When the field of 68 is finally revealed Sunday evening it means the phrase “bubble watch” goes on its trip to the land of jargon until next February when it again will be around as the regular season starts to come to a close.
This year’s bubble bunch took a hit Saturday when Wyoming beat San Diego State 45-43 in the Mountain West Conference Tournament championship game. The Cowboys have an RPI around 80, not good enough to get in as an at-large, and San Diego State, with an RPI around 25, will still get in despite the loss.
“We’ve been so close before, just seeing it slip right from our fingertips,” Wyoming senior Larry Nance Jr. said. “To know that this is ours, and there’s nothing anybody can do to take that away from us, like I said, it’s everything we imagined and more.”
That means one of the teams that have been declared bubble teams over the past two weeks will get bumped. Oklahoma State, Purdue, Indiana, Mississippi and LSU are all power conference teams with RPIs from 48-54 and they will all have a rough Saturday wondering if their resume is good enough to get them in the tournament.
“I do think we’re in the tournament,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said after the Boilermakers’ loss to Wisconsin on Saturday in the Big Ten semifinals. “We’ve had 13 Big Ten wins, and I do feel we’re in the tournament. But we had to overcome some things. There’s no doubt the way we played nonconference we had to go get – I said it when we walked out of non-conference. I just said, we’ve got to get 13 Big Ten wins in some way, counting the Big Ten Tournament, however you want to accumulate it, we’ve got to get to 13, and we were able to do that.”