Bubble Watch: The knives come out for Miami

Fortunately, they're not very sharp

Corey Alexander said something incredible Thursday night. During the first half of Florida State’s quarterfinal matchup with Duke, Dave O’Brien asked Alexander, partner on the call, to offer his take on the bubble discourse of the day. Miami lost, Auburn lost. Corey, what do you make of it all?

Alexander hemmed and hawed, acted like he couldn’t say whatever forbidden thing he really wanted to say, then ripped off this corker:

“If you took (the three ACC coaches who had been fired already) — Damon Stoudamire, Adrian Autry, Earl Grant — with those rosters, and they played Miami of Ohio’s schedule, they’d go 31-1 too.”

Whooaaaaa! Corey! Fire up the “First Take” audition reel! Bringing the heat! Who knew?! Honestly — we were kind of impressed.

Then, of course, we were dumbfounded. Does Corey Alexander even realize who he’s talking about here? These are the three teams you want to use in your comparison? Georgia Tech lost 20 games, including to DePaul, Drake, and Mississippi State. Syracuse lost 17 times, including to Hofstra, Pitt, and Boston College. Boston College lost to everybody, as Boston College does, including: FAU, Central Connecticut (KenPom rank: 306), Tulane (203), Georgia Tech and, get this, UMass — the same team that beat Miami Thursday afternoon. These were his comparisons. These were the teams he said would go 31-1.

If this was just Alexander jawboning on behalf of some fired ACC pals, you could laugh it off and move on. But Alexander was hardly alone. We saw an incredible number of people saying directionally similar (albeit less insane) things about Miami after their loss, and not just random Auburn fans making their case on the Internet, either. There was this …

Sorry: What?

… and also this, a column written by USA Today’s senior national college football (ahem) writer, published before Miami even lost, in which the author opened a couple of KenPom tabs, saw some numbers, realized Miami’s unbeaten season had come against an objectively bad schedule, reverted to football pundit brain (but who did they beat?!) and thus concluded that the literal coolest thing ever actually sucked.

For anyone who actually, you know, follows college basketball, this experience is disorienting.

We’ve been watching Miami for months. Buzzer readers have been along for every update (and live-chatting every narrow ESPN+ escape). We’ve covered all this ground! We’ve warned about the Redhawks’ awful schedule and nonexistent margin for error; explained why their schedule was bad (because scheduling for mid-majors is super hard); insisted they would have to enter Selection Sunday with no more than two losses to even have a chance; dissected the gulf between their predictive metrics and their wins above bubble rank; explained what WAB is, why old-school fans should like it (winning tons of games is hard!) and why it has become so important to the committee; and anticipated the upside-down discourse to come.

WAB-era Miami could break people's brains

That was written Feb. 6. It’s March 12. It’s too late, guys. You missed out. This conversation could have happened in earnest a few weeks ago, if the Redhawks had dropped a random league game. But they didn’t, so it didn’t. Teams with unbeaten regular seasons do not miss the NCAA Tournament. Teams with one loss on Selection Sunday do not miss the NCAA Tournament. That’s it. That’s all you need to know. Miami did what it needed to do.

We don’t expect everyone to be sickos about this stuff. But a bit of Googling never hurt.

Anyway, the selection committee could always light a 40-year precedent on fire. Anything is possible, technically. Miami really is a unique case. Someone in the room will at least make the argument. They’ll try it on, if only for the purposes of the exercise.

We can imagine it now: “OK, folks, thought experiment: If Boston College played this schedule, could they go 31-1 too?” And then everyone would laugh and laugh and laugh. Boston College. Hahahahaha. Ten out of 10.

Automatic bids from non-Bubble Watch leagues: 22
Locks: 34
Should be in: 6
Work to do: 5
Waiting game: 7

Housekeeping and miscellany:

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ACC

Wednesday morning’s Florida State excitement nearly paid off. The way-better-than-you-think Seminoles had a shot at the buzzer to knock off Duke — with whom they played an even 40 minutes from start to finish, a refreshing departure from the Blue Devils’ typical demolitions — that hit back rim and bounced off. We would have loved to see what that neutral-court win might have done for FSU’s NET, WAB, et al, and how long we would have spent agonizing whether to throw them on the page for a laugh. Alas.

And, with that, the ACC bubble was done. None of the teams listed below play again this week — which is not to say their situations won’t change.

