There are four teams on the NCAA Tournament bubble, and with anywhere from 0-4 possibly qualifying, this is the league to watch if you root for another team whose March fate is uncertain. As a basic primer, we’ll run through our Notebook Nine, nine basic points to know for understanding the state of SEC basketball…
The power conference tournaments start to warm up tonight, with preliminary games in the Big East and Mountain West. The action picks up tomorrow and hits full stride by Friday when the best team in each league will have played at least one game. In today’s college basketball coverage, our question is going to be a philosophical one—what do these games actually mean?
TheSportsNotebook’s college basketball coverage since the Super Bowl has focused on a narrow look at the nation’s Sweet 16—as defined by Lunardi’s projections—each Friday. The goal is not to quibble with seedings, which are based on the overall body of work, but to get a feel for which of the national championship contenders are really playing their best basketball right now. Obviously, Syracuse is not. At least not yet. Here’s the rundown on everyone else, starting with the 4-line and ascending upward…
For most of the power conferences, this is the penultimate weekend of the regular season. For Gonzaga and other schools who start their league tournaments early for TV exposure, this weekend brings the curtain down on the regular schedule. If you want to build momentum, there’s no time to waste, so with that in mind TheSportsNotebook’s college basketball coverage continues its weekly breakdown of the top 16 teams in the country—how they’re playing in the present and what the immediate schedule holds.