NCAA Tournament

With just a little more than a week remaining until the selection show for the 2021 NCAA men's college basketball tournament, the No. 1 seeds picture is coming more into focus by the hour.

It might not seem like much, but the difference between a No. 1 and a No. 2 seed is massive.

For starters, there have been eight No. 15-over-No. 2 first-round upsets compared to just the one No. 16 UMBC over No. 1 Virginia shocker. Dating back to 1999, more than twice as many No. 1 seeds have reached the Final Four (33) than No. 2 seeds (16). And when it comes to winning the whole shebang, 14 No. 1 seeds have cut down the nets compared to only two No. 2 seeds in the past 21 years.

There are still quite a few variables between now and next Sunday, though, so which projected No. 1 seeds are safest? And which teams not currently on the No. 1 line have a reasonable path to get there?

For every team with any realistic hope, we've set their chances of securing a No. 1 seed.

Teams are presented in decreasing order of certainty to land a spot on the top line.

                  

Gonzaga Bulldogs (99.8 percent)

Gonzaga is the only remaining undefeated team (24-0) in men's college basketball. And while the West Coast Conference isn't anything special, Gonzaga also scored neutral-site victories over West Virginia, Iowa, Kansas and Virginia within its first seven games of the season. As far as the Bracket Matrix is concerned, that's two No. 2 seeds, a No. 3 seed and a No. 5 seed.

If the Zags are able to win the WCC tournament—which only requires two wins, as they have a bye into the semifinals—not only are they a lock for a No. 1 seed, but they would be a lock for the No. 1 overall seed. Even if they were to lose to Saint Mary's or Loyola Marymount in the WCC semifinals, it's hard to imagine they'll drop all the way to No. 5 on the overall seed list.

The only feasible "nightmare" scenario would be an immediate Gonzaga loss, followed by West Virginia beating Baylor in the Big 12 championship and Michigan losing to one of Ohio State, Illinois or Iowa in the Big Ten championship. In that situation, maybe the four teams playing in the Big 12 and Big Ten title games could bypass Gonzaga. However, I don't even think that would be enough do it.

        

Baylor Bears (98.0 percent)

Tuesday's road win over West Virginia probably cemented Baylor's spot as a No. 1 seed. There were some brief concerns raised during the close call against Iowa State and the subsequent loss to Kansas, but the Bears are now at least close to looking like the runaway freight train that they were prior to that lengthy COVID-19 pause.

Because of that most-of-the-season dominance, Baylor has seven Quadrant 1 wins and only the one loss at Kansas. Even if the Bears were to lose to Texas Tech on Saturday, they are so far ahead of the six- and seven-loss teams (Illinois, Iowa, Ohio State and Alabama) that it's hard to see anyone other than Michigan catching them from behind, regardless of what happens in the Big 12, Big Ten and SEC conference tournaments.

The one exception would be if Baylor loses to Texas Tech this weekend and loses its Big 12 tournament opener against either TCU or Kansas State. The Horned Frogs are No. 121 in the NET, so that would be a Quadrant 3 loss. The Wildcats are No. 204 in the NET, so that would at least temporarily appear as a Quadrant 4 loss, although Kansas State would almost certainly move into the top 200 if it beats Baylor. Either way, that type of bad loss could knock Baylor down to a No. 2 seed, provided enough of the other candidates for the top line take care of their own business next week.

However, Baylor's average margin of victory in three games against TCU and Kansas State this season was 32.3 points. Winning that quarterfinal shouldn't be a problem.

       

Michigan Wolverines (92.0 percent)

Between Baylor's road win over West Virginia and Michigan's 23-point home loss to Illinois, Tuesday night brought the national hierarchy back to: Gonzaga and Baylor on the top tier, Michigan alone on the second tier, and everyone else is fighting for fourth place.

While it feels like the Wolverines are securely on the top line, they aren't quite the lock that Gonzaga and Baylor are. That blowout loss to Illinois, taken in conjunction with the previous 18-point loss at Minnesota, leaves the Wolverines at least a little vulnerable to a leapfrog situation.

If they lose at Michigan State on Sunday and if they lose their first Big Ten tournament game (seeding isn't set, but it's looking like that could be a third consecutive game against Michigan State), that would be trouble.

