Beyond the big three, the conference is struggling to produce serious contenders for the at-large pool.
On Tuesday afternoon, Stanford returned from a COVID-related hiatus to hand USC its first loss of the season and, in the process, collect a significant victory for the Pac-12.The Trojans are a lock for the NCAA Tournament, but the Pac-12 is hurtling toward a lowly three-bid existence in March Madness, with UCLA, Arizona and USC as the only participants.
It needs teams on the second tier, like Stanford, to position themselves for the tournament bubble. The upset of USC counted as a Quad 1 result for the Cardinal and improved its NET ranking by 16 spots overnight, to No. 85. That’s not nearly enough for comfort. The limited NET history available — the metric has been in use since the 2018-19 season — suggests teams in the 60s are on the outskirts of the bubble.
But the Cardinal is within sight of that point and joins Washington State, Oregon and Colorado as the only teams with a speck of a fleck of a chance to reach the NCAAs outside of the league’s three heavyweights.— For those unfamiliar with the NET rankings system: The result of each game played falls within one of four quadrants, based on the NET ranking of the opponent and location of the game. The categorization changes over time as teams move up and down the NET.
Comment: The NCAA selection process isn’t entirely metrics-based. There’s a subjective component — and a real possibility that the committee will recoil when it examines WSU’s non-conference schedule .Comment: In addition to the assessment of Stanford above, we should add this: The Cardinal is one bad loss away from wasting all that NET progress.Comment: Critical weekend in Los Angeles for the Ducks, who have precious few chances to collect first-class wins.