Thursday, March 12, 2020

Championship Thursday: Xavier, Stanford suffer bad losses as week begins to halt from Coronavirus

Wednesday was a pretty light day in terms of the tournament outlook but the bracket still saw a shakeup thanks to two bubble teams suffering untimely losses and Boston University claiming the Patriot League title over Colgate on the road.

Entering the day, Xavier and Stanford were among the last four in and needed to avoid losses Wednesday to stay in the field. Unfortunately, neither of them were able to take care of business as DePaul and California, respectively, knocked them out and may have sent both to the NIT...if we have an NIT. We'll get to that in a moment.

As a result, both are currently out of the field and UCLA and North Carolina State have moved in heading into their respective conference tournaments...or so they thought.

As of early Thursday afternoon, a host of conference tournaments for 2020 have ceased to exist due to the Coronavirus. Those conferences include the ACC, American Athletic, Atlantic 10, Big Ten, Big 12, Conference USA, MAC, Pac-12 SEC, and WAC. We're really starting to think about the possibility of the NCAA Tournament not happening next week, if at all.

The NCAA has already announced the tournament will be played without fans in attendance. It's now very likely they suspend the tournament, following the season suspensions of the NBA and MLS and, likely, the NHL.

We will certainly continue to monitor the situation. As of now, here is the latest projection. The WAC, as of now, was the only conference to officially announce which team would receive the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament (though New Mexico State was the overwhelming favorite anyway). The interesting note here is that Cincinnati was set to be the No. 1 seed in the AAC tournament. If there is an NCAA Tournament, the conference canceling the tournament may have given the Bearcats a free pass into the NCAA Tournament. We'll find out.


Last Four Byes: Oklahoma, USC, Texas Tech, Richmond
Last Four In: Arizona State, Texas, UCLA, North Carolina State
First Four Out: Xavier, Stanford, Wichita State, Northern Iowa
Next Four Out: Memphis, Mississippi State, Rhode Island, Oklahoma State

Conference Breakdown

Big Ten - 10

Big 12 - 6

Pac-12 - 6

ACC - 5

Big East - 5

SEC - 4

West Coast - 3

AAC - 2

Atlantic 10 - 2

Mountain West - 2

One-bid leagues - 22

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