It might not immediately knock the Wolverines off the top line, but it should eventually bump them behind the Big Ten tournament champion (assuming it's Illinois, Ohio State or Iowa). If an Alabama or West Virginia also wins out, it could bump Michigan down a peg.

          

Winner of Saturday's Illinois at Ohio State Game (70.0 percent)

Loser of Saturday's Illinois at Ohio State Game (15.0 percent)

Right now, there is minimal separation between the Illini and the Buckeyes. Illinois is 8-5 vs. Quadrant 1 and 13-6 against the top two Quadrants. Ohio State is 7-5 and 12-7, respectively. The Illini surged ahead a bit with that statement win over Michigan on Tuesday, but Ohio State previously won at Illinois and could get a significant leg up on Illinois by completing the sweep.

Put it this way: The winner of this game is definitely going to enter the Big Ten tournament as a projected No. 1 seed for the NCAA tournament, while the loser almost certainly will not.

That doesn't mean either side is guaranteed to remain in that position, though, as either one could lose in the Big Ten quarterfinals or win that tournament to acquire three more quality wins. But "second-best resume in the Big Ten" in the final few days before Selection Sunday is a good place to be.

If either Illinois or Ohio State wins the Big Ten tournament, lock it in as a No. 1 seed. If neither one wins it and either Alabama wins the SEC tournament or West Virginia, Kansas or Oklahoma State wins the Big 12 tournament, it's likely that both Illinois and Ohio State would be No. 2 seeds.

But here's why Saturday's game is huge: If Michigan wins the Big Ten, Baylor wins the Big 12 and someone other than Alabama wins the SEC, it's the Illinois at Ohio State winner would likely get that fourth No. 1 seed.

           

Alabama Crimson Tide (10.0 percent)

We've mentioned Alabama several times already, but the Crimson Tide are more of a potential party crasher than a major threat to secure a No. 1 seed.

That isn't because Alabama would be undeserving of a spot on the top line if it wins the SEC tournament. This team already has seven Quadrant 1 wins and seven Quadrant 2 wins. As of Thursday morning, those 14 victories against the top two quadrants are the most in the country. (Granted, Alabama has played 26 games, which is also the most among teams in the NET Top 15.)

It's more a problem of limited opportunity for the Crimson Tide.

Winning the SEC tournament would be an impressive achievement. As things stand, their path to a title might run through Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. But based on the latest Bracket Matrix update, that's a non-tournament team, a No. 6 seed and a No. 4 seed. Meanwhile, Illinois, Ohio State, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma State and West Virginia will likely need to go through at least two if not three legitimate Final Four candidates to win its conference tournament. That would push/keep that team ahead of Alabama on the overall seed list.

Alabama's best chance is to win the SEC tournament while Baylor and Michigan win the Big 12 and Big Ten tournaments. That would probably do the trick. But only twice in the past two decades (2007 and 2010) did the No. 1 seed win each of the Big 12, Big Ten and SEC tournaments, hence the 10 percent odds. 

        

West Virginia Mountaineers OR Kansas Jayhawks OR Oklahoma State Cowboys (9.0 percent)

Individually, it's probably more like 6.5 percent for West Virginia, 2.0 percent for Kansas and 0.5 percent for Oklahoma State. But if any of these three teams wins the Big 12 tournament, it will have a compelling case for a No. 1 seed.

Neither Kansas nor West Virginia has suffered a loss outside of Quadrant 1. They split the season series with each other, and they both swept Texas Tech. For each team, some of those near-the-bottom-of-Quadrant-1 results could slide down into Quadrant 2 within the next nine days. If either one wins the Big 12 tournament, though, it's going to be something like 9-7 vs. Quadrant 1 with no bad losses. That's pretty solid.

Oklahoma State does have a pair of questionable losses on its docket, as the Cowboys were inexplicably swept by TCU. However, they have eight Quadrant 1 wins and could add a ninth Saturday when they close out the regular season at West Virginia. Win that one and the Big 12 tournament, and you're talking about 12 Quadrant 1 wins in a year where no one else currently has more than eight.

Any of the three would be outstanding resumes.

However, in addition to the not-great odds of winning the Big 12 tournament, it's pretty unlikely that they would leapfrog Gonzaga, Baylor or Michigan even with that title. And while the fourth No. 1 seed is definitely in play, Illinois, Ohio State or Iowa would have the best case for it if any member of that trio wins the Big Ten tournament. There's also a chance the selection committee would prefer SEC champion Alabama over one of these potential Big 12 champions. 

