NCAA Tournament Bubble Watch: Monmouth Versus Everyone
By Nathan Giese
It’s not often that a mid-major could shake up the NCAA tournament landscape because of at-large bid possibilities. This makes the Monmouth Hawks a very important team.
Mid-majors don’t earn at-large bids. Their conferences aren’t good enough to improve a single team’s NCAA tournament profile.
Over the last decade, four teams have earned at-large bids into the NCAA tournament coming from true mid-major conferences (conferences that historically get just one team into the tournament). With all the realignment, some of the teams that made at-large bids are from conferences considered lower-tier mid-majors now, but were stronger just a few years ago.
The list of mid-majors to receive at-large bids over the last 10 tournaments goes as follows:
2008: South Alabama – 26-6, 10-seed, Sun Belt
2010: Utah State – 27-7, 12-seed, WAC
2012: Iona – 25-7, 14-seed, MAAC
2013: Middle Tennessee – 28-5, 11-seed, Sun Belt
Butler itself and the CAA pop up on this list a few times, but given Butler’s history and the Colonial Athletic Association being much stronger just a few years ago but taking a major hit in the realignment process, the point remains: it’s incredibly hard for a mid-major to be given an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
With all of this, what Monmouth is doing, and hoping to do for the rest of the season, is incredibly important and hard to pull off.
Just ask Murray State how hard it is to get the at-large bid. After not losing a game from Nov. 29, 2014, to March 6, 2015, a one-point loss in the Ohio Valley Conference tournament championship game kept the Racers out of the NCAA field, being forced to settle for a third seed in the NIT.
However, the one thing that kept Murray State out of last year’s tournament is a strength for Monmouth. The Racers didn’t really have any wins that could wow the tournament selection committee. The Hawks have plenty of those.
After Monday’s win over Manhattan, Monmouth is 22-5 overall and is 14-2 in Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference play. But while what they do during the rest of conference play is important, it’s the wins the Hawks earned from November and December that will set them apart.
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Wins over UCLA, USC, Georgetown, Notre Dame and Rutgers (I know, but it’s noteworthy) have Monmouth thinking about the possibility of at-large bid.
Currently, Monmouth has an RPI ranking of 36, ahead of teams projected as firmly in the field such as Indiana and Providence. They’re 7-2 against teams in the top 100 of the RPI and have better non-conference wins than LSU, Vanderbilt and Colorado.
Of course, the entire season is looked at for NCAA tournament consideration, so losing to Canisius, Manhattan and Army does hurt them a bit. Overall, though, Monmouth has some good arguments for an at-large bid should they fail to win the MAAC tournament championship.
Monmouth’s profile isn’t just important to the Hawks, though. How they do the rest of the way impacts every single team on the bubble as well.
Should Monmouth continue to win games — losing multiple games seems unlikely at this point — they’ll continue to make the bubble game really interesting.
Here’s how the situation plays out: if the Hawks keep winning and win the MAAC tournament, then everything stays the same. Teams on the bubble like Wisconsin, Washington and Butler will then be compared against each other, as per usual.
But if the Hawks keep winning and lose at some point in the conference tournament, they’ll then be thrown into the at-large bid protocol. They’ll be compared to those teams on the bubble. The first step of that process will be deciding whether or not they should be considered for an at-large bid.
Considering their wins against major conference teams, four of which are at least in the NCAA tournament discussion (sorry, Rutgers), they have more to offer than some of the power conference teams also trying to sneak their way into the field.
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Pitting yourself, a mid-major, against a plethora of major conference teams isn’t a game you want to play, though. Monmouth would be much better off winning their conference tournament and controlling their own destiny.
They may be this year’s Murray State, but Monmouth has more going for it. Murray State played the game and left their fate into the hands of the tournament selection committee and lost. There’s no telling if the Hawks will lose that same game, but if they have to play the game, they have a better shot at winning than the Racers did.