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The regular-season ended Sunday. Almost everybody finished up on Saturday, but there was still one bubble game, and a big one at that.
Wichita State 71, Illinois State 51
Wichita State is off the bubble! The Shockers won the Missouri Valley Conference and are guaranteed a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
Illinois State finished 26-6 but only three games were against top-50 opposition ... and all three of those games came against the Shockers. ISU is 1-2 in those contests. The only other top-100 win for the Redbirds came at home against New Mexico, which finished in the middle of the Mountain West. The Redbirds also have a couple of bad losses.
For historical perspective, only four teams have received an at-large bid with fewer than four top 100 wins since 1994, and only one since 2003. Three of those four teams had three top 100 wins.
The other team was Middle Tennessee State in 2013. The Blue Raiders were in the Sun Belt at the time and finished 28-5. They were just 1-3 against the top 100 that year. The win came at home over Mississippi, which made the NCAA Tournament that year as an at-large. The losses came against Florida by 21 and at Akron and Belmont, all tournament teams. The last two were automatic qualifiers.
MTSU also had two bad losses in conference play, one at Arkansas State in the regular season and against Florida International in the conference tournament. The Blue Raiders are the only team to get an at-large berth without at least three top 100 wins and the only team since 2003 to get in with less than four. While I always say you cannot judge selections based on tournament performance, the fact that MTSU was not competitive in its play-in game might give the committee pause when considering another team that has so few good wins.
So, that example gives Illinois State hope, but that team was an outlier. I do not expect the committee to go into that well again.
