Bubble trouble

For the past few weeks, we've been hearing about what a wide-open bubble picture we were going to have this year. Well, that picture got a little bit smaller this week, with two teams with at-large profiles from mid-major conferences -- Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference and South Alabama in the Sun Belt -- lost in their conference tournaments. The bubble picture got a little bit smaller, and it will continue to shrink as the week goes on.

What follows below is my map of the bracket landscape heading into the last few days. Let's start with the locks. I found 29 teams who will get at-large bids even if they lose their first game in their conference tournaments: Duke, North Carolina, Clemson, Xavier, Georgetown, Louisville, Notre Dame, Connecticut, Marquette, Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, Purdue, Michigan State, Indiana, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas State, BYU, UCLA, Stanford, Washington State, USC, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Gonzaga, Memphis.

The locks come from eight conferences. Subtract those automatic bids and you have 19 at-large bids. That leaves 13 for the bubble boys.

In addition there are also three wild cards left to be filled -- that is, conferences that would only get more than one bid if the regular season champ wins the tournament. They are: Horizon (Butler), Southern (Davidson), MAC ( Kent State). For the time being, let's assume all three of those teams win their league tournaments.

For the 13 at-large spots, I have taken 28 bubble teams and divided them into four flights of seven teams each. The A and B flights would be in the field of 65 if my bracket were being filled today. The C and D flights are on the outside looking in. Since things will change very quickly as the results come pouring in throughout the week, I've laid out the scenarios for the various possibilities in the conference tournaments.

RPI rankings are in parentheses, and as usual all RPI-related data comes from CollegeRPI.com. Happy bubbling:

West Virginia (37): The Mountaineers have benefited greatly from playing a generous slate in the Big East's unbalanced schedule, but give them credit for taking care of business. They scored wins at home over Marquette, Syracuse and Pittsburgh, and you can see now how good their nonconference win over Winthrop stands up. They did lose by 23 at home against Cincinnati on Jan. 30, but every bubble team has one or two big warts on their r�sum�. West Virginia gets Providence in the first round of the Big East tournament. If they take care of business again in that one, they can feel pretty comfortable regardless of what happens the rest of the way.

Arizona (30): A loss to Oregon State in the first round of the Pac-10 tournament would leave the Wildcats in a tough spot. That aside, they have an awfully strong r�sum�: No. 30 in the RPI, second in the overall strength of schedule rankings. They have five wins against the top 50 -- including a victory at UNLV that looks even better now than it did in December -- and suffered three losses in the four games when Jerryd Bayless was hurt. The committee takes that kind of injury-related nugget into account.

Texas A&M (46): The Aggies have been maddeningly inconsistent this season, but they got a critical road win at Baylor last week to shore up their case. They also have a good bubble head-to-head win over Ohio State and they beat Texas at home on Jan. 30. Texas A&M's biggest problem is it lost five of its last seven games, so an early exit from the Big 12 tournament might give the committee extra reason to pause before putting them into the field of 65.

Miami (27): The Hurricanes have done just about everything they needed to do, including that huge win at home over Duke on Feb. 20. I only included them on this list because of that loss to Florida State on Saturday. Even if they lose to NC State in the first round of the ACC tournament, I think Miami would be in, but I still wouldn't recommend taking that chance.