Bubble Watch: Home stretch

Texas Tech perfection, the bubbly Big East, Gonzaga’s persistence, new locks and much more

How it feels to play a perfect game of basketball (Photo credit: Justin Rex, Associated Press)

Incredible as it is, we are now just a little over a month away from Selection Sunday. True story! It feels like we’ve been writing this rather large column for a while already, which is not a bad thing; we’ve already gone on a journey.

Still, this is where the premise starts to get just a bit more serious and literal, where remaining schedules begin to shrink, when we spend fewer of the many words you’ll find below on the broad arc of a team’s season or minor tactical interests and a bit more on whether it looks like it’s in or out of the field right now. Not entirely, mind you. Just more.

It is, we believe, the most wonderful time of the year.

Housekeeping:

• In case you missed it last week, we’ve switched the second top line number next to each team from strength of schedule to strength of record, a superior and more descriptive metric that is also used by the committee to understand a team’s performance against its schedule (rather than just how difficult that schedule was in theory).

• Some email providers impose limits on email length. This is a long file, so if your email cuts off, be sure to click through to the site itself to read it all.

• There are almost certainly typos in the below copy. We are our only editor; this is a one-man show. If you spot factual mistakes or just think we should consider a team not on the page, get in touch in the comments or shoot me a note.

• NET and SOR are always current as of the previous day. Records are always up to date. Thanks as ever to Warren Nolan for his immensely helpful site.

• Oh, and thanks to all of you for being here. Sub numbers have grown super well in the past six weeks, and it’s been super gratifying to have so many of you reading, commenting and chatting. You guys rule!

ACC

Now that Clemson and Virginia have found their form and helped refute the notion that the 15-member ACC might only get two or three teams in the field (as opposed to four or five, which is obviously so much better, ahem) and the raging existential argument about the ACC’s basketball strength has cooled, we can turn our attention to more practical matters: locking Duke.

It comes at an interesting time for the Blue Devils, actually. On Monday night, at halftime of their home game against Wake Forest, Jay Williams essentially accused the Duke players of being soft. This followed former Xavier and Louisville coach Chris Mack saying he didn’t think Duke were “dogs,” that they lacked the intensity of Mike Krzyzewski’s teams. Especially interesting were the replies from self-professed Duke fans, which we expected to defend the players but almost to a person agreed with Mack, lamenting the loss of the old Duke.