Often times, prepping for an at-large bid means doing exactly what you're supposed to do. Even if you have a somewhat decent team on the schedule, home or away, you need to win those games to secure your berths. That's what happened on Wednesday night, as only one team damaged its tournament resume. All the rest of the important games involved teams not getting upset, which is just as important as filling up the resume with good wins. A couple of teams also are trying to claw their way onto the bubble, and stepped a little closer by beating their inferior competition. Let's take a look at Wednesday's action.
North Dakota State 73, Notre Dame 69: Disaster for Notre Dame. NDSU is unlikely to ever get any at-large attention due to a loss at North Dakota earlier this year, but the Bison are quite good, and they showed it in South Bend on Wednesday night. I expect that NDSU will run through the Summit League fairly easily. But Notre Dame can't be losing home games to teams who will hurt their strength of schedule. Notre Dame does not have a good win on its schedule, so it needs to win one of its upcoming games against Indiana and Ohio State. The packed bubble will not be so forgiving for the Irish this year if it doesn't find some decent wins along the way.
George Washington 70, Boston U 60: This game is important for what it was not. Boston U isn't anyone's idea of a great team, but they played UConn tough earlier this season, and they nearly knocked off Harvard on Saturday. GW, with a resume that now includes wins over Creighton and Maryland, both on neutral courts, is on a decent run to start the season. GW should be able to enter the A-10 season at 13-1 if it can capture a road game at Kansas State. That would be a strong non-conference profile for Selection Sunday.
Penn State 68, Duquesne 59: There is not much to say about this game except that Penn State added a road win to its non-conference resume and it did the same thing that GW did---not lose to an inferior opponent. PSU is another team on the big bubble.
Princeton 78, Rutgers 73: Don't look now, but Princeton is at least entering the at-large conversation. The RPI has improved to 60, and before tonight's road win, Princeton was at 71 in the efficiency ratings. The in-conference teams may destroy Princeton's strength of schedule, but it would be fun to have two Ivy League teams to talk about for a while.
Holding serve as needed:
Ohio State 86, Bryant 48
Wisconsin 78, Milwaukee 52
BYU 100, Prairie View A&M 52
Arizona 74, New Mexico State 48
The only real game of note on Thursday is Maryland at Boston College. ACC play gets underway early for these two schools, and Maryland is in desperate needs of a road win. It may pan out that Boston College is the worst team in the ACC (or second-worst behind Miami), and a loss tomorrow night would spell continuing doom for the Terrapins' at-large chance.
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