BubbleGrid for Friday, March 13

March 13, 2009 5:24 PM

See here for a description of the BubbleGrid.

Friday the 13th came early for many of the top seed contenders and some of the teams on the bubble.

• Michigan and Minnesota should feel solid after wins Thursday, while Penn State lives to fight another day. A win Friday night over Purdue should help the Nittany Lions.
• A few Mountain West teams (UNLV and New Mexico) in the RPI mid-60s are now in jeopardy after losing.
• The model is more confident in Southern Cal and Arizona than I am. Many of the teams currently on the wrong side of the bubble have two or more bad losses (vs. 101+ RPI) than Arizona, but the Wildcats and Trojans each have abysmal road profiles. The problem is that I don't know who I would replace them with. St. Mary's? South Carolina (1-5 vs. RPI Top 50)?
• The model is also more confident in Texas A&M than I am. The Aggies don't have anything unusually good or bad in their profile, as the BubbleGrid shows. Their big problem is a weak road profile, with only one RPI Top 100 win (#73 Nebraska by 2). They did beat SEC regular season champ LSU away from College Station, but it was a two hour drive away in Houston.

Over the next two days we'll take a closer look at the teams left on the bubble using profile ingredients not shown on the BubbleGrid. I will also predict which teams I think the model will miss and why. Time willing, I may also put together an actual bracket.

Also, stay tuned after Selection Sunday for review of the committee's picks and some looks at the actual tournament games to help fill out your brackets.

Notes:

• Hover over a value for more information
• Shaded teams are predicted to be in the field
• Teams with a * are the automatic qualifier (AQ) for their conference, or the projected AQ if the bid is not final
• Teams are listed in order of their selection confidence by the CTD model. In other words, the last shaded non-AQ team is the last team in, and the first non-shaded team is the first team out.
• The RPI only considers games against Division I opponents, so all records listed include only games against D-I opponents.

		1-25	1-50		1-100		1-200	Road	Good road wins	Bad home losses
Team	W-L	W	W	+/-	W	+/-	+/-	+/-
Ohio St.	20-9	1	5	-3	9	0	5	4-6	#43 Michigan #61 Miami FL
Minnesota	21-9	2	5	-2	9	0	4	4-6	#39 Wisconsin
Utah St.*	27-4	1	1	-1	3	0	10	10-3
Texas A&M	22-9	2	4	-1	8	0	6	5-5	#73 Nebraska
Michigan	19-12	2	6	-3	10	-1	1	3-8	#37 Minnesota #72 N'western
Boston Coll.	22-10	3	4	0	7	0	8	5-5	#3 North Carolina #62 Maryland	#246 Harvard
Siena*	26-7	0	2	-3	7	2	10	9-4	#97 Fairfield
Wisconsin	18-11	1	4	-5	9	-1	2	4-7	#43 Michigan #56 Virginia Tech #67 Penn St.
Creighton	26-7	1	2	0	9	4	9	8-4	#58 Northern IA #94 Evansville #99 Bradley	#167 Drake
San Diego St.	20-8	1	1	-4	6	-2	4	6-5	#66 UNLV #66 UNLV
Florida	23-9	1	2	-4	8	0	5	2-7	#64 Auburn #90 Vanderbilt
Penn St.	22-10	3	6	-2	7	-2	1	5-6	#4 Michigan St. #21 Illinois
Arizona	19-13	2	5	-4	8	-4	2	2-9
Southern Cal	19-12	0	3	-5	7	-3	4	2-8	#91 Washington St.
St. Mary's	23-6	0	2	-1	3	-1	9	8-3
South Carolina	21-8	0	1	-4	7	0	5	5-6	#60 Baylor #74 Kentucky
New Mexico	21-11	2	3	-1	7	-1	4	6-6	#96 Wyoming	#161 Central Florida
Illinois St.	24-9	0	2	0	7	1	11	7-6	#94 Evansville #95 Wright St.	#207 Indiana St.
UNLV	21-10	4	4	-1	9	1	3	6-6	#8 Louisville #25 BYU #81 UTEP #83 Nevada
Kentucky	20-12	3	4	-2	8	-2	-1	4-6	#24 Tennessee	#128 VMI #189 Georgia
Miami FL	17-12	2	2	-5	6	-4	0	4-6	#55 Boston Coll. #74 Kentucky
Maryland	19-12	2	3	-4	7	-3	0	2-6		#136 Morgan St.
Georgetown	16-14	4	4	-4	7	-5	-1	3-8	#6 Connecticut #11 Villanova
UAB	22-10	0	0	-5	2	-8	5	7-7	#59 Arizona
Baylor	18-13	2	4	-6	8	-3	0	2-7	#80 Kansas St. #91 Washington St.
Temple	20-11	1	1	-4	4	-4	3	9-8	#67 Penn St. #77 Duquesne	#113 La Salle
Niagara	26-8	1	2	-1	5	2	9	10-6	#88 Buffalo #97 Fairfield	#114 Akron #214 Iona
Kansas St.	20-11	1	3	-3	5	-4	-1	5-5	#33 Texas #34 Texas A&M #54 Cleveland St.
Cleveland St.*	22-10	2	2	-2	5	-2	2	8-8	#14 Syracuse #23 Butler
Tulsa	22-9	0	2	-4	5	-1	3	7-5	#81 UTEP
Auburn	20-10	1	2	-3	5	-4	3	5-5	#78 Mississippi St.	#180 Mercer