Bubble Watch: The bloodbath continues
(Almost) everybody keeps losing
Cincinnati gave up an eight point lead with two minutes to play, and lost in overtime. Indiana lost by 13 to Northwestern. Texas fell by 10 to Ole Miss. Cal, in so far as they were still on the far fringe of bubble at all, lost to Florida State.
And so the great bubble bloodbath of 2026 rolled on.
Not every high-major hopeful had a disastrous Tuesday. Oklahoma stayed hot. UCF, Cincinnati’s torturers, bolstered their spot. Auburn avoided disaster against Mississippi State. Still, the general trajectory felt like a continuation of last Saturday’s mess, creating what feels like an even wider gap between teams on the Nos. 9 and 10 lines coming in to Champ Week and the teams on the actual bubble several notches below.
No big introductory theme for you this morning; there are lots of games starting in a couple of hours, so let’s just jump right in. As of writing, here’s how we tally the bubble math:
Automatic bids from non-Bubble Watch leagues: 22
Locks: 33
Should be in: 9
Work to do: 6
Waiting game: 5
That’s a lot of locks. But it feels right.
Housekeeping and miscellany:
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ACC
As we sat down to write this (too) late Wednesday night, we found ourselves briefly, irrationally excited about Florida State. Maybe, with the disaster unfolding everywhere else, a long-shot hope could rise at the last possible moment — especially a team with a 10-3 record in its last 13 games, one rated 29th in Bart Torvik’s efficiency rankings since Jan. 18. Come on: Why not Florida State?!
Oh. Right. That’s why.
Still: Kudos to the ‘Noles. The Luke Loucks hire raised at least a few eyebrows in the spring, and the 7-11 start didn’t inspire much faith. But they’ve figured some stuff out (a willingness to sell out on volume 3-point shooting, regardless of accuracy, chief among it) and been a top-half ACC team for months. (The staff also elaborately celebrates accurate iPad reads after successful coach’s challenges, which is very high-level stuff.) By the way: The last time they played Duke, on Jan. 3, was a four-point home loss, by the way. The Blue Devils are banged up this week. Crazier things have happened.
Lock: Duke, Louisville, Virginia, North Carolina, Miami, Clemson
Should be in: NC State
Waiting game: SMU, Virginia Tech, Stanford
NC State (20-12, 10-8; NET: 35, WAB: 43): Will Wade’s 2026 habit of sarcastically insulting his own team extended into the postseason after Wednesday’s 98-88 win over Pitt, when a reporter began a question by noting that it was the first time the Panthers had hit 12 3s in a game all season. “Well, they hadn’t seen our defense,” Wade quipped. Wade was mostly amiable and praised his team from there, mentioning in mitigation that Pitt hit some tough looks along the way, but you could tell he remains existentially frustrated that his first Wolfpack team was in Wednesday’s quietly desperate position in the first place. NC State really needed to win this game! It mattered way more than anyone would have assumed five weeks — let alone five months — ago.
SMU (20-13, 8-10; NET: 37, WAB: 46): SMU’s 62-58, 61-possession loss to Louisville Wednesday was a 180 from the Mustangs’ win over the Cardinals Feb. 17. That game was a blast, even if it was a bit defense-optional, all pace and playmaking guards, and we’re still not totally sure how both teams got dragged so deep into the muck in Charlotte. In any case, the Mustangs have nothing to do now but wait. They will have been encouraged by the losses elsewhere on the bubble throughout the evening, and their WAB and predictive metrics compare favorably to many of the teams still on this page. But they are just 9-13 against the top two quadrants, and their best win (the aforementioned Louisville game) feels a bit perceptually inflated by Louisville’s NET. (The Cards haven’t exactly racked up a murderer’s row of victories in their own right.) Our guess is they’ll sneak in, especially if the committee takes B.J. Edwards’ late-season absence into account. We’d certainly rather have Boopie in the tournament than not. But there’s a lot of ball between now and Selection Sunday.
Virginia Tech (19-13, 8-10; NET 57, WAB: 53): Tuesday’s blurb focused on how bad we felt for Mike “what the f*** am I doing wrong” Young, who only narrowly avoided a full-on breakdown after his team’s heartbreaking loss at Virginia last week. Now we really feel bad. The Hokies needed at least a couple of wins in Charlotte this week. What they got instead was a one-and-done overtime loss to Wake Forest. Much like Stanford below, Tech will be stuck with their long-shot resume, including a 2-10 Quad 1 record — and a WAB that dropped from 46th to 53rd after the Wake loss — as-is for the rest of the week. Just brutal.
Stanford (20-12, 9-9; NET: 62, WAB: 58): On a late-season bubble full of fading hopes, Stanford stood out: The Cardinal entered the postseason having won six of their last eight, including over SMU and NC State. Finally! Someone, somewhere was making a move! Someone was doing, like, literally anything! Hooray! Naturally, on Tuesday, Stanford immediately lost to Pitt. Sigh. In terms of spectacle, it was one of the most depressing conference tourney games in recent history, observed by a friends-and-family-sized crowd that politely murmured along as Stanford’s season ended with a whimper. With one notable exception, of course: The guy singing Goo Goo Dolls during Stanford free throw attempts.
