Welcome to the middle of February, when we are neck-deep into brackets and bubble talk. Since you’re a smart Hoops HQ reader, I know you’ll be following Brad Wachtel’s work on this front mighty closely the next four weeks. The conversation will get ramped up this week as the NCAA holds its mock selection exercise for members of the media on Thursday in Indianapolis. I’ll be among the group of writers. And then on Saturday, I’ll be in the CBS studios for the selection committee’s annual bracket reveal at 12:30 p.m. We’ll get an early look at the top 16 seeds, an order that will start to become outdated as soon as the early afternoon games tip off.
Since the committee will not project the field beyond the No. 4 line, it won’t get to the most intriguing question in Bracketville. But I will, and it is this:
Can Miami (Ohio) get an at-large bid?
For bracket nerds like me, this is a fascinating question because it moves us into uncharted waters. On the one hand, a team has never earned an at-large bid without playing a single Quad 1 game, much less without having earned a single Quad 1 win. The RedHawks are 0-0 in this vital category, thanks to a strength of schedule that is ranked No. 349 in the country and No. 364 (out of 365) for nonconference games. They have only played a single Quad 2 game, and they have no Quad 1 or 2 games remaining. That suggests a team that is far from worthy of consideration.
The argument in favor of Miami (Ohio)’s candidacy is obvious: This team is friggin’ undefeated!!!! That is compelling argument, but there’s a wrinkle. If the RedHawks enter Selection Sunday with a perfect record, they will have won the MAC Tournament and thus earned the league’s automatic bid. So the at-large question would be moot.
So by definition, it means that if we are asking this question, the RedHawks will have lost at least one game. Would they still be able to get into the field?
The question should be answered by resume alone. If that’s the case, the RedHawks are in deep doodoo. Not only do they have just one win in the top two quadrants, but their metrics are terrible: They’re 50th in the NET, 84th on KenPom, 88th in BPI and 45th in KPI. The only number that has them even sniffing the bubble is their No. 35 ranking in Wins Above Bubble.
Brad Wachtel projects Miami (Ohio) as a No. 11 seed even with their perfect record. That’s where the last of the bubble teams typically get seeded. So that suggests that if the RedHawks were to lose, they would fall below that seed line – and out of the tournament.
Still, in the real world the committee will also have to take optics and, yes, politics into consideration. If the RedHawks go into the finals of the MAC touranment undefeated and lose, I find it hard to believe the committee would turn them away. That would definitely require some splaining.
On the other hand, if the RedHawks lose two or three regular season games and then falter in the tournament, it will be easy for the committee to leave them out.
Bracketology 2026: Men’s NCAA Tournament Projections
Feb 16: Hoops HQ’s lead bracketologist builds his field of 68. Michigan snatches the No. 1 overall seed, while TCU makes its season debut.
The question, then, is what happens if they lose one game in the regular season and then lose in the finals of the MAC tourney. Or if they finish the regular season perfect and then lose their quarterfinal game in the MAC tourney. What then?
Then, my friends, we have a fascinating debate that will leave people angry no matter where the committee lands. It’s not a story that any of us were anticipating, but here in Bracketville, we’ve learned that we should always expect is the unexpected.
Stay tuned, bracket nerds.
Other Hoop Thoughts
• Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor delivered a shocking blow Sunday night when he announced the school was parting ways with coach Jerome Tang. The Wildcats had been struggling, to say the least, and Tang drew some unwanted attention to the problem when he roated his players following Wednesday’s home loss to Cincinnati. There has been plenty of chatter that the school was going to let Tang go after the season, but the major hangup is the huge size of his buyout: $18.7 million. That would make it the biggest such payout in the history of college basketball.
Taylor’s statement suggested what multiple media outlets have reported, and that’s Kansas State’s desire to terminate Tang “for cause.” If that’s the case, the school doesn’t owe him anything. I’m no lawyer, but that claim seems farcical to me. If criticizing their players was cause for termination, then coaches would get fired almost every week. That doesn’t nearly rise to the level of the definition in my eyes, but I’m sure the various parties will try to hash this out. As the saying goes, there will be lawyers.
Why, you might ask, is Tang’s buyout so high? Because two years ago, Arkansas tried to hire him, and Kansas State wanted to keep him. So they gave him a lucrative contract extension with guaranteed money. This is something that athletic directors do time and again, and it often blows up in their faces. When will they learn? If Tang wanted to go to Arkansas, the school should have let him go and hired someone else. Instead, Taylor gave Tang the buyout guarantee that he is now stretching the truth to excise. Good luck to him.
