Mark WiedmerBIRMINGHAM, Ala. - You never know what's in the minds of NCAA tournament selection committee members this time of year. Maybe they pick over the results of every regular-season game, or maybe they don't. Maybe winning a regular-season conference crown stands alone, regardless of how many league losses a team endures along the way.
But with 1:46 to go in Sunday afternoon's game at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Middle Tennessee State University in a 64-61 hole, senior forward and former Baylor School star Reggie Upshaw was pretty sure he didn't want his Blue Raiders to suffer their second Conference USA loss this season. That was especially true with a chance to win the regular-season crown outright.
"We've felt like if we could get through the regular season with just one conference loss, we might not have to win the (conference) tournament as long as we got to the title game," Upshaw said. "But we felt like we needed to win the last seven (regular-season games)."
But after losing at the University of Texas-El Paso on Feb. 4, there would be no way to win the last seven without winning a fifth straight by knocking off UAB, then taking home games this week against Florida International (Thursday) and Florida Atlantic (Saturday).
So Upshaw did what any potential C-USA player of the year should at that moment. He calmly swished his second 3-pointer in four minutes to make it 64-all, then watched teammate JaCorey Williams (a fellow candidate for conference player of the year) hit the game-winning shot with 4.4 seconds to play.
Upshaw finished the 66-64 victory with 18 points, six rebounds, three assists, two steals and a block.
"Those were two big 3s by Reggie," MTSU coach Kermit Davis said. "Just sensational. He's a fourth-year guy, and this is his third conference championship (won or shared), which just shows what he's meant to this program."
But will this regular-season crown - the only one won by a Division I program in Tennessee this season other than Belmont's Ohio Valley Conference-best 15-1 league mark - be enough to get the Blue Raiders into March Madness, no matter what happens in the C-USA tourney?
Though MTSU stands 25-4 overall and 15-1 in its league - its résumé no doubt helped by a 23-point home win over Vanderbilt in December and a 15-point win at Ole Miss on the final day of November - can it be enough to emerge from what's pretty much become a one-bid league?
As ESPN analyst Jay Bilas is fond of saying, "They've got to find 68 teams somewhere." MTSU started Sunday 32nd in the Ratings Percentage Index. Though there's no way C-USA will get more than one bid unless the Blue Raiders fail to win the league tourney, the victory at UAB gave MTSU more wins than all but 14 other Division I schools, and only 10 programs had won more than 25 games as of this writing.
Regardless of where they stand nationally, the Blue Raiders are clearly a cut above the rest of the Volunteer State, though East Tennessee State's 24-6 mark should put the Buccaneers in the discussion. Otherwise, the only other Tennessee programs with 20 wins this season are Belmont (22-5) and UT-Martin (20-11).
As for our UT-Chattanooga Mocs, maybe it really is as simple as second-year coach Matt McCall put it after Saturday's shocking home loss to Mercer: "The nights when the ball is going into the basket, we are pretty good on offense. And on the nights that it's not, we get too consumed with it."
Too often of late, the ball isn't going in the basket, which is the best way to explain the Mocs' three-game losing skid with only today's game at The Citadel remaining before the Southern Conference tournament starts Saturday in Asheville, N.C. If nothing else, UTC should enter the tourney with less pressure than most defending champs.
But no matter how bad the Mocs are playing, they don't appear to be in nearly the funk the Tennessee Volunteers are in. Still somewhat on the NCAA tournament bubble entering this past week, a home loss to Vanderbilt followed by a 27-point defeat at South Carolina may not only have knocked them out of the NCAA tourney but also the NIT.
That leaves Vanderbilt. The Commodores crushed Mississippi State on Saturday night in Nashville and head to Kentucky on Tuesday with a chance to not only upset the Southeastern Conference standings leader but also post their eighth win in 10 games, which should certainly get the selection committee's attention.
But any attention the Commodores receive should only heighten the probability of MTSU marching into March Madness, with or without the C-USA tourney title.
Returning to their lone league defeat at UTEP, Upshaw said, "That loss woke us up."
Come this time next week, we'll know whether three losses in a row woke up the Mocs in time to challenge for a second straight SoCon tourney title and the automatic NCAA berth that goes with it.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.