Lock: Duke, Louisville, Virginia, North Carolina, Miami, Clemson
Should be in: NC State
Waiting game: SMU, Virginia Tech, Stanford

NC State (20-13, 10-8; NET: 35, WAB: 43): NC State finished their ACC tournament as a microcosm of their broader 2025-26 campaign: not bad, but not as good as you’d hope. The 81-74 loss was certainly a better accounting of themselves than they gave in Charlottesville (90-61) Feb. 24. But it wasn’t the resounding postseason push Will Wade might have been hoping for — assuming Wade, who has long seemed resigned to the flaws of this group, was still capable of hope on the subject anyway. For his part, he directly quashed rumors that he was considering re-taking the LSU job this spring, and talked about how excited he was to build something better in Raleigh moving forward. For now, he’ll have to settle for a double-digit seed seed after year one.

SMU (20-12, 8-10; NET: 37, WAB: 45): SMU’s WAB fell to 45th after its Wednesday loss to Louisville, which is, funny enough, exactly where the metric’s threshold for the “average” bubble team cuts off. This all feels very Andy Enfield, whose teams — at least every team that didn’t have Evan Mobley on it — have lived in an uncannily tight band of averageness for the majority of his post Dunk City career:

Right in that meaty part of the curve

To be fair, this one often looked better than most. The Mustangs spent most of the season ranked in the low 30s at KenPom. Their late-season losing streak, and metrics drift, came after guard B.J. Edwards injured his knee. Edwards was day to day before the ACC tournament, and one assumes SMU is currently making it clear to the committee that he’s on the cusp of a return any day now, honestly, really, he’s practicing already, so maybe just ignore all those losses in late February? Please? We usually downplay these kinds of injury what-ifs, but a team this wedded to the bubble needs every margin it can get. Edwards is important enough for it to matter.

Virginia Tech (19-13, 8-10; NET: 56, WAB: 50): We’ve kept Virginia Tech on the page the last couple of days more as a courtesy than anything else. It’s not going to happen — especially after Miami’s loss created a MAC bid thief and slid everyone down a spot.

Stanford (20-12, 9-9; NET: 62, WAB: 56): If you cover Quad 3 with a dark piece of construction paper, Stanford looks like a no-brainer tournament team. 5-6 in Quad 1, 4-2 in Quad 2, wins over Louisville, UNC, Saint Louis, Virginia Tech (away), SMU — put them in the field! Unfortunately, the other four losses exist: Notre Dame, Pitt, UNLV, Seattle. The first three came back in December, and were part of the reason we didn’t revisit this team much in the Watch until it won at NC State March 7. They might be in a next four out here and there, but we’re not sure how they find a way into the field.

Big 12

What a day for the Big 12’s gimmick LED basketball court Thursday. Gratifying and validating.

It really sucked to look at. Worse than that, though, is that it looked unhealthy for players. Kansas State’s Khamari McGriff said the lights gave him a migraine, which is why he spent the second half against BYU on the bench with a towel on his head. All day, as players slipped and slid, players and coaches told reporters the court was slippery. Then, Texas Tech star Christian Anderson slipped and injured himself against Iowa State, forcing him to leave the game, and really, who could have possibly foreseen this? Who could have imagined putting elite athletes on a big slab of glass might be an issue?

(Anderson seemed fine postgame, as he encouraged the Big 12 to return to a normal basketball court, but really: imagine if he wasn’t. Imagine if that kid missed the NCAA Tournament because of a jangling-keys attention-span stunt. Also: Imagine how Darryn Peterson’s agent feels watching him play two whole halves of basketball on this thing! There is no clinical antiperspirant strong enough.)

After Anderson’s injury, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark hopped on the ESPN broadcast. He said safety was the top priority. He reminded the hosts that the court was FIBA-certified and already being used in EuroLeague play. He played a bit of defense.

But Yormark ultimately stuck to his guns: “Anytime you innovate, you never get 100% buy-in,” he said.

Move fast and break tendons. Real man in the arena stuff.

Then, early Friday morning, came the best part, just a few minutes after Kansas and TCU finished:

One day we’ll tell our grandchildren about that brief and glorious time when the best and brightest in this country — college athletics conference commissioners — were allowed to create, originate, and be free from the parasite facing nature through an intermediary.

March 10, 2026 — March 12, 2026. Time to pick up the pieces.