          

Iowa Hawkeyes (4.0 percent)

The metrics have loved Iowa all season long, but it wasn't until the 15-point win at Wisconsin on Feb. 18 and the 16-point win at Ohio State on Feb. 28 that the Hawkeyes started to feel like a legitimate threat to claim a No. 1 seed. They now have a 6-5 record in Quadrant 1 games, plus noteworthy home wins over Rutgers, North Carolina and Michigan State.

The problem is that Iowa was swept by Indiana and lost at Minnesota. Neither of those teams is likely to make the NCAA tournament at this point, and three losses to non-tournament teams is a major red flag in this year's loaded race for the No. 1 seeds.

The Hawkeyes do still have a home game against Wisconsin on Saturday, in which they could pick up a seventh Quadrant 1 win and likely lock up the No. 3 seed in the Big Ten tournament. From there, their likeliest path to a title appears to be Wisconsin-Illinois-Michigan. Winning those three games on a neutral court would be huge for a team that's already ranked No. 6 in both NET and KenPom.

         

Florida State Seminoles OR Villanova Wildcats (2.0 percent)

As far as our crystal ball is concerned, the odds of Florida State or Villanova getting a No. 1 seed are the same as Baylor's odds of not getting a No. 1 seed.

Between the two teams, the best win of the season was Villanova's road win over Texas back in early December. Florida State has a few nice blowout wins on its resume, but that's the only victory either team has in the top half of Quadrant 1. They also each suffered a bad loss (Florida State vs. UCF; Villanova at Butler).

The two main things working in their favor are a limited supply of losses (four each) and the fact that—even in what is undeniably a down year for the ACC—sweeping both the regular-season and league-tournament titles in a major conference will always look good on the resume. Still, Florida State and Villanova need to win out and get a healthy amount of chaos in the other tournaments to have a shot at the top line.

         

The Field (0.2 percent)

This is a catch-all for Houston, Arkansas, Virginia, the Pac-12 champion and the third-tier teams from the Big Ten and Big 12. Maybe there's a mathematical chance for some member of that group to sneak up and grab the fourth No. 1 seed. But a whole lot of things would need to go haywire for that to happen.

               

Kerry Miller covers men's college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.

Without fail, fans of men's college basketball make some sort of "This is the weakest bubble ever!" complaint in late February or early March of every year.

In most seasons, it's just recency bias; we forget how nauseating it was to wade through the previous year's resumes in search of teams worthy of the final few spots in the field.

However, this year's bubble is openly inviting such proclamations by losing critical games over and over again.

Let's be sure to note off the bat that this was already destined to be the weakest bubble on record.

With the Ivy League opting out of the 2020-21 season, there's one more at-large spot available (37) than usual. Not only do more at-large spots need to be awarded, but there are also fewer major-conference candidates than usual with both Arizona and Auburn ineligible for the postseason. On top of that, the combination of the late start to the regular season and teams losing games to COVID-19 pauses means there are going to be teams who enter Selection Sunday with 20 or fewer games played, compared to 31 to 34 in a normal year.

Fewer games means fewer quality wins. Two years ago, several teams racked up at least a dozen Quadrant 1 wins. Texas and Indiana were both left out of the 2019 field in spite of a combined 11 Quadrant 1 victories. But as of Tuesday morning, no one in the country has more than eight Quadrant 1 wins this year, and there are several teams either in the projected field or darn close to it who have either zero or one top-tier victories all season.

Even with those caveats established, the past week of bubble flops has left us to wonder if some of these teams even want to play in the NCAA tournament.

In my bracket projection on the morning of February 23, the last seven teams in the field (in order from safest to least safe) were Drake, Minnesota, Colorado State, VCU, Indiana, St. Bonaventure and Seton Hall.

In the subsequent seven days, those teams went a combined 6-8 with three Quadrant 3 losses. The only one to pick up a Quadrant 1 win was St. Bonaventure, but in addition to it barely counting as Q1 (at NET No. 71 Davidson), the Bonnies also suffered one of the three bad losses.

Of the seven teams, the only one that didn't suffer at least one loss was Colorado State, which played a pair of Quadrant 4 home games against 5-19 Air Force.

