Cal Sports Report

Is Cal an NCAA Tournament Team? Some Say Yes, Some Say No

Tonight's home game against No. 16 Louisville might provide answers about Cal. Injury report is posted here
Jake Curtis|
Cal forward Chris Bell
Cal forward Chris Bell | D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images

Cal’s ACC opener tonight (Tuesday) against No. 16 Louisville at Haas Pavilion should provide a better idea of whether the Golden Bears are an NCAA tournament team, because the top NCAA tournament projections at the moment have Cal right on the cusp.

Cal is 12-1 and on a nine-game winning streak, and some projections have the Bears barely in the 68-team field, and some have the Bears barely out. (An injury report for Tuesday's game is posted at the end of this article.)

Joe Lunardi posted his latest Bracketology projections on this morning (Tuesday), and he has Cal as one of the First Four Out, putting the Bears just outside the field. It’s the same precarious position he had Cal in a week ago.

Lunardi's ACC preview posted Tuesday, he lists three teams as Final Four contenders (Duke, North Carolina, Louisville), five others as likely NCAA tournament teams, and three others -- Cal, Stanford and Wake Forest -- as possible NCAA tournament teams, with this comment:

The West Coast additions are both ahead of schedule in their second ACC season. This year, they also host Duke and Carolina for the first time in league play, which should make for an interesting road swing for the conference's traditional powers.

However, Bleacher Report projections posted Monday have Cal as the very last team in the field. Cal is seeded 11th in that projection and is paired with 11th-seeded Indiana in a preliminary-round First Four game.

The constantly updated Bracketologists website places its top 46 NCAA tournament-worthy teams in its projected field, leaving room for the automatic berths. Cal is the first team under the cutoff line, at No. 47.

The latest On3 NCAA tournament projections posted last Wednesday have Cal in the tournament as one of the Last Four In, and has the Bears seeded No. 11 and facing No. 11 Butler in a First Four game.

One site is particularly optimistic about Cal, setting it apart from the others. Mike DeCourcy of Fox Sports has Cal in the field as a No. 8 seed on Tuesday morning.

The final projection we’ll cite is the TeamRankings website, which claims to use a number of computer simulations to project the final tournament field. Unlike the other projections, this site does not project the field based on teams’ current standing. It attempts to project where the teams will finish the season based on its remaining schedule and other factors.

Based on that information, it predicts that Cal will finish with a 20-11 record, which sounds pretty good, but it gives the Bears only a 6% chance of making the 68-team field.

One thing in Cal’s favor is that the ACC is seen as a stronger basketball conference this season. Wins in conference play should count more in the selection committee’s mind and losses should hurt less.

Virtually all the projections have eight ACC teams in the NCAA tournament at the moment – Duke, Louisville, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia, SMU and Miami.  Cal plays all those teams except North Carolina State this season.

Lunardi places Virginia Tech in the Next Four Out category, so the Hokies are just barely out too. And Stanford, which hosts Notre Dame tonight (Tuesday), is 11-2, so the Cardinal is in the conversation as well.

Stanford and Georgia Tech are the only teams Cal plays twice this season.

It’s still early in the season, and conference play is just beginning, so very little has been settled. But Cal’s opener against Louisville will provide some insight into whether Cal can consider itself an NCAA tournament team.

Here is an injury report for Tuesday's game, indicating Justin Pippen and Nolan Dorsey are likely to play, but Rytis Petraitis and DeJuan Campbell are not. Louisville star freshman Mikel Brown will probably play.

Cal-Louisville injury report
Cal-Louisville injury report | ACC website

It will be interesting to see how many people show up for Tuesday's game against nationally ranked Louisville. The Bears are averaging 2,646 in home attendance this season.

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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