The next Pac-12 Conference basketball games will be played within the month of February. March is not that far away. Selection Sunday — March 12 — is coming into view. Bracketology and bubble evaluations are now a regular part of daily sports discussion, especially with the NFL being down to just one game and 30 of 32 teams having ended their seasons.
Here’s the latest on the Pac-12 bubble. You know that USC leads Utah and Arizona State in the race for an NCAA Tournament at-large bid. The Trojans are first in line, the Utes and Sun Devils behind them. Oregon is next after that, and that’s where we start with this edition of Bubble Watch.
Oregon is sixth in the Pac-12 pecking order, but not 100-percent eliminated. However, the Ducks have very little margin for error, and the next two weeks will likely tell us if Dana Altman’s team will be in the hunt for an at-large berth when we arrive at March and the Pac-12 Tournament.
Oregon visits the Arizona schools this week and then hosts the Los Angeles schools next week. That’s right: Oregon plays Arizona, Arizona State, USC, and UCLA in the next two weeks. That’s four chances for valuable bubble wins.
Hypothetically, if Oregon does win all four of those games, it would likely make the NCAA Tournament.
Obviously, the chances of winning all four are quite remote. The obvious question: Just how many games does Oregon have to win to get back into the bubble discussion?
Realistically: three.
Oregon needs to go 3-1 in these next four games to offset all the horrible (and numerous) losses the Ducks have collected. If Oregon goes 2-2 instead of 3-1, the only scenario which would help the Ducks is a pair of wins over the heavyweights in the Pac-12, Arizona and UCLA. If Oregon doesn’t beat both Arizona and UCLA, it will need 3-1 in these coming four games to have a decent chance of making the field of 68.
A 2-2 split with only one win over the Arizona-UCLA pair won’t do it. Oregon has lost too much ground. Splitting games without stacking multiple high-end wins won’t make the cut. This is Oregon’s last stand.
Let’s talk about Arizona State. The Sun Devils host Oregon this week. That game is obviously valuable, but right now, it seems like more of a “loser hurts itself” game than a “winner moves into the field” game. The loser takes on more water and reduces its already-small margin for error.
In two and a half weeks (February 16 and 18), Arizona State will host the Mountain schools. That includes a game against Utah.
What happens in the next week and a half will determine the stakes for that ASU-Utah bubble game in Tempe. If Arizona State loses to Oregon this week, the Sun Devils’ game against Utah would likely be more of a play-out bubble game (loser is excluded from the field of 68) than a play-in bubble game.
A final word about Utah: The Utes host Stanford, Cal, and Colorado in the next week and a half. The Utes absolutely must win all three games. A loss to any of those teams would be a big dent in the team’s profile. Then Utah goes to the Arizona schools. It would need to win at least one of the two games in Tempe and Tucson.
Here’s a simple rooting guide for USC fans: Have Arizona beat these other Pac-12 bubble teams, and have Arizona State lose to them. That combination of bubble results would be favorable to the Trojans.
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