Bubble Watch: Locks galore

A portrait of the bubble takes shape

Photo credit: USA Today

Fresh Bubble Watch! We don’t have an overriding theme today, mostly because we watched about 80 college basketball games while writing this Tuesday night (and late Wednesday morning, phew) that were impossible to organize into any larger theory or take. (Except, as ever: Get rid of replays. Freaking replays!) It was an unreal night of hoops, but then we have those three or four times a week in college hoops these days — it’s remarkable how healthy and reliably entertaining this sport has become.

One note: there are a lot of new locks today. It’s that time, mid-Feb. Things are taking shape. The tournament is just a few weeks away. And there are a lot of good teams.

The usual housekeeping:

• 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 (where you can use the navigation on the left side of your screen to scroll to conference sections quickly!) 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.

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ACC

So, um: Is Red Autry already done? Syracuse lost at Miami Tuesday night, falling to 11-14 on the season and 5-9 in the ACC — the same six-win Miami team that began the ACC campaign with a 10-game losing streak so bad its coach retired. (It has been pretty funny to see the extreme version of the Jim Larranaga experience come out this year: Even at their best, the Hurricanes were always much more focused on the offensive end of the floor, but they’ve completely stopped even pretending to care about defense this year. Current KenPom.com adjusted defensive efficiency rank: 342nd! LOL!) Anyway, even if Miami has been slightly peskier lately, losing to the Hurricanes is inexcusable, and whatever faint hints of momentum or program identity Autry was supposed to fomenting in his second season are nowhere to be found. This team is not only bad but formless.

There’s already one big brand program looking for a head coach this spring (Indiana). Will Syracuse be the second?

Lock: Duke
Should be in: Clemson, Louisville
Work to do: SMU, Pittsburgh, North Carolina, Wake Forest

Clemson (20-5, 12-2; NET: 27, SOR: 25): What a week for the Tigers. Sure, maybe a home win over North Carolina doesn’t quite hit the same as it would most years; the Tar Heels suddenly look unlikely to make the 2025 tourney. Still, it sure feels good, whatever the state of UNC, probably almost as good as knocking off Flagg and Co. before students rushed the floor Saturday. The latter gave Clemson its best win of the season by a healthy margin and all but assured the Tigers will be in the field provided they don’t have a total meltdown in their final six regular season games.

Louisville (18-6, 11-2; NET: 29, SOR: 26): Indiana fans nervous about finding the One True Hire can take some solace from the Louisville situation. Pat Kelsey was not the program’s first choice. He was a handful of spots down the Cardinals’ list. But he was a capable and well-regarded young(-ish) coach who would be deposited into a program with huge NIL resources and an inherent ability to attract talent even at the worst of its Kenny Payne nadir. He immediately put together a viable roster of transfers and built a modern, functioning team around star veteran guard Chucky Hepburn. Now, after two existentially depressing seasons, the Cardinals are very likely to get back in the tournament in Kelsey’s first year. This stuff doesn’t have to be rocket science.

SMU (19-5, 10-3; NET: 40, SOR: 41): On Tuesday night the Mustangs proved, and not for the first time, that they are a very solid basketball team. Say whatever you want about Pitt — and we’re about to just below — an 83-63 win over the Panthers is fairly impressive stuff. The problem for SMU remains the same one we’ve highlighted several times already: The schedule is weird. The noncon schedule was soft, the lone noncon quadrant 1 opponent was Mississippi State, SMU lost that game (and games to Duke, Louisville and North Carolina) and as such still hasn’t beaten a quad 1 opponent this deep into the year. There is one chance to do so between now and the end of the season: Feb. 22 against Clemson. Saturday’s home date against Wake is at least a crack at another NCAA Tournament hopeful. But mostly SMU will be in maintenance mode, treading carefully through trips to Notre Dame, Cal, Stanford and Florida State (and a home game against Syracuse, if Syracuse even bothers to show up).

Pittsburgh (14-9, 5-8; NET: 46, SOR: 57): At the risk of deploying Zoomer lingo: Pitt might be cooked. The Panthers were one of the ACC’s most promising teams in November and December. Since Jan. 7, when they got run off the floor by Duke, they are 2-8. That stretch includes losses to Florida State, Wake and an inexplicable 73-57 home debacle against Virginia; it also includes Tuesday’s no-show in Dallas. The piling up of losses, and the cratering of previously pristine predictive metrics, has sent Pitt into S-curve freefall; they wouldn’t be in our bracket if we had to build it today. Seriously: What happened here?