UVA Sits On The Bubble After Mixed Week

By Raleigh_Hoo

Heading into the final week of the regular season, UVA is squarely on the NCAA Tournament bubble.  

About The Author 

As some of you know, I have been doing bracketology for several years.  I have been posting to the bracketmarix for 4 years now.  My entry is called RWX.  I finished tied for 4th in the bracketmatrix last year, my personal best.  

Mixed Week

UVA had a mixed week in bubble world last week with a nice Q2 road win @ BC but followed that up with a blowout loss at Duke. The Duke blowout didn’t do as much damage as I feared,  worsening our NET by three spots to 49. The predictive metrics did take another hit though. Things that went in UVA’s favor were Notre Dame picking up two big wins and their NET rising to 125, erasing UVA's Q3 bad loss.  Georgia Tech also improved their NET to 134  giving us another Q2 win. Unfortunately Wake Forest’s NET ranking fell to 31, which knocked that Q1 win to Q2 for now. I do think Wake will move back up though. Of course, we are competing with Wake for a bid so that is tricky too.

I have UVA as my final bye right now, the last 10 seed and the 5th team in the field. A win against Georgia Tech will likely have UVA in the mock brackets heading into the ACC tournament, but not much better position than they are now. Unless they annihilate GT and teams below them have a bad week. A win would put UVA as the 3 seed in the ACC tournament  and that means their first game will be against the 6/11/14 survivor. The most likely teams to be the 6 seed right now are Clemson/WF/Syracuse/Pitt. A 1st round game against any of those teams would be tough, but a quality game. Meaning no opportunity for a bad loss, which is good.  A win would likely clinch a bid, a blowout loss would increase anxiety levels. 

If we lose to GT, we likely fall out of the bracket or are maybe the last team in or more likely in the first four out. That would mean at minimum we need one quality win at the ACC tournament and perhaps two. Of course, it still depends on what other teams do.

Teams to pull against this week:

FAU, Utah, Villanova, New Mexico, Seton Hall, Colorado, St. Johns, Providence, Iowa, Wake Forest (to a degree), Ole Miss, Texas A&M. Those are the big ones. Odds are at least a few of those will improve their position in the next week, we have to just hope they don’t all do.

*** Today’s S Curve***

Seed Power Team

1 1 Purdue*

1 2 Houston*

1 3 UConn*

1 4 Arizona*

2 5 North Carolina*

2 6 Tennessee*

2 7 Marquette

2 8 Baylor

3 9 Iowa St.

3 10 Kansas

3 11 Duke

3 12 Creighton

4 13 Alabama

4 14 Illinois

4 15 Auburn

4 16 San Diego St.

5 17 Kentucky

5 18 BYU

5 19 Washington St.

5 20 South Carolina

6 21 Clemson

6 22 Dayton

6 23 Wisconsin

6 24 Utah St.

7 25 Texas Tech

7 26 Florida

7 27 Boise St.*

7 28 Nevada

8 29 Saint Mary's (CA)*

8 30 Colorado St.

8 31 Oklahoma

8 32 Northwestern

9 33 Gonzaga

9 34 Texas

9 35 Nebraska

9 36 Michigan St.

10 37 TCU

10 38 Mississippi St.

10 39 Fla. Atlantic

10 40 Virginia

11a 41 Utah

11b 42 Villanova

11c 43 New Mexico

11d 44 Seton Hall

11 45 Indiana St.*

11 46 Richmond*

12 47 South Fla.*

12 48 Princeton*

12 49 Grand Canyon*

12 50 McNeese*

13 51 App State*

13 52 Samford*

13 53 Louisiana Tech*

13 54 UC Irvine*

14 55 Vermont*

14 56 Akron*

14 57 Col. of Charleston*

14 58 High Point*

15 59 Oakland*

15 60 Eastern Washington*

15 61 Morehead St.*

15 62 Colgate*

16 63 Quinnipiac*

16 64 South Dakota St.*

16a 65 Norfolk St.*

16a 66 Eastern Kentucky*

16b 67 Merrimack*

16b 68 Grambling St.*

*Notes projected automatic qualifiers 

Last Four In: Seton Hall, New Mexico, Villanova, Utah

First Four Out: Colorado, St. Johns, Providence, Iowa

Next Four Out: Wake Forest, Ole Miss, Pittsburgh, Texas A&M

(Featured Image Credit: Getty)