Trotter’s 10 Trends: Potential NCAA Tournament bid-stealers to replicate NC State’s 2024 March Madness run

The brands on the Big Dance bubble this year are incredible. It’s Indiana. It’s Baylor. It’s North Carolina. It’s Arkansas led by John Calipari. These raucous fanbases will be closely monitoring potential bid-thieves during the conference tournaments. 

So, who could those teams be? Finding that next NC State is not easy because winning nine do-or-die games in a row will shape up to be a historic outlier. In this week’s edition of 10 Trends, let’s jump across the country to various conference tournaments to try and find teams that have a chance to make serious buzz (or tears), starting in maybe my favorite conference tournament of them all: Arch Madness.

1. Can anyone upset Drake in Arch Madness?

Drake has been one of the best stories in college basketball. First-year coach Ben McCollum, aka your favorite coach’s favorite coach, and his band of Division II transfers eviscerated Miami, FAU and Vanderbilt in November, knocked off Kansas State in December and torched the Valley to win the league by two full games. Drake looks poised to earn an at-large bid as long as it can avoid a Quad 4 landmine in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament. 

Drake point guard Bennett Stirtz has been the head of the snake all year. He’s scored in double figures in 28 of 30 games. Those lone two clunkers? Oh, they both came against Bradley. 

That’s no coincidence. 

Bubble teams should be rooting for Drake to bulldoze through Arch Madness, which tips off on Thursday, but Bradley has everything it takes to knock off Drake and earn the automatic bid. 

Bradley is a veteran-laden team with loads of continuity. Point guard Duke Deen is a killer, but Bradley also owns one of the best rim defenses in the league. 7-foot-1 junior center Ahmet Jonovic was inserted into the starting lineup in mid-January, and opponents are shooting a measly 46% at the rim against Bradley when Jonovic is on the floor. Bradley is also the best 3-point shooting team in the country with the lineup versatility to trot out five-shooter lineups whenever it wants. 

Also, don’t worry about that three-game losing streak to UIC, Northern Iowa and Belmont from a month ago. Those three teams went an insane 39-for-81 from downtown (48%) combined in those three games. That is a major outlier.  

Brian Wardle’s unit has the positional size, lineup versatility and point guard play to be a very dangerous club in do-or-die tournaments.

The rubber match between Drake and Bradley for the Arch Madness title would be glorious.

2. Will the ACC Tournament concoct some magic … again?

Duke, Louisville and Clemson are stone-cold, March Madness locks, but the rest of the ACC will enter the conference tournament needing to make some magic.

I’m looking for a team with a superstar and a path that’s as far away from Duke as possible. Maybe Duke doesn’t put a ton of stock in the ACC Tournament, but this group feels like stone-cold killers who are eviscerating whoever happens to be in their path.

Assuming the seeding holds steady, Stanford could be an interesting candidate to make a racket in Charlotte. Maxime Raynaud has been as good as any player in the league outside of Cooper Flagg. The 7-foot-1 senior legitimately plays center on defense and point guard on offense. He can shoot 3s. He can post up. He can pass. He runs pick-and-rolls as the handler and the screen-setter. He’s stupid-good.

Plus, Stanford is shaping up to be at the bottom of the bracket. 

Duke going down seems unlikely, but Stanford is frisky and likely due for some positive regression. Top-100 teams are shooting an absurd 48% on midrange jumpers against Stanford. Top-100 teams are also shooting 36% from 3-point range while the Cardinal is shooting just 31% from downtown. If that flips …

3. Buy the Bears in the Big 12?

There’s an enormous gap between the haves and the have-nots in the Big 12. Baylor is stuck in the middle of it all. It was supposed to be in the first group, but an injury to big man Josh Ojianwuna combined with real defensive slippage have dragged the Bears down to the middle ground in the league.

