quadrant 3 and bottom-half-of-Quadrant 2 results to bolster their tournament resume.
At some point, though, they'll need at least one quality win, because they are 0-5 against the NET Top 50.
(It's still really weird to write that in the aftermath of a road win over Kentucky, but that's how far the Wildcats have fallen.)
The good news is Arkansas has plenty of chances to get such a victory. The Hogs play at Missouri this coming weekend and have home games against Florida, Alabama and LSU on tap before the end of February.
The bad news is with so many likely tournament-bound opponents remaining, they might need to win two of those games.
The home contest against Florida (NET No. 25) is a borderline Quadrant 1 game. The home tilt against LSU (NET No. 33) is in the Quadrant 2 range. While either one would be nice to have, it wouldn't provide a huge resume boost. And if they lose the other three aforementioned games, the Razorbacks would likely enter March in worse shape than they are in today.
Let's not put the cart before the horse, though. Where things go from here is uncertain, but Arkansas is looking good thanks to wins in four of the last five. (Even the four-point loss at Oklahoma State didn't hurt.)
Stock Down: Saint Louis Billikens
Five Most Recent Games: W vs. Rhode Island, W vs. St. Bonaventure, L at La Salle, L vs. Dayton, W vs. UMKC
KenPom Change: -14 (32 to 46)
The good news is St. Louis appears to have stopped the bleeding. Back-to-back victories over St. Bonaventure and Rhode Island—the former a strong Quadrant 2 result; the latter a near-the-top-of-Quadrant 3 result—plugged a few holes in a boat that was taking on water at an alarming rate.
The bad news is the Billikens still have two Quadrant 3 losses (La Salle and Dayton), no Quadrant 1 wins and perhaps only one more opportunity (at VCU on Feb. 23) to address the lack of quality victories.
Much like we discussed with Oregon, COVID-19 pauses clearly played a part in those bad losses.
There was a 34-day gap between Saint Louis' games against UMKC and Dayton, and the team's shooting was just plain awful in those first two games back. The Billikens shot 41.0 percent from three-point range in their first eight games, finishing seven of those eight contests at 37.5 percent or better.
But after going more than a month between games, they shot 23.1 percent against Dayton and 21.1 percent against La Salle, losing by five and seven points, respectively.
They have gotten back into a good offensive rhythm in their two most recent games, but it might be too little, too late unless they win out.
Of the six contests left on their schedule, three (at Fordham, vs. La Salle, vs. George Mason) are of the "simply cannot afford to suffer that bad loss" variety, two (at Dayton, vs. Richmond) are tricky Quadrant 2 games and the other is the tough road matchup against VCU that they almost need to win just to have a Quadrant 1 win on the resume.
Drop just one of those six games and they would enter the A-10 tournament with a 14-4 record, no spectacular wins, two bad losses and NET and KenPom rankings similar to where they are today. That probably wouldn't do the trick—unless the committee intentionally cuts them some slack for those post-pause missteps.
Stock Up: BYU Cougars
Five Most Recent Games: L vs. Gonzaga, W at Portland, W vs. Pacific, L at Pepperdine, W vs. Pepperdine
KenPom Change: +16 (48 to 32)
BYU is the perfect example of how weird this whole margin-of-victory rating system is.
After a three-point loss at Pepperdine—a near-the-bottom-of-Quadrant 2 result that we can all recognize as a bad loss—the Cougars moved up one spot from No. 48 to No. 47 on KenPom.
They slipped backward two spots after the double-overtime game against Pacific, but they jumped from No. 49 to No. 37 following the 45-point road win over Portland—a team ranked outside the top 320 in both metrics and one that fired its coach the next day. And then after an 11-point home loss to Gonzaga, BYU moved up five more spots.
No rational person would look at BYU's last five games and conclude, "Oh yeah, that's a team on the rise!" But because the Cougars mercilessly blew out a very bad team and didn't get embarrassed by a very good team, they climbed 17 spots on KenPom in the past week.
I'm not saying the Cougars are undeserving of a bid. Rather, they should definitely be in the projected field. They have true road wins over San Diego State, Utah State, Saint Mary's and San Francisco, as well as a nice neutral-site victory over St. John's and an 18-point home win over Utah. That's a solid collection of quality wins for a team that only has one loss to an opponent currently ranked outside the NET top 40.
It's just a little messed up that blowing out the worst team on its schedule was the best thing BYU has done this season as far as KenPom is concerned. This is why I wrote—almost two years ago to the day—about the unintended but negative consequence of this new rating system: Why would anyone want to put together a challenging schedule (AKA: fun-to-watch games) when you can make yourself look just as good, if not better by blowing out bad teams?
(While we're at it, let's also note that three weeks ago, after back-to-back losses to Utah State, San Diego State was ranked 44th in the NET and 42nd on KenPom. But thanks to six consecutive Quadrant 4 victories over Air Force, Wyoming and San Jose State by a combined margin of 179 points, the Aztecs are 22nd in the NET and 21st on KenPom.)
But I digress. The main takeaway is that BYU will be in excellent position to dance if it wins its remaining games against Pacific, Loyola Marymount and Santa Clara. The Cougars might even survive a 2-1 record in those games, given how much they've risen in the metrics in the past couple of weeks.
Stock Down: Minnesota Golden Gophers
Five Most Recent Games: W vs. Purdue, W vs. Nebraska, L at Rutgers, L at Purdue, L vs. Maryland
KenPom Change: -15 (22 to 37)
The good thing about playing in the Big Ten is that opportunity is perpetually at your doorstep. Several Big Ten teams will likely finish four or five games below .500 in league play and get into the NCAA tournament because that's still a bunch of wins in a Quadrant 1 smorgasbord.
The bad thing about playing in the Big Ten is things can get ugly in a hurry if you struggle on the road, which Minnesota has found out the hard way.
The Golden Gophers are 0-6 away from home, with those losses coming by an average margin of 17.0 points. And those blowout losses keep undoing any good that they accomplish at home.
In early January, they had a 17-point home win over Ohio State that vaulted them from 34th to 21st on KenPom. But after back-to-back road losses to Michigan (by 25) and Iowa (by 15), they were right back in the mid-30s. It's been a similar story over the past couple of weeks, as the monumental 18-point home win over Michigan was effectively negated by three straight losses to Maryland, Purdue and Rutgers.
If Selection Sunday were today, Minnesota would almost certainly receive a bid. But there will be quite a bit of sweating if this pattern continues.
The Golden Gophers still have road games remaining against Maryland, Indiana and Penn State. They also had a road game against Nebraska postponed a few weeks ago. If that game gets added back to the schedule and they lose it, yikes. And both teams have a lengthy gap in the Feb. 21-26 range when it could fit.
Excluding the possible Nebraska game, if Minnesota were to go 0-3 in its remaining road matchup, it pretty much has to win the home games against Illinois, Rutgers and Northwestern to at least somewhat make up for it.
All NET and KenPom data current through the start of play Thursday, Feb. 11.