The Big East is holding steady at 11 possible bids, six of which are essentially locks (welcome, Syracuse!) and another one that is getting close. Whether the Big East merely ties its own ridiculous record of eight NCAA tournament teams or obliterates it with 11 bids will come down to huge stretch runs for St. John's, Marquette and Cincinnati.
West Virginia [15-8 (6-5), RPI: 18, SOS: 4] Sure, a home win versus rival Pittsburgh on Big Monday would've been nice, but the Mountaineers are still in solid shape. Yes, they have all those losses, but none have come to teams ranked outside the RPI top 75, six of them have been on road or neutral courts, and only one (a Jan. 19 loss to Marshall in Charleston, W.Va.) will jump out at the committee as a particularly shaky loss. The computer profile remains strong, the five top-40 wins still stand, and though West Virginia has a tough remaining Big East draw, the return of leading scorer Casey Mitchell certainly helps. There's very little chance this team won't be worthy of an at-large bid.
Louisville [18-5 (7-3), RPI: 23, SOS: 50] Louisville dropped a road game at Georgetown after Peyton Siva's last-second 3-point attempt drifted left last week, but that loss didn't do much to affect this impressive and surprising team's strong at-large bid status. A loss at DePaul on Saturday would have. Fortunately for the Cardinals, they escaped Allstate Arena with a four-point win, a downtick in their strength-of-schedule column, but no major harm done to their at-large status. The Cards have five wins against the RPI top 50, including last Saturday's marquee double-overtime win at Connecticut, and thanks to the DePaul escape they don't have any sub-100 losses to speak of. Barring a catastrophic February meltdown, Rick Pitino's team will be dancing again in March.
St. John's [13-9 (5-5), RPI: 22, SOS: 2] St. John's missed an an opportunity to get a solid road win against a fellow bubble team Saturday when Steve Lavin returned to UCLA. The Bruins held on for a seven-point win at Pauley Pavilion and handed Lavin's team its ninth loss of the season, a mark that will get more and more disconcerting if the Johnnies fail to notch a few more marquee victories in the coming weeks. Fortunately, they still have that Duke win, as well as a quality computer profile with a sky-high strength of schedule that should come in handy when the committee looks closely at a team with 12 or 13 losses. With a brutal four-game run coming up -- games vs. Connecticut, at Cincinnati, at Marquette and vs. Pittsburgh in nine days -- 13 losses might even be too conservative an estimate. We'll see if this experienced but inconsistent team can come out of that mess alive and with its tourney chances intact.
Cincinnati [18-5 (5-5), RPI: 34, SOS: 109] Figuring out just how good the Bearcats are has been one of the biggest challenges of the 2010-11 season. Cincinnati played one of the worst nonconference schedules in the country (284th-best, to be exact) and left the state of Ohio only once before the Big East season began. But Cincy did go 13-0 against non-league foes, and its five losses -- four of which were on the road, the most recent of which came at Pitt without star forward Yancy Gates -- have all come against likely NCAA tournament teams. And that 20-point pasting of Xavier is looking better and better with every impressive Musketeers win. In other words, we still (still!) don't know how good this Cincinnati team is. The likely answer is "OK but not great," a perception the Bearcats will have to work hard to change if they want to be the Big East's 10th or 11th bid on Selection Sunday.
Marquette [14-9 (5-5), RPI: 57, SOS: 30] Marquette seems destined to be a bubble team. That's what happens when you mix eight losses and an unflattering RPI with a quality squad that has yet to lose to a truly bad team this season. Marquette hasn't dropped any game by more than eight points, and only one of its nine losses (to Gonzaga in Kansas City) has come to a team ranked outside the RPI top 30. The rest have all been close, hard-fought defeats against strong at-large contenders. Still, you'd feel a lot more confident about this team's chances of getting over the bubble hump if it could notch a marquee win on the road. It missed another opportunity last Wednesday, when the Golden Eagles fell 75-70 at Villanova after a second-half run got them back in the game. That loss doesn't really damage Marquette's chances, of course. But at some point, being an efficiency darling and tough out isn't quite enough. At some point, you've got to get a few of those wins, too.
