Bracketology Bubble Watch: Wisconsin gets big win at Penn State; Slumping Arizona State starts crucial stretch

A couple of bubble teams lost at home Wednesday, but one team contending for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament picked up a big win on its home floor.

In a “double-bubble” game, Wisconsin completed a season sweep of Penn State with a 79-74 victory in Happy Valley. It was a big win for the Badgers, who have had kind of a weird season. They are now 7-5 away from home against teams in the top three quadrants, but only 2-4 at home. They also play a lot of close-margin games, which is likely why they rank 72nd in the NET this morning.

For Penn State, this loss drops them to 14-10 overall and while the Nittany Lions have a few good wins, most notably at Illinois, it is not enough to give them strong bracket consideration at this time. I’m not taking them off the bubble yet because they are not far from getting back into the bracket, but it is going to take a better run of play.

West Virginia took care of business at home and defeated Iowa State 76-71 to improve its record to 5-9 against Quadrant 1 teams with no losses outside that group. The win boosted the Mountaineers into the top 20 of the NET, for what that’s worth.

Virginia Tech took the most damaging loss of the evening though. The Hokies lost at home to Boston College, giving the Eagles a season sweep and handing Virginia Tech an unwelcome Quad 3 loss. Both of the Hokies’ losses outside the top two quadrants are to BC. They now enter a stretch of four out of their next six games on the road.

NCAA Tournament locks

Locks based on resume: 5 | Bids secured: 0 | At-large spots remaining: 31

On the cut line

Check out all the teams on Palm’s Bubble Watch, the field of the 68 and the entire bracket on the Bracketology hub  

Thursday’s ‘Double Bubble’ game

USC at Oregon

11 p.m. | ESPN2, fuboTV (Try for free) 

Other bubble teams in action Thursday

All references to NCAA Tournament selection records and trends refer to pre-pandemic tournaments. Due to shortened schedules and a relatively small number of nonconference games in 2021, those rankings were not reliable enough to be considered.