Bracketology 2020: Duke, Texas Tech and Utah State among biggest losers

Utah State (21-8, 12-6 MW)

The Aggies had one job. With the rest of the bubble seemingly caving in around them, Utah State had a favorable final stretch in Mountain West play, facing bottom-half teams in each of their last three league games. They had little trouble in the first two games, coasting past Wyoming and San Jose State by a combined 58 points.

That just left the regular season finale, a treacherous trip to The Pit to face a New Mexico team that has experienced a great deal of tumult throughout the season. Despite all the troubles facing Paul Weir’s team, the Lobos showed up on Senior Night and dealt a potentially fatal blow to Utah State’s at-large hopes.

The loss could not have come at a worse time for Utah State. While they will still enter the Mountain West Tournament as the league’s #2 seed, they are in serious danger of missing the NCAA Tournament if they don’t win the whole she-bang. The loss to the Lobos counts as a Quadrant 3 loss, which is especially unfortunate because an earlier loss to UNLV had only recently graduated into Quadrant 2.

Now, the Aggies proceed with two ugly losses on their resume–they also lost to Air Force on the road back in early January–as they try to make their case to the selection committee that they are one of the nation’s 36 best at-large teams. They do have a couple good wins over tourney-bound SEC opponents in LSU and Florida, but that’s pretty much it as far as marquee wins go. So Utah State was really relying on having a somewhat-clean bottom half of their team sheet.

It’s hard to know exactly where Utah State is right now. They are the very essence of a mid-major bubble team. They are likely going to be in either the Last Four In or the First Four Out of many brackets this week. Unless they win the Mountain West Tournament, that is exactly where they will stay all the way until Selection Sunday.