Normally, a week that terrible from the teams on the good side of the projected cut line would be great news for the teams on the bad side of the projected cut line.

Except those teams didn't do much to help their case, either.

My first five out last Tuesday were Duke, Saint Louis, Wichita State, Michigan State and Syracuse. Four of those five suffered a loss, and the lone exception was Wichita State, which hasn't played since Feb. 18. (Michigan State actually did a lot to help its case with home wins over Illinois and Ohio State, but the Spartans also left a sour taste in our mouths with that 18-point loss to Maryland on Sunday.)

Even most of the "still under consideration" teams shot themselves in the foot. We had 12 teams in that group last week, and seven of them suffered a loss (or losses, in several cases) bad enough to effectively extinguish what little hope they had of making the tournament.

As a result of all that carnage, the limited few who didn't take a bad L benefited in a big way.

By simply not losing to Air Force—which is now 0-8 against the Mountain West Conference's top four teams with each loss by at least 11 points—the Colorado State Rams climbed up from a "play-in game" to a solid No. 11 seed. And Georgia Tech vaulted from somewhere around "10th Team Out" all the way up to "Fifth-to-Last Team In" with its wins over Virginia Tech (road) and Syracuse (home).

The Yellow Jackets are also now the third-highest rated ACC team on KenPom.com, which is rather remarkable when you consider the usual strength of that league and the fact that Georgia Tech opened the season with consecutive home losses to Georgia State and Mercer.

But Georgia Tech's rapid ascension from its woeful beginning speaks volumes to how the blue-blood programs keep hanging around the bubble in spite of their atypically bad seasons.

The conspiracy theorists in the crowd love to spew nonsense about the NCAA and/or selection committee wanting teams like Duke, North Carolina and Michigan State to get in for ratings and dollars, but that isn't what's happening. The bar for inclusion is just so low this year that—while some other team on the bubble is suffering a Quadrant 3 loss seemingly every night—all it takes is one home win over Virginia, Florida State or Illinois to drastically improve a team's resume.

Where this is ultimately headed is perhaps the most important conference tournament season ever.

In most years, if you put together a competent bracket projection five days before Selection Sunday and don't change anything within the major conferences throughout the week, it would still look fine. You should probably at least account for the couple of teams who surprisingly win several games to reach their conference championships, as well as the ones who immediately suffer a bad loss. However, there usually aren't drastic swings in projected seeding this late in the season.

This year, though, so much is still up in the air, as these final data points are going to carry more weight on the slimmed-down resumes.

That's most pertinent in the Atlantic 10 and Mountain West, otherwise known as the epicenter of the 2021 NCAA tournament bubble.

Each of those mid-major leagues has had four teams in the at-large conversation throughout the season—VCU, St. Bonaventure, Richmond and Saint Louis in the A-10; San Diego State, Boise State, Colorado State and Utah State in the MWC. Of the bunch, though, the only one safely in the field is San Diego State.

Richmond is the No. 8 seed in the A-10 tournament, meaning it will face No. 9 seed Duquesne first. If the Dukes happen to catch fire and knock off both Richmond and No. 1 seed St. Bonaventure while Saint Louis fails to even reach a conference championship game that VCU wins, hello one-bid A-10.

(Before you say there's no way Duquesne could pull that off, be sure to note that the No. 1 seed was eliminated by either the No. 8 or No. 9 seed in five of the last nine A-10 tournaments. That tournament almost always goes off the rails.)

And while the most likely scenario in the MWC is those four teams squaring off in the semifinals, it isn't exactly beyond the realm of possibility for Nevada, UNLV and Fresno State to knock off Boise State, Colorado State and Utah State in the quarterfinals of a tournament that San Diego State wins, possibly making that a one-bid league, too.

Throw in the ACC and Big Ten tournaments featuring a combined nine or 10 bubble teams, and things could get wild.

Just get ready to hear this refrain on repeat for what little time remains before the final bracket is revealed: We have to get to 68 teams somehow. And don't be surprised if and when the blue-blood programs benefit from that dilemma.

Well, most of the blue bloods. Barring a miraculous run to an SEC tournament title, even this year's bubble doesn't have enough room for 8-14 Kentucky.

               

Kerry Miller covers men's college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.