2024 NCAA Tournament Bracketology: Gonzaga sits on bubble ahead of WCC finale
The Gonzaga Bulldogs are playing with plenty of NCAA Tournament implications at stake as they head down the stretch of the West Coast Conference regular season.
Gonzaga (22-6, 12-2 WCC) is the last team in the 68-team field according to ESPN Bracketology expert Joe Lunardi. Similarly, CBS Sports' Jerry Palm has the Bulldogs in his "Last 4 In" group while Mike DeCourcy of Fox Sports has them as a No. 10 seed.
Advanced metrics are much higher on the Bulldogs, as they're in the top 25 of the NET (21st), KenPom (20th), Bart Torvik (21st) and Haslametrics (17th). Torvik's predictive algorithm gives Gonzaga a 95.5% chance to qualify for the NCAA Tournament, but only a 35.5% to win the WCC Tournament championship.
It wasn't long ago that some prognosticators had Gonzaga out of the postseason picture entirely, but amid its six-game winning streak with two ample opportunities to boost its at-large resume before conference tournament week, there's still a path for the program to earn its 25th-straight NCAA Tournament appearance.
The Bulldogs end the West Coast Conference regular season with Quad 1 opportunities at San Francisco and at Saint Mary's. A pair of victories in the Bay Area would make Gonzaga 3-5 in Q1 games (5-6 combined with its Quad 2 record), likely resulting in a slight bump up from where it currently stands at No. 21 in the NET Rankings.
Based on the predictive outlooks from the metrics and human polls, as well as the history of the NET, the odds that Mark Few's team is going dancing in March are favorable. Since the 2018-19 season when the NET was introduced, no team ranked in the metric's top 25 has been left out of the NCAA Tournament. But those odds can sway the wrong way if the Gaels or Dons come out victorious over the Bulldogs this week, in which the path essential to the postseason is limited to the automatic bid through a WCC Tournament championship.
A little help from other teams "on the bubble" would do Gonzaga well.
Seton Hall in the Big East is a common bubble team between Lunardi and Palm. The Pirates (18-9, 11-5 Big East) sit in third place in the league standings heading into a pivotal battle with Creighton on Wednesday night. Yet despite five Quad 1 wins and an 8-7 record in the first two quadrants, Seton Hall is 61st in the NET (San Francisco is 56th by comparison) and are still fighting for its NCAA Tournament aspirations.
Staying in the Big East, Providence (18-9, 9-7 Big East) can earn some looks from the Selection Committee based on its regular season resume. The Friars, who have played without star forward Bryce Hopkins (ACL) since early January, are still in the hunt with eight combined Q1 and Q2 wins. They'll have three prime opportunities against Marquette, Villanova and UConn before the Big East Tournament.
Elsewhere, Virginia has bounced around the bubble over the last two weeks. The Cavaliers (20-8, 11-6 ACC) have lost three of their last four games while failing to score 50 points in three straight contests. Sitting third in the ACC and 47th in the NET, Virginia's resume includes a combined six Q1 and Q2 wins without a loss in the other two quadrants.
Wake Forest nearly undid all the good it made happen with an upset over Duke after it lost to Georgia Tech two days later. Gonzaga transfer Hunter Sallis has the Demon Deacons (18-10, 10-7 ACC) vying for a spot in the field as the 27th team ranked in the NET. The 6-foot-5 junior is averaging 18.3 points (fifth in the ACC) on 50.4% shooting from the floor (also fifth).
Gonzaga is also keeping tabs on its three Pac-12 opponents from earlier this season. The 89-76 win over USC in Las Vegas has a chance to improve from a Q3 win to a Q2 win if the Trojans can sneak into the top 100 of the NET (currently at 101st). USC has three Q1 games left before the Pac-12 Tournament to improve its standing — at Washington State (Thursday), at Washington (March 2) and home against Arizona (March 9).
Speaking of the Huskies, they are just inside the top 75 of the NET to qualify as a Q1 game for Gonzaga. Washington ends the regular season at home against UCLA and USC followed by the Apple Cup at Washington State.
