A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
Andy Bottoms analyzes college basketball year 'round for Midwest Sports Fans. His column, The Bottoms Line, features in-depth and advanced statistical analysis plus his podcast, which features expert guests from around the college basketball landscape. Follow Andy and The Bottoms Line on Twitter: @AndyBottoms | @TheBottomsLine
Also see: Fun With Numbers | 2011-12 First Impressions by Conference | Non-BCS Watch List
For the 30th straight season, Madison Square Garden will play host to the Big East Tournament, which begins on March 6th. While Syracuse is the clear favorite at this point, UConn proved last season that anything can happen when tournament play tips off.
At this point in the season, Andy Bottoms had hoped to be paring down the list of bubble teams, but that isn’t exactly happening. While a few teams have moved off of the bubble, many remaining bubble squads are essentially coming back to the pack, which has a few new names in this week’s Bubble Watch.
With eight teams currently in the RPI Top 100, the Atlantic 10 Tournament is shaping up to be one of most competitive in all of Championship Week. Temple and Saint Louis look like the favorites, but they won’t face an easy road to the title when the event tips off on March 6th.
MAC Tournament play begins on March 5th, and if the regular season is any indication, a team from the Eastern Division will earn the automatic bid. With just two weeks left, Akron holds a two-game lead on Buffalo and Kent State, and the Zips appear to be the early favorites.
The Missouri Valley Conference Tournament has earned the moniker Arch Madness for a reason, and this year should be no exception when it tips off on March 1st. Wichita State and Creighton have dominated the headlines for most of the season, but a number of evenly matched teams behind them should make for plenty of closely contested tournament games.
Following a week where more teams seemed intent on playing their way out of the field as opposed to playing their way in, four new at-large teams enter this week’s projections. At the same time, a few teams saw large changes in their seed based on big wins over the weekend.
With just three weeks left until Selection Sunday, Andy Bottoms’ Top 25 stayed relatively stable with just one new squad making their way onto the list this week.
Andy Bottoms takes an early look at the Horizon League Tournament, which tips off on February 28th. The regular season race is still close, as Valparaiso holds a slim one game advantage over slumping Cleveland State, who has lost three straight.
In episode #22 of The Bottoms Line College Basketball Podcast, host Andy Bottoms is once again joined by Rob Dauster and Troy Machir of Ballin’ Is a Habit to discuss all the latest news and events in college basketball.
With Championship Week on the horizon, Andy Bottoms runs down the important dates and key information for every conference tournament.
Welcome to the post-Valentine’s Day edition of Bubble Watch. If some of these teams – UCONN, Illinois, Kansas State, and many more – don’t start stringing together some wins, they might be left “broken-hearted” on Selection Sunday.
It is now under a month until the field of 68 is announced, and the at-large selections are starting to stabilize with just two new teams in this week’s projected field. However, a number of losses by ranked teams and tournament hopefuls last week did lead to some fluctuation in terms of seeding in Andy Bottoms’ latest NCAA Tournament bracket predictions.
Many of last week’s top matchups lived up to their advanced billing, and when the dust settled following an excisting week of basketball, 13 teams in the Top 25 had lost at least once. While that certainly made Andy Bottoms’s job of assembling this week’s rankings a bit more challenging, it certainly bodes well for March Madness 2012, which begins with Selection Sunday in just four weeks.
Prior to the season, Andy wrote a number of posts centered around advanced metrics and tempo-free stats, and with more college basketball writers and analysts starting to use them, it seemed like a good idea to provide a brief summary of the key stats and how they are calculated.
Whether by luck or by design, the college hoops slate has been terrific in the first week of post-football action. In the wake of a number of exciting games, Andy Bottoms looks at teams on the rise and on the decline heading into a loaded weekend schedule.