Baylor is likely going to get the No. 6 or No. 7 seed in the Big 12 Tournament, and it will head to Kansas City smack dab on the cut line. Careful what you wish for, but Baylor may prefer a matchup with Texas Tech in the quarterfinals instead of Arizona or Iowa State. That’s a feasible path for the Bears to go on a run. Texas Tech’s guards are not remotely close to the level defensively that Arizona or Iowa State can possess. And you better have elite defensive guards if you want to slow down a now-healthy Baylor backcourt that is teeming with depth. VJ Edgecombe, Jeremy Roach, Rob Wright, Langston Love and Jayden Nunn provide Scott Drew with five different guards who can go for double-figures in a hot second.

Baylor is the one team currently sweating its at-large hopes who has what it takes to make some money in the Big 12 Tournament. 

4. Xavier demands attention ahead of Big East 

The Big East NCAA Tournament picture is pretty cut and dry ahead of the final week of the regular season.

Dancing: St. John’s,Marquette, Creighton and UConn 

Not dancing: Seton Hall, DePaul, Providence, Butler, Georgetown and Villanova are not currently positioned to earn an at-large bid.

Xavier is the lone team missing. The Musketeers have a ton to play for down the stretch. On tape, this group looks every bit the part of a team that can do real damage. Ryan Conwell is an assassin and Zach Freemantle can score inside and out. Those superstars are carrying a heavy load, but the emergence of role players like Dailyn Swain and Dante Maddox Jr. has helped Sean Miller’s rotation round into real form. Since Freemantle returned from a knee injury on Jan. 3, Xavier has been a top-30 team nationally.

Xavier genuinely feels like it can play with (and beat) anybody in the Big East, and it has proof. It had St. John’s in a vicegrip in the second half before blowing a 16-point lead and eventually losing in overtime. It has beaten Marquette, UConn and Creighton. 

Villanova may be the other team to watch here. Eric Dixon and Wooga Poplar can give buckets to everybody. Villanova’s been one of the elite halfcourt offenses in the country this year, but does anyone trust this group to grind out late-game possessions with a season on the line?

If you’re looking for a bid-stealer in the Big East, it’s Xavier who could find itself on the right side of the cut-line with a couple wins in Madison Square Garden. But this group has even higher aspirations.

5. Mountain West Madness

The Mountain West Tournament is as entertaining as anyone in America. New Mexico rattled off a run to the automatic bid last year, and a familiar script is at play in 2025. New Mexico and Utah State should enter Las Vegas feeling pretty darn good about their respective at-large resumes. 

Everyone else? Not so much.

Boise State and Colorado State have both been red-hot lately and should enter with loads of confidence. San Diego State is trying to get healthy, but it has one of the highest ceilings in the conference. This league is just begging for a bid-stealer. BEGGING. 

I cannot wait.

Hamburger to my head, I’ll ride with Colorado State. Nique Clifford is a two-way superstar, and sophomore guard Kyan Evans is starting to emerge. He’s shooting a berserk 44% from downtown in conference play. En fuego, indeed.

6. Can the middle tier of the West Coast Conference rise up?

Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s look every bit the part of March Madness locks after earning the top-two seeds in the WCC Tournament. The quest for a bid-stealer likely comes down to three teams: San Francisco, Santa Clara and Oregon State. Washington State would’ve been in this mix if Cedric Coward (who should be a 2025 NBA Draft pick) was healthy.

Alas, David Riley’s bid for a Big Dance slot seems unlikely despite LeJuan Watts’ brilliance, a man who has been featured in 10 Trends.

San Francisco, Santa Clara and Oregon State all have head honchos who can go toe-to-toe with anybody in the league. San Francisco guard Malik Thomas is a superstar guard capable of hitting tough shots galore. Oregon State’s Michael Rataj is a mismatch 4-man who can pass, dribble and shoot. He’s developed into an All-League guy. Santa Clara has Adama-Alpha Ball who has next-level potential.

None of the draws are particularly easy, but Santa Clara is probably the best bet of the three. This group can shoot the absolute cover off it, and Santa Clara also allows the second-fewest shots at the rim. If this turns into a jump-shooting contest, advantage Santa Clara who has six different guys shooting north of 38% from downtown.