If Kansas State wants to change coaches because the team isn’t winning enough, then fine. But Taylor gave Tang this contract, and I believe that one way or another, he’s going to have to honor it.
• Kudos to the Big East for giving Providence forward Duncan Powell an extra two-game suspension on top of the automatic one-game suspension he earned for fighting. What Duncan did to Bryce Hopkins wasn’t a hard foul or even a dirty a basketball play. It was an assault. If that took place in a different context, Powell could have been led away in handcuffs. Then he exacerbated the situation by escalating the situation and then amping up the fans on his way off the court as if he had accomplished something. What’s really unfortunate is that Providence (and especially coach Kim English) really needed a win, and the Friars had just taken a one-point lead when Powell committed one of the most violent acts I’ve ever seen. I’m glad the league did the right thing in sending a message. Frankly, Powell is fortunate the penalty wasn’t more severe.
• BYU got the news it was dreading on Sunday when senior guard Richie Saunders revealed that he tore his ACL in the early moments of the Cougars’ home game against Colorado on Saturday. For all the attention directed at A.J. Dybantsa this season, Saunders has been every bit as good, and as valuable to his team. That was evident when BYU had to go to overtime to beat a lower-tier conference opponent without him. I was one of the few AP voters who dropped the Cougars off my ballot the (they were ranked No. 22 last week), so I wasn’t all that bullish on them to begin with. Without Saunders, they become that much more vulnerable.
• Unfortunately, there were a couple other major injuries of note in the last week. North Carolina freshman forward Caleb Wilson broke his left hand during the Tar Heels’ loss at Miami. He appeared to injur the hand during the game and finished up wearing a wrap on it. It’s good news for the Tar Heels that the injury happened to Wilson’s non-shooting hand, partly because he can still do a lot of conditioning work.
From what I’m being told, the best-case scenario for Wilson is that he’s back for North Carolina’s regular season finale at Duke on March 7. The more likely return date is for the ACC Tournament the following week. Obviously, the sooner the better, because there are not many teams that depend on a single player as much as North Carolina depends on Wilson.
• Meanwhile, Arizona, which suffered its first defeat of the season on Monday at Kansas, lost more than just another game to Texas Tech in Tucson on Saturday. The Wildcats also lost their star freshman Koa Peat to a lower body injury. Peat appeared to hurt himself just before halftime and did not play the entire second half. Arizona was also without freshman forward Dwayne Aristode, who was out with an illness. The Cats were clearly gassed down the stretch and nearly pulled off the win in overtime. I’m told that there will probably not be an update on Peat until the school has to issue an availability report on Tuesday in advance of the Wildcats’ game against BYU on Wednesday night. I’m hoping at least that means the injury is not season-ending as was the case with Saunders.
• On the flip side, Illinois benefited from the return of senior guard Kylan Boswell, who missed seven games with a broken hand but played 32 minutes and had 9 points, 7 rebounds and 2 assists in the Illini’s 71-51 home win over Indiana on Sunday. When I spoke with Brad Underwood on Saturday, he was hopeful that Boswell’s hand would be good enough to play, and he was pleased that Boswell’s recovery was ahead of schedule.
Unfortunately, Illinois had to play its second straight game without its third-leading scorer, junior guard Andrej Stojakovic, who is out with a high ankle sprain. Those are very tricky injuries and Underwood does not want to rush Stojakovic back until he’s completely healthy. The fact that Illinois was able to dominate the Hoosiers short-handed shows you how good this team is.
Underwood also brushed aside my question about whether his team might be better without Boswell because it means freshman sensation Keaton Wagler would have the ball in his hands more. Underwood acknowledged that he’ll be making some adjustments in that regard, but he insisted (correctly, in my view) that the Illini are far better defensively when Boswell is on the floor. Regardless, this team needs all hands on deck if it’s going to make a deep March run.
• Memphis coach Penny Hardaway was not happy that the Utah State players were taking extra shots at the end of its 99-75 win over the Tigers on Saturday. Hardaway expressed his displeasure both in the handshake line and in his postgame radio interview about the unsportsmanlike conduct. Aggies coach Jerrod Calhoun acknowledged he was trying to run up the score and said it was because he wanted to give his team every advantage it can muster in the metrics that determine the NCAA Tournament seeding.
I love a good controversy, so I’ll offer a few takes on this one. First, I agree with the idea that if you’re Hardaway and you don’t like teams scoring too many points against you, play harder defense. On the other hand, I’m a sportsmanship nerd, and I don’t think it’s a good look to run up the score. Karma never loses an address, and the basktball gods have long memories.
