Joe Lunardi, the expert on bracketology–I think he’s gotten over 95% of his predictions for the field of 65 right over the years– has Ms. State in and Notre Dame out. He also has the Blazers in.
I agree with his prediction on State to a point. I think State is a fine basketball team, but as Jay Bilas pointed out last night on ESPN’s Gameday, State is 1-4 against RPI top 50 teams. Not good for the resume. Notre Dame has had some real quality victories lately over Pitt at home and at Gtown.
UAB still has work left. If they can beat Memphis at home Wednesday and then UTEP on the road (very tall order) Sat, they’ll look better. But I still think they’ll need to win a couple of games in the C-USA tourney. They had a good win yesterday albeit over a very weak Tulane team. But they did play a lot better.
In other words, all three of those teams have work left along with UConn. I think all four are pretty quality teams even the Blazers if they can find their shooting touch. They could all make it in, but there is plenty of work left for all four. I think all four need to at least go two or three rounds in the conference tourneys and it would help if all four won their last two games. If they don’t the tourneys are critical.