- Jim Root
Every year, the same kinds of bubble teams hang around the cut-line, hoping to hear their names called on Selection Sunday as they nervously hang out in some ballroom on campus. I’ve been categorizing these in my head for years now, but it finally became time to put pen to paper (okay, fingers to keyboard) as we enter a glorious new decade.
I tried to fit every legitimate bubble team into a category this year, though I’ll admit one or two teams are shoehorned into their respective spots. If there’s a 6th (or 7th or 8th) category that I should be creating, let me know! A lot of this is based on quadrant records and good wins/bad losses; there’s certainly room to be more discerning in terms of SOS numbers, inflated NET rankings, etc.
Split Personalities
What It Means: These squads are liable to do anything: lose to Long Beach State, sweep Marquette, beat the entire top half of their conference at some point, lose at Northwestern…oh wait, that’s all just Providence. But the Friars are the ideal version of this type of résumé: the wins are simply too strong to ignore, even if the bad losses leave you baffled as to how the same group of players manufactured such disparate results.
On the other hand, Cincinnati is a bad version of this profile. Sure, going 6-0 against Q2 competition is impressive, but when you’ve lost at home to UCF and Colgate, you need more top-shelf, Q1 victories to balance that out (just two right now).
Last year’s Baylor squad was a perfect “Split Personality” team; losing at home to a SWAC team and a 7-11 Southland team while also registering three Q1A wins in conference play is a perfect distillation of this genre.
Examples this season: Providence, NC State, UCLA, Cincinnati, South Carolina
2019 Examples: Baylor, Arizona St., Alabama, Oregon
We Did Nothing Wrong!
What It Means: It’s right there in the title: the whole argument for this group is its lack of bad losses, and like a dry red wine and a prime cut of steak, that pairs nicely with an uninspiring group of wins (and a well-below-.500 Q1 record). The computers are usually big fans of this group (especially if they lay waste to the bad teams they play), but discerning human evaluators don’t love the “beat who we were supposed to, lose to all of the better teams” quality that these teams possess.
A win as good as Xavier’s @Seton Hall scalp is usually pretty rare here (Rare! Like steak!); it’s mostly just a collection of fringe Q1 wins (see: Wichita’s “best” victories) and no standout losses.
Examples this season: Oklahoma, Arizona St., Texas Tech, Florida, Xavier, Wichita State, Texas, Arkansas
2019 Examples: Creighton, Mississippi, TCU, Iowa
Hometown Heroes
What It Means: These heroes rack up plenty of quality wins at home, often by impressive margins, and typically stumble when put in hostile environments. They’re easy to identify: if a team is in the bubble picture and has something like a 2-8 road record, that’s a great sign of a hometown hero.
Unsurprisingly, this is pretty much a collection of Big Ten teams this year, with Rutgers possibly being the starkest example I can remember. Meanwhile, Purdue and Minnesota are threatening to join 2019 Texas in the creation of a new genre: “We’d Be In If We Won More.”
Examples this season: Rutgers, Purdue, Minnesota, Clemson
2019 Examples: Minnesota, Nebraska, Memphis, Texas
Record Buffs
What It Means: Almost always a mid-major, the Record Buff sports a gaudy win/loss record, but usually pairs that with a dearth of big wins and soft schedule numbers. The lack of big wins is not always the team’s fault (scheduling imbalances are a scourge on the sport!), but it’s unfortunately a key factor in the current bubble landscape. East Tennessee State and Northern Iowa stand as the top dogs in this category right now; each team has a huge non-conference road win to point to (at LSU and at Colorado, respectively), but it’s unclear if either can survive another defeat in a conference tournament setting.
It’s not always a mid-major here, though; think 2018 Nebraska for a power conference example. The Cornhuskers were 22-10 with a 13-5 Big Ten record and were left out; they got torpedoed by a weak non-conference schedule and a lack of big home win opportunities thanks to the 14-team B1G’s unbalanced schedule.
Examples this season: ETSU, UNI, Rhode Island, Richmond, Utah State, Stephen F. Austin
2019 Examples: Belmont, Furman, UNCG, Lipscomb
Power Conference Beggar
What It Means: This is a watered-down hybrid of the “We Did Nothing Wrong!” and “Split Personality” groups, as they typically have one or two bad losses and the same trademark gruesome Q1 winning percentage. The Beggars are hoping for a handout from the committee as their cases rest almost entirely on a couple huge wins accumulated throughout the season. Think of it this way: they’re the teams that Dick Vitale loves to declare as “100% in” after a solid-but-unspectacular home win in late February.
Worth noting: there can actually be “good” résumés among this group, as USC and Stanford both demonstrate. Those two are really a Q3 loss each away from being in the “We Did Nothing Wrong!” category.
This group creates the most animosity in bubble land, as they often end up above the mid-major Record Buffs solely due to sheer volume of opportunities. It comes back to the basic question of whether it’s more impressive to go something like 7-12 vs. good teams (Q1/Q2 competition) or 3-3. The committee threw Belmont a bone last year, taking them ahead of such squads as Xavier and Clemson, so hopefully that trend continues – even if it’s really just hush money for the disenfranchised smaller schools.
Examples this season: USC, Stanford, Mississippi State, Georgetown, Memphis, Alabama,Syracuse, Notre Dame, Tennessee
2019 Examples: Florida, St. John’s, Syracuse, Washington, Xavier, Clemson
