| By Marc Lawrence — Mark it down. This the wildest Bubble Watch in years. And it would be hard to disagree, especially with a handful of teams in contention likely to finish under .500 in its conference. There’s a fair chance that between Georgetown, Xavier and Oklahoma (or, who knows, Purdue, Minnesota and Arkansas), you’ll see more than one at-large team that did indeed finish under .500 in its conference. So do sub .500 teams perform poorly once they do make the tournament? ESPN says that answer is a clear no, though such teams don’t perform especially well, either. The 44 sub .500 conference teams that have earned at-large bids since 1985 have won approximately as many tournament games as would be expected based on their seeds alone. The most successful losing team in recent years was Syracuse, which made the 2018 Sweet 16 as a No. 11 seed after going 8-10 in the ACC. For a look at others currently on the craziest bubble in years click here. |
NBA Trend Of The Day |
| From this week’s Playbook Basketball Newsletter: The LA Lakers are 13-1 ATS in double one day-rest division games. |
| Grinding Out The Profits |
| The Arizona Wildcats travel to USC tonight after having played back-to-back revenge games against the Beaver state boys (Oregon and Oregon State) standing just 2-9 ATS away after the Ducks when facing an avenging foe with another revenge tiff on deck (UCLA on Saturday). With the Trojans 7-1 ATS in PAC-12 contests when playing with three or more days of rest this season, we will surely not be raising Arizona tonight. |
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