As a native of Phoenix and a resident of Seattle, I've spent my whole life in Pac-12 country. Because the games start later out here in the West, and because a college sports fan here

As the last weekend of regular season competition arrives, the overall bubble picture is still cloudy for the dozen-plus teams that are fighting for a handful of spots. Yet, while the big picture is muddled, clarity can be found on an individual level. In specific cases, certain bubble teams face defining moments. West Virginia, for […]

If you know your college basketball history, you know that the Dayton Flyers used to matter.  Dayton is not just the city that hosts the First Four, and it's not just the city where a peace agreement was signed in 1995, to help mediate a tense and bitter situation in Bosnia. Dayton throbbed with life […]

  San Diego State could be slotted in the West Region and play regional games (Sweet 16 and Elite 8) in Anaheim, Calif. The Aztecs went to Anaheim the last time they reached the Sweet 16, in 2011. If Wichita State loses in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament and Wisconsin goes on a tear, winning […]

The time of year popularly known as Championship Week, but which is actually a fortnight, is upon us. This means that until 6 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, March 16 — Selection Sunday — the main topic of conversation in American sports will revolve around a bubble that has nothing to do with housing prices. […]

Loading a roster with freshmen — otherwise known as the one-year model of program building — gave John Calipari his first national championship. The very same approach gave Calipari a humiliating NIT appearance and an even more embarrassing loss to Robert Morris. Entering this season and the latest installment of Calipari's "one-year plan," it was […]

If you've seen it once, you've seen it dozens of times over the past 30 years of major college basketball. When the calendar arrives at late February and early March, Rick Pitino gets his teams to play at their best. The struggles of December and January melt away and give rise to a fluid, coordinated […]

As the month of March arrives, so does a constant flood of bubble talk. What does the weekend hold in store for the bubble? We'll go through the full list of games with bubble implications, and we'll start with a 10 p.m. Eastern game that is more important than you might first think. Gonzaga and […]

What does it mean to "pull an Arkansas?" The term wasn't part of a college basketball fan's vocabulary 24 hours ago. It is now… or at least, it can be. "Pulling an Arkansas" now has a clear meaning — it's what happens when a team that's barely even on the bubble suddenly shoots to the […]

You didn't hear much about the Arkansas Razorbacks the past few weeks… and for good reason. When the Hogs lost at Missouri on Feb. 13, they missed one of their final two chances to get a quality win before the end of the SEC regular season. Moreover, Missouri's subsequent nosedive made that loss even worse […]

There are only two days left until March, but few teams are snapping up available spots in what is currently a not-that-crowded (Big) Dance hall. So many teams began Wednesday night firmly on the bubble but in possession of a chance to move up the ladder. With three to four regular season games remaining on […]

It is one of the endlessly fascinating aspects of collegiate team sports: 20-year-olds come and go every two to four years, but the personality of the program remains intact, for better or worse, over many decades. In college football, Northwestern — a Sisyphus within the sport (there are more than one) — fights like hell […]

The Missouri Tigers needed to beat the Georgia Bulldogs on Tuesday night in Athens, Ga. They didn't. They didn't even come close. Inaccurate shooting, impatient ballhandling, and ineffective defense led to a blowout loss against a team that was finished as an at-large NCAA tournament candidate in early January. Missouri trailed Georgia, 67-43, with two […]