Wednesday night was a great bubble night for Wisconsin

Wisconsin and the bubble

There aren’t many days left in the college basketball regular season. The regular season is defined as the schedule of games preceding the conference tournaments. Many of the smaller conferences in Division I men’s basketball will conclude their conference seasons on Feb. 29 or March 1. Their conference tournaments will commence in the first week of March. The first tickets to the Big Dance, the 2020 NCAA Tournament, will be handed out on the first full weekend of March (Saturday the 7th and Sunday the 8th).

As Yogi Berra once said, “It gets late early out there.”

Even though this is a leap year — which means one extra day in February — we are at an advanced stage of the college basketball regular season. The bubble picture is gaining detail — not necessarily clarity, but certainly more accumulated results and more of an understanding of what teams need to do to improve or hijack their bubble status.

Wednesday night, the Wisconsin Badgers received plenty of good news relative to the bubble. Whether you think UW is relatively safe (as I do), or or whether you remain skeptical (which is a reasonable position, given that the Badgers need to avoid losing to Northwestern in early March before they feel fully comfortable), you can acknowledge that the bubble landscape is moving in a direction which is favorable to the Badgers.

Start with North Carolina State beating Duke by a lot. That loss to the Wolfpack looks a lot better now. The Richmond team which is fighting for an NCAA bid continues to win. That loss looks better. Indiana beat Minnesota, making sure the Gophers won’t get into the NCAAs. Minnesota has to thread the needle now, which includes beating Maryland. If the Gophers can’t beat the Terps, stick a fork in them. They would be completely finished.

Then look at two other conferences, the AAC and SEC. Bubble teams are cratering in those conferences. Cincinnati lost at home to UCF on Wednesday. The AAC seemed to be a league which might have four or five NCAA teams a few weeks ago. That number might be down to two. Wisconsin stands to benefit from that.

In the SEC, Arkansas once looked like a No. 4 or 5 seed. However, an injury to Isaiah Joe has severely crippled the Razorbacks, who are now 4-9 in the SEC. Arkansas is joined on the wrong side of the bubble by Alabama, which took a bad home-court loss on Wednesday to Texas A&M. If you’re still worried about Wisconsin — which, again, is perfectly understandable — just know that Arkansas and Alabama are in the process of playing their way out of the field.

It is only one night, and one night generally doesn’t guarantee a bubble outcome, but Wednesday certainly moved Wisconsin up — not down — the seed list. It was a very good night for the Badgers.