It’s one of the best days of the sports calendar: Selection Sunday. Later in the evening, the selection committee will reveal the field for the 2024 NCAA Tournament. The tournament will unofficially begin on Tuesday with two games as part of the First Four to get in. On Thursday, the Round of 64 will start and from there it’ll be a mad dash to the Final Four, which will take place in Phoenix on April 6-8. Below we’re going to go over the bubble heading into the Selection Show, which will air at 6 p.m. ET on CBS.
2024 March Madness: Bubble teams on Selection Sunday
Teams who should be in
Michigan State
Texas A&M
Miss State
Florida Atlantic
Colorado State
TCU
Dayton
Oklahoma
First, I’m not bracketologist. So we’re going to get some help from our colleagues around the college basketball media world in ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm, both of whom do great work all season round updating up on their projected brackets.
There are a few more recognizable schools who should be safe — the Michigan State Spartans and Texas A&M Aggies. According to Lunardi and Palm, both teams will be in the field for the tournament. A&M helped their case by winning two SEC Tournament games (one over No. 9 Kentucky). Both bracketologists have Tom Izzo and the Spartans playing in the First Four as well as A&M.
Last year’s cinderella FAU team is looking good to get into the field without having to fight in the First Four. Similar to A&M and another SEC team, the Mississippi State Bulldogs did enough in the SEC Tourney to get in. They picked up two wins, one massive victory over No. 5 Tennessee to assure they get into the field. All that coming off a nightmare four-game losing streak to end the regular season. The Bulldogs are a team to watch in the tournament, they’ve got a very impressive resume with wins over UT (twice), Auburn and out-of-conference win over Northwestern.
Teams firmly on the bubble
St. John’s
Colorado
Seton Hall
Virginia
Pittsburgh
We’re going to focus on two teams in this section: St. John’s and Colorado. Those are the two teams Palm and Lunardi appear to disagree on. Lunardi has St. John’s in his First Four Out while Palm has the Red Storm as his Last Four In the field. Similarly, Colorado is in the First Four In for Lunardi while Palm has Colorado in the Last Four Out section. So we’ll break that down a bit.
Both teams are definitely deserving. Colorado ranks 27th on KenPom and St. John’s is 26th. The Red Storm might get the Pitino bump. It’s helpful to all parties (NCAA, media, etc) that Rick Pitino’s team gets into the field and gets at least a nationally televised game in the tournament. There’s a lot of narrative around him coaching St. John’s. The Red Storm also finished the season strong on a six-game winning streak, which carried into the Big East Tournament, where the Johnnies feel 95-90 to UConn. Aside from losses to Michigan (early in the season) and Boston College, St. John’s didn’t have a loss you would consider “bad” this year. The worst would be to Seton Hall, a team also on the bubble.
As for Colorado, the case is a bit more difficult. Tad Boyle isn’t Rick Pitino. The Pac-12 schedule also isn’t the Big East schedule. The Buffs finished the season on an eight-game winning streak, which ended in the conference tournament vs. Oregon. None of those wins were against teams in the top-50 on KenPom, well technically two were (Utah is 50th). Losses to Arizona State and Cal at the beginning of conference play could hamstring Colorado’s chances of getting in.
St. John’s should get the edge and the “Pitino bump” in this instance. But we’ll see how the committee handles it this evening. It’ll definitely be the most polarizing of the debates once we see who gets in. There’s also a scenario both teams get in but then we’d maybe see a team we thought was going to get in, get snubbed. It seems that happens every season.
