Bubble Watch: Sunday scaries

Will the A10 title game mean as much as it should?

Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

When VCU beat St. Joe’s Saturday, we were overcome by an immediate, almost instinctual, wave of dread.

To be fair, that is often how we feel this time of year. The Saturday of Champ Week is always the last jam-packed Saturday of the pre-Dance season; there is no Saturday with more games from here. As exciting as the tournament is, its arrival begins the countdown: Three more weekends. Three weeks from now, we’ll be at the Final Four, the buzzer will sound, the confetti will drop, another incredible college hoops season will end and the long offseason will begin. It’s always deeply bittersweet.

But the dread was also VCU-specific. VCU will play Dayton in the A10 title game today. Dayton is not a bubble team. VCU very much is. The Rams have performed well against their schedule and built viable metrics across the board, but they have always lacked quality wins — South Florida, at Dayton, and Virginia Tech are their top three, with a 6-7 record against the top two quadrants — and thus remain close to the cut line, right in the mix with the Texases, Auburns, Oklahomas and San Diego States of the world.

Here’s the big problem: This game tips at 1 p.m. ET on Selection Sunday. The committee, as ever, will be under severe time pressure all afternoon; there’s a deadline for the bracket that they simply can not miss. Every year, a result happens on Sunday — an SEC team wins the title game that its coach (usually John Calipari) thinks should result in a higher seed, or whatever — that doesn’t ultimately show up in the bracket a couple hours later. The bracket has already been built. The work is already done. The Sunday games, and to a lesser extent the entire weekend, tend to matter way less than people think.

So: What if Dayton wins tomorrow? Will the committee scrub every seed and run VCU down the pole? In theory, yes. Would it be much more seamless to put the Rams to the side, insert auto-bid Dayton into whatever spot the bubble team occupied, and keep it pushing? Also yes. VCU is not such an obvious selection, relative to other bubble teams, that the decision wouldn’t be fairly easy to justify.

This calculus extends to the rest of the field. Besides whatever mediocre SEC team (and/or San Diego State) the committee ultimately tacks on to the bottom of the bracket, this is the only intrigue left: Is Dayton a bid thief? Would VCU be in anyway? Which other bubble team would lose out?

Or, as we suspect, will the A10 be a two-bid league one way or the other — with Sunday’s title game functioning as a play-in?

That’s the last possible drama left on this bubble, at least as far as we can see. The committee will do what it will do. It will deliberate and decide to take one of Texas or Auburn or Oklahoma or San Diego State (all discussed in detail below). None of the teams left out will have a strong argument after the fact. There will be no angry columns to write about a deserving team that got snubbed. The rest of the world will move on and fill out their brackets, more unconcerned than ever about who limped their way into the First Four.

This bubble, in particular, has felt less dynamic than many in recent seasons: There are teams that should get at-large bids, and there are a handful — and it’s really just like three or four — that no one will be willing to go to bat for, whether they sneak in or not, whatever narrow distinctions the committee decides to draw. The entire situation feels pretty staid.

Among teams still on the page, we’d rank it like so:

Miami University
Texas A&M
Santa Clara
NC State
UCF
Missouri
SMU
VCU
Oklahoma (last team in)
CUT LINE
Texas (first team out)
Auburn
San Diego State
New Mexico
Indiana
Seton Hall
Stanford

Assuming SMU’s BJ Edwards is healthy (also more on which below), there’s a pretty clear this team deserves to be in dropoff after SMU. We won’t be able to muster an ounce of outrage for OU, UT, Auburn or beyond — or even, if things get weird, Missouri, which should get in but shot itself in the foot with its nonconference schedule long ago.

But VCU is up in the air. They’re the last meaningful, anxious question about this bracket before then Bubble Watch ends and the countdown begins.

Automatic bids from non-Bubble Watch leagues: 22
Locks: 34
Should be in: 5
Work to do: 1
Waiting game: 10

Housekeeping and miscellany:

• This is the final Bubble Watch update of 2025-26. Good news: We’ll be putting updates in the live chat throughout Sunday, including during the selection show, so come on by.

• More good news: As ever, we’ll be devoting the same energy toward the NCAA Tournament to come. This newsletter an independent, ad-free labor of love. If you would like to support its continued existence, as well as our upcoming tournament coverage — including on-site coverage of the East regional and our 17th Final Four — please consider a paid subscription today.

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• 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, get in touch in the comments or shoot me a note.

• NET and WAB are 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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