Busting Brackets
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Bracketology 2020: Villanova, Michigan State among this week’s losers

By Andrew Dieckhoff

PHILADELPHIA, PA - DECEMBER 21: Head coach Jay Wright of the Villanova Wildcats reacts against the Kansas Jayhawks in the first half at the Wells Fargo Center on December 21, 2019 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
PHILADELPHIA, PA - DECEMBER 21: Head coach Jay Wright of the Villanova Wildcats reacts against the Kansas Jayhawks in the first half at the Wells Fargo Center on December 21, 2019 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images) /
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BATON ROUGE , LOUISIANA – FEBRUARY 26: Head coach Will Wade of the LSU Tigers . (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)
BATON ROUGE , LOUISIANA – FEBRUARY 26: Head coach Will Wade of the LSU Tigers . (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images) /

LSU Tigers (17-6, 8-2 SEC)

Will Wade’s club came into the week with a clear goal for this two-game road trip: take care of business during the middle of the week against Vanderbilt, and then go knock off Auburn at their house. If they could do those things, LSU likely would enter Monday as the top team in the SEC.

Instead, they did neither.

The Tigers may have been overlooking Vanderbilt heading into their trip to Nashville on Wednesday; their upcoming game against Auburn was surely somewhere in the back of everybody’s minds. But like a bolt from the blue, first-year head coach Jerry Stackhouse guided the Commodores to their first SEC win since 2018, dropping a cool 99 points in the process.

This wasn’t just a head-scratching result. This was a Quadrant 3 loss that is likely to stay on the books for the remainder of the season. That’s not exactly the kind of data you want to feed into the machine at this late juncture.

But it looked like the Tigers were turning things back around after their embarrassment in Nashville, as they opened up a 14-point lead during the first half and were able to keep the lead as large as eleven points after the under-8 media timeout.

A late surge from Auburn forced overtime and a J’von McCormick buzzer-beater put LSU away for good. Redemption—and the inside track on top seeding in the SEC Tournament—had slipped right through the fingers of the purple and gold.

The Auburn game was only the second Q1A opportunity for LSU this season, along with an early November loss to Wade’s former post, VCU. The Tigers do boast three Q1B wins over Rhode Island, Texas, and Tennessee, but of the three, only the Rams seem bound for the NCAA Tournament.

LSU’s resume is bereft of quality wins, so missing out on a big one really hurt—especially when it was rightthere for the taking. Add to that an inexplicable loss to a previously winless Vanderbilt team, and you have the makings of a pretty terrible week.

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