Where San Diego State stands on the NCAA Tournament bubble with four games remaining
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A season that opened with high expectations began to bog down early on for the San Diego State Aztecs, who are fighting for their NCAA Tournament lives with just four games left in the regular season.
The Aztecs were the unanimous preseason choice to win the regular-season title in their last year in the Mountain West before heading off to the new-look Pac-12. And why not, since guard Miles Byrd and 7-footer Magoon Gwath announced in the spring that they were withdrawing from the NBA Draft to return to Montezuma Mesa and bolster the roster for another swing at March Madness.
Additionally, guard Reese Dixon-Waters was coming back from a foot injury that sidelined him all of last year.
Hello, sixth straight NCAA Tournament bid.
Not so fast, it turns out.
The first sign of trouble came just three games in, when the Aztecs dropped a 108-107 double-overtime decision at home to Troy, a Quad 3 loss.
Then came blowout losses to the two marquee teams on their schedule, Michigan and Arizona.
The Aztecs rebounded by winning seven straight games and looked like a solid at-large team. Then they lost at Grand Canyon and Utah State in a span of four games, and just like that, they were on the bubble.
As it stands with four games left, the bubble is close to popping, if it hasn’t already, and their best bet is to win the conference tournament and claim the MW’s automatic berth.
Where San Diego State stands in the NCAA Tournament picture
Whether they’re listed in the First Four Out or Moved Out or just simply on the bubble, they’re not currently projected to be in the Field of 68, especially after last week’s brutal performances: A 10-point home loss to Grand Canyon and a nine-point road loss to eighth-place Colorado State.
ESPN bracket expert Joe Lunardi has been calling the Aztecs “the bubbliest of bubble teams” for a few weeks now, and says their consensus at-large chances have dropped from 65% to just 27%, and they’ve slipped outside the top 50 nationally in the résumé ranking to No. 58.
Lunardi still has them in his First Four Out, at No. 72.
The numbers behind San Diego State’s résumé
The Aztecs are ranked No. 44 in the NCAA NET Rankings, which are used by the Tournament Selection Committee as the primary sorting tool for selection and seeding for March Madness. That’s up from No. 66 on Jan. 12, but they have largely flat-lined all of February.
The Aztecs are No. 45 in KenPom. By comparison, Utah State is No. 23 in KenPom and No. 24 in NCAA NET Rankings.
SDSU is a brutal 1-5 in Quad 1 games. They lost on neutral courts to Michigan, Baylor and Arizona, and in road games at Grand Canyon and Utah State. Their only Quad 1 win was at Nevada.
They were 5-0 in Quad 2 games until the consecutive losses to Grand Canyon and Colorado State. Troy is No. 141 in NCAA NET, and that Quad 3 loss has been hanging over the Aztecs’ heads all season.
Up next
The Aztecs (18-8, 12-4) have three straight Quad 1 opportunities, starting Wednesday night at home against Utah State (23-4, 13-3). But the next two are on the road, at New Mexico and Boise State, where the Aztecs have struggled in past seasons.
They close the regular season with a home Quad 3 game against UNLV.
After that, the only guarantee for the Aztecs would be to make a three-game run through the MW tourney.
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-bd678ba4dbad4f453246f539ee56a3b4.jpg "Bernie Wilson")
Bernie Wilson recently retired from The Associated Press after nearly 41 years, including stops in Spokane, Los Angeles and, for the final 33 years, San Diego. He grew up in Coeur d'Alene and graduated from the University of Idaho.