POPPING THE BUBBLE - MONDAY EDITION

by Thermocaster, The Meaningful Collateral

Welcome to a new feature for this time slot on Epic Carnival called "Popping The Bubble". In this segment, we'll be taking a detailed look at two or three NCAA tournament bubble teams every week. What do these teams have going for them? What's going against them? Which fans need to wake up to reality?

We'll also occasionally branch out and cover teams that are either criminally overrated (ahem...Drake) or underrated. If you've got a team you'd like to see covered, just shoot us an email at themeaningfulcollateral@gmail.com and we'll take a look.

So let's start this week's edition of PtB with a look at THE lightning rod team in college basketball these days...

SYRACUSE: Ah, the lovely Orange(men). Scourge of our natural resources! Owners of the most neurotic fan base east of Urbana/Champaign! Last year, as you may recall, a Syracuse team that finished 50th in the final RPI ratings was denied a spot in the NCAA Tournament, leading to a solid week of non-stop whining by Jim Boeheim in the national press. Syracuse's "case" last year consisted of home wins against Holy Cross, Villanova, and Georgetown, and a road win at Marquette. Unfortunately, they had two major problems - they played exactly zero OOC games outside the state of New York, and they racked up losses to sub-100 RPI teams St. John's, UConn, and Wichita State.

So what's their profile look like this year? Well, let's examine:

WHY THEY COULD MAKE IT: No bad losses. Whereas last year's team had those three sub-100 RPI losses hanging over them, the worst loss for this year's team is a road loss to Cincinnati, who's played well in conference. Even the two home losses to A-10 teams don't look nearly as bad as they did at the time, since both UMass and URI have a good shot to be at-large teams. Also, the committee might capitulate and give Syracuse an at-large bid, just to avoid another week-long whinefest from Boeheim.

WHY THEY'RE SCREWED: No signature win! Sorry, I can't see the committee classifying a home win versus St. Joseph's as a quality win, even if St. Joseph's makes the tournament as an at-large. At this point, that represents the Orange's ONLY win against the RPI Top 50.

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS: Syracuse is very lucky this year, in that they can take destiny into their own hands over the next few weeks. Five games against the RPI Top 50 (and two of those games on the road) will either give the Orange the resume boost that they need, or send them to the NIT. If they can only muster wins against South Florida, Seton Hall, and Marquette, there are going to be problems.

On to our next team...

HOUSTON: The Cougars have a profile very similar to Syracuse --- good losses, no signature wins, and a middling RPI, in this case 53. Unlike Syracuse, they don't have major media advocates singing their praises...or, for that matter, talking about them at all. I can't blame the media in this case, because there is very little about Houston that excites me.

WHY THEY COULD MAKE IT: Houston's fate on the tournament bubble could ultimately hinge on Kentucky, believe it or not. The Cougars 83-69 win over the Wildcats back in December wasn't very impressive at the time, but now that UK has seemingly put things together, every win that Kentucky gains helps to bolster the quality of that win for Houston.

Also helping Houston is the residual effect of Memphis being the #1 team in the nation. If, by some chance, Memphis gets a #1 seed in the tournament, and Houston only loses three games in Conference USA this year (all to Memphis), can the committee really tell Houston that they're not worthy of a berth? After all, if Memphis' total resume (including C-USA games) was good enough to get a #1 seed, surely a team that won every C-USA game except those versus Memphis is good enough to get in...right?

WHY THEY'RE SCREWED: Even though that UK win looks better every day, the Wildcats still have an RPI in the high 80's. Um...what else? They only have one other win against the RPI top 100 PERIOD, and that's against conference foe UTEP. If it were to come down between Syracuse and Houston at this stage, Syracuse would get in every time over the Cougars.

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS: HUGE game coming up for Houston this week, as they travel to Memphis. If they can somehow slay the Calipari dragon on the road, they can almost punch their ticket that night (barring a huge collapse). If they lose but keep it close, that could give them some momentum among the committee. The problem is that there are only two other RPI top 100 teams on the schedule - UTEP and UAB - and both of those games are on the road. A loss to Memphis would mean that Houston could afford no more losses at all.

FINAL ANALYSIS: In my most recent bracket, I had both of these teams out of the field, although Syracuse was the first team out. While both of these teams can play their way into the field, Syracuse has many more opportunities to impress than Houston does. The bottom 6 or so teams in this tournament field are very fluid right now, because most of them fit into two types of profiles - teams with no bad losses and no great wins (e.g., Syracuse) or teams with lots of both (e.g., Oregon, Oklahoma). I'd put my money on the committee valuing the latter over the former.