smallchou.com/blog

from espn…

Now just a day before Selection Sunday, it’s time to really bore downon the final at-large candidates and establish a pecking order. We’lldo that after a quick look at the current bubble picture.

* — Auto bid winner included. ^ — Butler and Nevada are locks; Xavier should be in.

The Bubble Breakdown
CONFERENCE	LOCKS	SHOULD BE INS	AT-LARGES TAKEN (OUT OF 34) (assuming no auto bid outlier)
ACC	6	1	6
Big East	6	1	6
Big Ten	3	3	5
Big 12	3	2	4
Pac-10	5	0	4
SEC	4	0	3
MVC	2*	0	1
MWC	2	0	1
Other Locks/Should Be Ins^	2	1	3
TOTAL	33	8	33

If you believe Nevada and Xavier are in (which is a very safe bet),and you believe Purdue, Illinois and Kansas State are now likely to getthere (which is pretty reasonable), that leaves only one at-large spotfor the rest of the pool — and that assumes that Memphis doesn’t losein the C-USA final Saturday.

Here’s the pool of teams that appear to be in contention for that spot:

Air Force, Stanford, Florida State, West Virginia, Old Dominion, Drexel, Missouri State and Appalachian State.

Of those teams, I believe Stanford, Air Force, Old Dominion and Drexelhave the best cases — and right now, it appears Old Dominion woulddeserve the nod on paper. The Monarchs should be ahead of Drexel giventhe head-to-head sweep, better CAA standing and better record againstthe top CAA opponents. Air Force beat Stanford (minus a Lopez) by 34 inPalo Alto — a nice tiebreaker to own — and has a vastly better RPI,but ODU’s profile seems to slightly edge Air Force’s (and Stanford’s)in direct comparison — even though I suspect Stanford would be a moreformidable first-round opponent given Anthony Goods’ return and itsunusual size inside.

rough to rely on that selection committee…