BYU At-Large Hope

Your daily primer on BYU's At-Large hope:



There are 68 teams invited to the NCAA Division 1 tournament. Of that amount, 31 receive auto-bids, leaving 37 at-large slots. 12 teams have already punched their tickets.



Depending on who you are calling an expert, generally there are 33 teams that are being deemed, at this point today, as "locks" for the tournament that are not part of the 12 teams that are auto-bids already (in alphabetical order):

Alabama

Baylor

Cincinnati

Duke

Florida

Florida St.

Georgetown

Gonzaga

Indiana

Iowa St.

Kansas

Kansas St.

Kentucky

Long Beach St.

Louisville

Marquette

Memphis

Michigan

Michigan St.

Missouri

New Mexico

North Carolina

Notre Dame

Ohio St.

Purdue

SDSU

Syracuse

Temple

UNLV

Vanderbilt

Virginia

Wichita St.

Wisconsin



Of that list of 33 teams, 9 of them should become auto-bids by winning their tournaments (A10, ACC, B12, BE, B1G, Big West, C-USA, MWC, SEC).



Doing the math then, that leaves 15 open bids (37 At-Large openings - 33 "locks" + 9 teams of the 33 that will become auto-bids) for teams that are not yet "locked" into a place in the tournament. There are basically 23 teams vying for those 15 slots (in alphabetical order):

Arizona

BYU

California

Connecticut

CSU

Dayton

Drexel

Iona

Miami

Miss. State

NC State

Northwestern

Oregon

S. Florida

Seton Hall

So. Mississippi

St. Joseph's

St. Louis

Tennessee

Texas

Washington

Xavier

WVU



ESPN's Brennan believes 3 of those teams "should be in" (they are in bold above). He further believes that Arizona, Dayton and Iona are the weakest 3 and would need extended tournament wins to get over the hump. Lunardi believes there will only be 3 A10 teams, which means that St. Louis, St. Joseph's, Xavier and Dayton are all fighting for 2 spots as Temple is already considered a lock).



The keys games for BYU fans today are:

Connecticut vs WVU (pulling for the Mountaineers)

Seton Hall vs Louisville (pulling for the Cardinals)

Villanova vs South Florida (come'on Nova)

Weber St vs Montana (come'on Wildcats, our RPI doesn't need to drop any lower)

Thanks for the break down. It's always nice to know what team to root for when BYU isn't playing.

U Conn beats WVU in OT. Doesn't help us at all. Now, WVU, that "should have been in" didn't put away U Conn. U Conn would have been on shakier ground having only beaten one team in their tourney, and now they have two victories. Bummer.



What is it about U Conn and tournaments? They win their next game (vs. Syracuse) then they are certainly in.

EM_Puma wrote:
U Conn beats WVU in OT. Doesn't help us at all. Now, WVU, that "should have been in" didn't put away U Conn. U Conn would have been on shakier ground having only beaten one team in their tourney, and now they have two victories. Bummer.



What is it about U Conn and tournaments? They win their next game (vs. Syracuse) then they are certainly in.

Coaching

I believe that we should also root for Oregon, and root for Nevada to stay as top 50 wins on their resume. We have beaten both of these teams. If they both win, our chances of getting off of the bubble edge increase.

byucougar1 wrote:
I believe that we should also root for Oregon, and root for Nevada to stay as top 50 wins on their resume. We have beaten both of these teams. If they both win, our chances of getting off of the bubble edge increase.

That is correct and was noted today by Lunardi. They didn't play today, so I didn't note them as games of interest.



I'm glad Georgetown did what they should and knocked Pitt off in the second round, as they should.

Louisville beat Seton Hall 61-55. That was a good thing.

Weber State went down.

McY wrote:
Weber State went down.

Bummer...was hoping they'd pull it off.

Northwestern was 1 and out in the B10 tourney.

Texas beat Iowa State. That was a pretty big win...

Linardi's most recent list (8:15 p.m. EST) shows BYU in and indicates how many teams each conference will send to the big dance.



CONFERENCE BREAKDOWN

Big East (10)

Big Ten (6)

Big 12 (6)

SEC (5)

ACC (4)

Mountain West (4)

Atlantic 10 (3)

West Coast (3)

Colonial (2)

Conference USA (2)

Missouri Valley (2)

Pac-12 (2)

Things are look better now. We just need all the upset winners to lose their next games.