But my main takeaway is that padding your margin of victory to improve your seeding is a vastly overrated tactic. Yes, the NET takes MOV into account, but given the incredible volume of data that goes into those numbers, a few more buckets are not going to make any difference. And contrary to what too many people think, these metrics do take the caliber of opponent into accont. Head coaches will do anything if they think it will give them even a microscopic advantage when it comes to the tournament, but the math doesn’t math here.
• Along those same lines, I want to make something clear regarding Alabama and the Charles Bediako situation: This is not going to have any impact on how the selection committee does its work. Yes, the committee takes injuries and personnel into account, but those situations only really matter if it’s super duper clear that a team was demonstrably different with a certain player in the lineup who will not be available for the tournament.
Bediako played five games for Alabama. The Crimson Tide lost two of them, and he averaged 10.0 points and 4.6 rebounds. I know some Auburn fans are trying to argue the Tigers should get some slack given that Bediako played in their loss to the Tide, but unless Auburn is on the cut line and that result would determine whether they’re in or out, I doubt the committee will spend a single second even discussing that matter.
• Speaking of Auburn, I spoke with Steven Pearl on Saturday morning about his decision to sit his leading scorer, 6-foot-7 senior forward Keyshawn Hall, for the Tigers’ game at Arkansas later that night. It was a bold move considering Hall is not only averaging 20.7 points per game but scored 32 in the Tigers’ home win over Arkansas on Jan. 10. Pearl had benched Hall for the final 12-and-a-half minutes of Auburn’s 84-76 home loss to Vanderbilt on Tuesday. The decision to sit Hall out for Saturday stemmed from what Pearl characterized as his poor reaction to the benching.
Whatever happened in practice the next couple of days must have been pretty bad for Pearl to bench Hall as the team was staring down a three-game losing streak. What’s also notable here is that it’s only the last two years that the SEC, like many other leagues, has been requiring teams to issue an availability report the day before the game. This is done for transparency with respect to gambling, but the rules don’t just cover injuries. If a coach knows a player isn’t going to play, he is required to put that in the report. So we knew the night before that Hall wasn’t going to play, which drew even more attention.
Based on my conversation with Pearl, I don’t expect Hall to be out much longer, but suffice to say this is not the type of situation a team wants to be dealing with for the home stretch of the season.
• UConn has been very quietly playing some not-so-great basketball the last few weeks, even while continuing to win games. For the second time in the last four weeks, the Huskies struggled to put away Georgetown before prevailing at home, 79-75. Hoyas coach Ed Cooley remarked afterwards how surprised he was to see empty seats in Gampel Pavilion, of all places. And Dan Hurley complained afterwards that the fans who did come weren’t loud enough.
Hurley has often been seen trying to hype up the home crowd during games, and I fully agree with him that he shouldn’t have to given the program’s incredible success. But I wish he would learn to make his points without cursing in public so much. I’m no prude when it comes to foul language, and I appreciate Hurley’s authenticity. But a lot of kids are watching him, and he should at least be able to clean up his potty mouth when he’s talking to the media.
• It was only three weeks ago that some Louisville fans and some members of the media were openly wondeing whether Pat Kelsey was irreversibly faltering with the Cardinals. That was the chatter after Louisville got dominated 83-52 at Duke. Well, the Cardinals have not lost since then and it’s not hard to figure out why: Mikel Brown Jr. is looking like himself again. The 6-foot-5 freshman point guard and projected lottery pick had previously missed five weeks due to a back injury. The Duke loss was his second game back. A back injury is very difficult to bounce back from because the player can’t do a lot of conditioning work while he’s out. The only way to heal it is through extended rest.
It took a few games for Brown to reclaim his form, but he looked incredible last week while scoring 45 and 19 points, respectively, in wins over NC State and Baylor. Brown was a combined 14 for 21 from three in those wins, which is remarkable considering he came into the week as a 27 percent three-point shooter. Given the way Brown and the Cardinals are playing, the fact that they’ve already played Duke twice, and Wilson’s injury at North Carolina, I expect them to emerge as the clear second-best team in the ACC. Finally, I want to bid a fond farwell to Billy Donovan Sr, who passed away on Saturday. His son, Billy Jr., just got inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame last fall. Billy Sr. played at Boston College from 1958-62 and was a fixture at Florida’s games while his son was coaching there. Billy Sr. usually watched games from the Gators’ bench. (Andy Katz wrote this profile of Donovan’s dad during the 2006 Final Four.) Billy Sr. had a delightful smile and infectious personality, and I’ll never forget the way he beamed with pride as he walked on the court in his Gators’ sweatsuit while his son’s team participated in the open practices at the Final Four. He was a good man and a great dad, and he’ll be missed by all who knew him.
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