Only 53 shopping days until Selection Sunday and some of the scenarios would seem to jar the college basketball landscape as we’ve come to know it. To be sure, the season is still deep in the maybe or maybe not stage, but consider these possibilities come March 17:
Gonzaga might not make it.
The 13-5 Zags are living a very strange existence — for them, anyway — seeing their name mentioned in the same sentence as the word bubble. The last time they missed March was 1998, when there were only nine teams in the ACC, Connecticut had never been to the Final Four and Tom Izzo was in only his third season at Michigan State. He didn’t hate Twitter back then because it hadn’t been invented yet. Gonzaga is still No. 29 in the latest NCAA NET rankings and may yet restore natural order. An absolutely critical day is Feb. 10 at Kentucky.
Only six teams from the Big Ten might make it.
That would include Nebraska and Northwestern but probably not Michigan, Ohio State, Iowa or Indiana. Strange sounding, is it not? Nebraska hasn’t gotten in since 2014, and a bid would give the Cornhuskers a chance to fill a rather nagging void. They are 0-7 all-time in the NCAA tournament and the only power league team never to win a game. Meanwhile, an Indiana miss would be the fifth in the past seven tournaments. A very unbecoming and conspicuous number for a purported blueblood.
Only three teams from the ACC might be included.
Can that be possible? What in the name of Mike Krzyzewski is going on here? The bracketology folks all have North Carolina, Duke and Clemson but currently that’s where it stops. If nobody makes a late push — we’re especially looking at you, Wake Forest — and the league indeed gets only three bids, it would be the smallest ACC contingent in more than two decades. The league has averaged more than six teams in the past 14 tournaments.
UCLA and USC probably won’t make it.
Talk about killing the mood for the Pac-12 going-away party. The Bruins and Trojans are each 8-11 and a combined 5-11 in the league. UCLA had a chance for relief the other night but blew a 19-point lead against Arizona. Barring a massive late-season turnaround, this will be only the fifth time in 35 years the tournament doesn’t have at least one of them.
Samford might get in.
The 17-2 Bulldogs haven’t seen the NCAA dance floor since 2000 but they’re making themselves impossible to ignore. Samford has the nation’s longest winning streak of 17 games and at…
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