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Drew Burress (Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
With less than two weeks until Selection Monday, the race for the NCAA Tournament is reaching a fever pitch.
As Selection Monday approaches, I’ll be tracking the development of the Field of 64 and, most importantly, what every team needs to do to secure an at-large bid.
For these purposes, I’ll sort teams that are in at-large contention into three camps:
1) Locks. Reserved for teams that could lose out and still make the NCAA Tournament. That’s a bit nit-picky, but when I say lock, I mean it.
2) Should be in. Generally, a team that would be solidly in if the field was selected today.
3) Work to do. Nothing is guaranteed for these teams.
In the conference records listed, I include any win against a conference team, whether it counts toward the conference standings or not because that is how the information is presented to the selection committee. So, for instance, Illinois gets credit for a conference win for its victory against Michigan State in an early season tournament. Overall records do not include any wins against teams outside of Division I, as those do not appear in the information presented to the selection committee and do not factor into RPI’s calculation.
RPI remains the selection committee’s primary metric, but this year it has also brought KPI into the mix. It’s unclear how much emphasis KPI will be given in the selections, so while I’m looking at it and referencing it, I haven’t presented those rankings here for the sake of keeping this a bit more easily digestible.
ACC
The ACC splits evenly into two halves at this stage of the season: 1) teams with at least 15 ACC wins and top-25 RPIs and 2) everyone else. The seven teams that fit in the top half are all locked into bids. Georgia Tech, Louisville and Virginia Tech have work to do, while Boston College, Miami, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh are focused on securing ACC Tournament berths.
Locks: Clemson, Duke, Florida State, North Carolina, NC State, Virginia, Wake Forest
Should be in: None
Work to do: Georgia Tech, Louisville, Virginia Tech
Georgia Tech (30-19, 14-13; RPI: 48; SOS: 49): The Yellow Jackets got a critical series win against Duke, pushing their RPI into the top 50 and themselves into eighth place in the ACC standings. Its underlying metrics aren’t great, especially its non-conference strength of schedule (243). But it’s…