Bubble Trouble: Fixing the Bracket 🛠️

03/19/2024

By: Jeff Yoder

The Top Bubble Snubs of the 2024 NCAA Tournament Bracket

We talk about “the bubble” every year when the NCAA selection show rolls around. For college basketball enthusiasts, you know the bubble as that imaginary force field that encompasses the group of teams within one or two games of making or missing the NCAA tourney (teams 64-72 in a 68-team bracket). For others, it might be confusing. No matter where you stand on bubble terminology, Sunday’s selection show was quite historic in terms of bubbly drama. Some of the teams that were left off the bracket undoubtedly deserved to go dancing. But in order to put them in, someone else had to be left out. So here we are, picking up the pieces and fixing the bracket.

“This year is harder than all my previous years combined. Just gut-wrenching knowing some very good teams will unfortunately not be dancing.” — Jamie Pollard, Selection Committee Member

Automatic Bid-Stealers: Bid thieves were the culprits behind this year’s historic bubble-bursting frenzy. NC State (ACC), Oregon (Pac-12), Duquesne (A10), New Mexico (Mountain West), Yale (Ivy League) and Drake (Missouri Valley) were notable squads who shrunk the bubble. They’re all 10 seeds or higher. By winning conference tournaments, those six teams secured their spots and ultimately pushed the bubble further away and out of reach for other bubble teams. So who took the fall? We can’t send them to the dance, but we can give them their due.

3 Biggest Bubble Snubs

1. Indiana State — The NET Nightmare

One of the biggest snubs came from Terre Haute where the Sycamores of Indiana State (28-6) won the Missouri Valley regular-season and finished with a NET ranking of 29. They also had an exciting must-see player in Robbie Avila (a.k.a. Cream Abdul-Jabbar) who went viral this season. He’s a 6-foot-10, goggle-wearing, slow-footed star who plays a Nikola Jokic-style game. ISU lost in the conference tournament, so there was no automatic bid, and they ended up on the outside with the highest NET ranking ever (29) by a team not in ‘The Big Dance.’ We were all robbed of Robbie Avila.

2. Oklahoma — The Sooner Surprise

Oklahoma was listed by many as the first team out. A number of analysts had them in the tournament as a 10- or 11-seed. The big factor here was that the Big 12 already had eight teams in. The Sooners were 13-1 through the first half of the season, but they finished with a brutal gauntlet of losses to conference foes who were ultimately 4-seeds or better — #1 Houston, #2 Iowa State, #3 Baylor, #4 Kansas. War of attrition. Oklahoma is a talented team, but the conference’s depth just notched too many L’s on the Sooners’ record, and the committee couldn’t find room for a ninth Big 12 bid.

3. Big East — Seton Hall & St. John’s

We have Seton Hall and St. John’s as co-No. 3s on the list, and this one was hard to stomach. Only three Big East teams made it in while three more had a legitimate case for being in the conversation — Seton Hall (20-12), St. John’s (20-13) and Providence (21-13). The Pirates and Red Storm finished 4th and 5th in the Big East, respectively, and they had to watch six teams from the Mountain West go dancing. Doesn’t add up. One could understand Providence falling short, but Seton Hall had wins against #1 UConn and #2 Marquette, and they took a 3-seed (Creighton) to triple-OT. St. John’s caught fire in the last month of the season. They beat Seton Hall in the Big East tourney, and the Red Storm looked like one of those potential 10-seeds who could get hot in March. Mountain West, six? Big East, three? Hmm. Three bids is the fewest from the Big East since 1993.

Fixing the Bracket

Alright, let’s reconstruct this thing. Overall, Oklahoma’s miss kind of makes sense. The Big 12 was too deep. We would’ve swapped two teams to fix this year’s bubble chaos. Six Mountain West teams is just too many. The conference is good, but it isn’t deserving of double the amount of bids as the Big East (3 teams), or more than the ACC (5 teams) and Pac-12 (4 teams). Here’s how we would’ve tweaked the bubble — four Big East teams, four Mountain West teams, and one Robbie Avila. Seems fair.

IN: #10 St. John’s OUT: #10 Boise State

IN: #10 Indiana State OUT: #10 Colorado State

Final Seed Tweaks

Beyond the two bubble swaps, there were other seed decisions with some serious issues. Clemson as a 6-seed has to be a typo (and I know typos). Pittsburgh isn’t in the tournament, and Virginia is an 11-seed playing tonight. Both had better records than Clemson in the ACC. Clemson should’ve been an 8 or 9, minimum. The Mountain West seed decisions also didn’t sit well. Utah State (8-seed) won the conference regular season while San Diego State (5-seed) was three games back. Neither of them won the Mountain West tournament. That was New Mexico (11-seed). Make it make sense…

What do you think about the bracket? What bubble teams or seeds would you change?

Email our editor and let us know. We’d love to hear your thoughts and perspectives before the tournament tips off, and we might include them in one of this week’s editions.

CBS Sports: NCAA Tournament Winners & Losers: St. John’s Leads Notable Snubs

USA Today: March Madness Snubs: 6 Teams That Should’ve Made the Tournament

SportsGrid: Bubble Burst! Top 10 KenPom Snubs From March Madness Brackets

Image via Giphy