Sidebar: Elijah Mahi. Know the name. The 6-foot-7, Santa Clara wing is one of my sneaky favorite players in the country. That dude can hoop.

7. Circling Memphis’ top challenger in AAC

North Texas, a program built on defense, has quietly posted the second-best offensive efficiency mark in AAC play. Ross Hodge and Co. are shaping up to be Memphis’ biggest competitor in the looming AAC Tournament. North Texas is generating unguarded catch-and-shoot 3s at the second-highest clip in the league. Plus, if you look ahead to a potential Memphis rematch, North Texas’ turnover-forcing ways could be the one real way to slow down this Tigers’ club who has been terrific offensively whenever it doesn’t cough the pill up.

Create good shots + force tough shots + take the ball away = winning recipe for North Texas.

8. Chaos awaits in the A-10

VCU is the deserved favorite in the A-10. This roster is NCAA Tournament-caliber, and the resume is certainly close to looking the part, too. 

But this conference tournament is going to be berserk.

Tony Skinn and George Mason have a chance thanks to one of the elite pick-and-roll defenses in the sport. Saint Joseph’s might have the best 1-2 punch in the league with point guard Xzayvier Brown and future first-rounder Rasheer Fleming. Dayton has been trending in the wrong direction, internally and on the floor, for a minute, but that group is still capable of beating anybody with its barrage of treys. Even Saint Louis and Loyola-Chicago will waltz into Washington D.C. with visions of a deep run.

This is no cakewalk for VCU.

March Madness 2025: Conference tournament brackets, schedules, dates, times, TV channels, streaming

David Cobb

9. A two-bid Big West?! 

UC San Diego tried to give us clues in a season-opening dogfight on the road against San Diego State that it was not one to be trifled with. The Tritons, armed with a lineup that features five guys who can pass, dribble and shoot, sit at 26-4 and 16-2 in the Big West. Eric Olen’s crew is up to a staggeringly-high No. 35 on KenPom.

This resume is good enough to earn an at-large bid, even with a respectable loss in the Big West Tournament. And boy, UC Irvine has to have a bad taste in its mouth after UC San Diego waltzed into its house and handed the Anteaters a humbling, 18-point beatdown on Feb. 8. 

Remember, UC Irvine went on the road to UC San Diego and won behind 23 points, 13 rebounds and two blocks from 7-foot-1 big man Bent Leuchten. The big fella could certainly give UC San Diego’s slightly undersized frontline some real trouble again if they meet for a third time in the Big West Tournament finale. Opponents are shooting just 46.9% at the rim against UC Irvine. That ranks third-best nationally and has been a real indicator behind March Madness success.

Bubble teams everywhere should be pleading with the basketball gods that UC San Diego emerges with the Big West autobid.

10. Why a bid-stealer coming out of the SEC and Big Ten feels unlikely for two separate reasons

I just don’t see a NC State-type candidate coming out of the Big Ten or SEC for two opposite reasons. There is just way too much parity in the Big Ten. In theory, that could open the door for a team to get red-hot, but there are zero gimmes. Not on Wednesday. Not on Thursday. Most definitely not on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, either. Maybe Indiana could keep the party rolling, but the Hoosiers also could very well have to win five games in a row depending on how the seeding shakes out down the stretch.

The SEC is a bit different. I think there are four legitimately great teams in the league: Auburn, Alabama, Florida and Tennessee. Missouri is extremely close to joining that group. The path to winning the SEC Tournament championship for a bubble team like Georgia or Texas might be harder than its path in the NCAA Tournament. Think about that?!

For example, Texas’ path could very well be Arkansas in the first round, Alabama in the second round, Missouri in the quarterfinals, Auburn in the semifinals and Florida in the championship game.

Good luck and best wishes. You’ll need it.

Anyways, check ball. Let’s get this party started.