As funny as that was — and it was hilarious — the main reason you can hear him bleating so clearly is because the rest of the gym is dead, dead silent. It’s bleak.
Anyway, we’ve seen a fair number of bracket folks putting Stanford much closer to the field since the last weekend of the regular season. We weren’t as convinced, though it was nice to see someone making a push. But even if you’re higher on them than we’ve been, they now face the prospect of sitting at home all week while the rest of the bubble will be chipping away. Bad spot to be in.
Big 12
We saw some response to Wes Miller’s comments after Wednesday’s crushing overtime loss to UCF chiding him for being desperate, which felt a little harsh. To be clear, he is desperate. Miller has been on the hot seat since the end of last season, with his reputation as a rising star in the profession hanging by a thread; he needs this tournament bid badly, whatever Cincinnati brass decides to do this spring. But you know what? Lots of coaches are desperate! Coaches of teams who have compiled much better NCAA Tournament resumes — teams much closer to the cut line than Cincinnati has been at any point in the past week, coaches with much greater job security — do this stuff all the time. Sometimes their dads even do it for them!
Unfortunately for Wes, “when was the last time a team won X out of its last Y games in Z league?” is not a formal criteria for NCAA Tournament selection. For all of the good stuff Cincinnati did this season, particularly down the stretch — including Feb. 21’s rejuvenating win over Kansas — they needed to back it up with a run in Kansas City. Without it, with the whole resume in relief, the good work in league play feels like too little, too late.
Speaking of which: TCU once appeared to be trending in that same direction. It’s been a journey. TCU lost to New Orleans at home to open the season, then should have beaten Michigan Nov. 14 but didn’t, then did beat Florida and Wisconsin in San Diego, then immediately lost to Notre Dame in Ft. Worth. It was hard to know what to make of all that — especially because that was back when Florida was losing games and figuring things out, which feels like a very long time ago indeed. When the Frogs opened the Big 12 3-6, with losses to Colorado and Utah, we suspected (as in the preseason, when the roster filled us with little hope) they would soon fade against the rigors of the league.
Not so. TCU has lost one game since Feb. 1! Along the way, they’ve knocked off Iowa State, won at Texas Tech, handled surging Cincinnati, and now find themselves 6-6 against Quad 1 and 7-2 against Quad 2 with strong metrics and top-end wins most bubble teams dream of. They’re a lock.
Locks: Arizona, Houston, Iowa State, Texas Tech, Kansas, BYU, TCU
Should be in: UCF
UCF (21-10, 9-9; NET: 51, WAB: 38): First of all: There was a lot of hype about the court at the Big 12 tournament. It’s basically a big LED screen! It can change graphics and colors! We can do anything we want with it! The future is now! Cool. So why did you take the fill tool on Microsoft Paint and make the entire court gray?
What was the thinking here? We’d love a designer — a graphical artist, or someone who plans modern convention center spaces, or even one of the thousands of interior designers our wife follows on Instagram — to explain this choice. Is it supposed to play down the new-age court during live action and intentionally draw the eye to the colors of each team’s uniforms? Did it only feel like watching a basketball game in a Darkest Dungeon level because Cincinnati and UCF were wearing white and black? Did everyone else immediately check their display’s calibration? Or was that just us?
We would have made it look either a) distracting and garish or b) like a totally normal hardwood court. Not that anyone asked.
ANYWAY: Cincinnati’s immense pain was UCF’s gain. The Knights trailed 58-50 with just over two minutes left in regulation, at which point KenPom’s win probability metric gave them a whopping 3.3% chance of winning the contest. Cincinnati may not be heading to the tournament, but beating them on a neutral court counts as a Quad 1 win, which is something. Most of all the comeback halted UCF’s late-season slide toward the in-or-out cut. A loss against Arizona Thursday shouldn’t change that calculus.
Big East
Shout out to the Georgetown fan who brought the laptop along to the Garden Wednesday night:
In the circumstances, we see nothing wrong with this. It’s a weeknight. Some folks work long hours. Maybe he was reading Bubble Watch? Or maybe he was hedging his bets: Georgetown has not been the most captivating product lately, and a Wednesday night No. 11 vs. No. 6 matchup against DePaul had every possibility of becoming unwatchable. Might as well keep that Whiskerwood colony close at hand. Just in case.
Of course, Georgetown did beat DePaul, 63-56, not only advancing the Hoyas to face Villanova Thursday but bringing Ed Cooley to 2-1 against the Blue Demons this season and 4-4 in his three years on the Hilltop. (Georgetown went 0-3 against DePaul last year.) Baby steps.
Locks: Connecticut, St. John’s, Villanova
Work to do: Seton Hall
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