NCAA Bracketology: Buy or sell mid-major bubble teams in 2019
By TJ Miller
What mid-major teams should you buy or sell as at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament? It’s still early, but here are five teams currently sitting on the fence in Bracketology.
The safest way for quality mid-major teams to make the NCAA Tournament is obviously to win its respective conference tournament. But, every year we see a handful of conference champions go down during champ week, leaving their fate up in the air. While the selection committee has typically been reluctant to award at-large bids to mid-majors bubble teams, it does happen even if rare.
There’s certainly some added intrigue in terms of this year’s bubble, namely will there be a greater weight placed on the NCAA’s new NET Ratings than the previous RPI? This would be good news as the NET appears to generally favor the mid-major above its predecessor. At the end of the day, avoiding bad losses and scoring as many road wins as possible is just about all mid-major teams can do at this stage of the season.
Here, we will look at which mid-major bubble teams are worth buying and which you should sell. “Buy” means I forecast that particular team would be given an at-large bid should it not receive an automatic berth. “Sell” means I inevitably see the team left out of the Big Dance.
Related Story. Top mid-major performers of the week. light
Note that despite its recent loss to Bowling Green, I still am considering Buffalo as safely in the field so you won’t find them here. Nor did I include the American or A-10 as mid-major teams in this piece. With that in mind, let’s get started!
*All records and ratings updated to include all games through February 3rd