I’m going to do my NCAA Tournament projections article a bit differently this week. Right now all we’re hearing about is “bubble teams”, “must-win games”, “good” and “bad” wins and losses, and “Judgment Week”. It’s all nonsense, really. And as you’ll see in a moment, right now the “bubble” is really just 11 teams fighting for six open at-large bids, with about five conferences, outside of the “major” leagues, sitting there with potential bid stealers and X-factors waiting for the conference tournaments to start.

This week I also want to point out what a farce that Joe Lunardi is. In my opinion he is the biggest tout and most overrated fraud in college basketball. I have nothing against the man, personally. He seems like a nice guy. But I have a big problem with the way that the sleaze at ESPN are pimping him as some sort of guru or Answer Man when it comes to the NCAA Tournament. In reality, predicting the field is nowhere near as difficult as it seems and most of the work is already done for you. (Again, we’ll get to this in a minute.)

However, Lunardi’s NCAA Tournament projections are, in my opinion, influencing the actual selection process. Whether it’s seeding or actual at-large teams, this guy’s NCAA Tournament projections are an example of “perception becoming reality”. ESPN is just trying to drive Web traffic to their site and they are doing so with his Bracketology tournament projections page. They are also just trying to hype up games on their networks. (That is why you hear anchors and commentators continually taking shots at the Atlantic 10. The A-10 has its games shown on CBS, not ESPN. So you’re not going to hear the ESPN crooks and bobbleheads giving a team like Richmond much discussion. And they will try to marginalize clubs like Dayton and Charlotte and they don’t want people searching out their games on another network. If you think that’s far-fetched, conspiracy talk you are amazingly naive and don’t know dick about ESPN.)

And to emphasize what a joke Lunardi’s NCAA Tournament projections are, as of Thursday night he actually had St. Mary’s, Rhode Island and UAB in the field and Connecticut out. I mean, how can anyone take a guy willing to say that seriously? The Huskies have wins over Villanova, West Virginia and Texas – all of which have spent considerable time in the Top 10 this year – and boast the No. 2 toughest schedule in the nation. They also have losses to Georgetown, Kentucky and Syracuse (more Top 10 teams) by a combined 11 points.

St. Mary’s? They beat Utah State. That’s it. That’s their best win. They lost to Vanderbilt, USC, Portland and Gonzaga twice. They have the No. 140 schedule and they are clinging to second place in the No. 13 conference in the nation. Anyone that could think that’s a more deserving resume than Connecticut is an idiot. Or they are just trying to rabble rouse. You tell me.

So pay no attention to Joe Lunardi or any of ESPN’s extraordinarily biased NCAA Tournament projections, be it online or on the airwaves. They are pimps and hustlers, and right now Lunardi has the biggest rack.

Instead, let’s take a look at the field as it lie. You’ll see that it’s actually a lot more clear-cut than you think. And that when you actually sit down and list out the teams you’re really just left with a few random teams fighting for the last handful of slots.

There are 65 teams in the NCAA Tournament field. There are 31 automatic bids and 34 at-large teams. Here is a look at the 25 teams that are absolute locks to make the NCAA Tournament, be it by winning their league’s automatic bid or via the at-large route. These are the teams that can’t be argued, even if they were to go in the tank and lose the rest of their games. These teams are 100 percent going to be in the Big Dance:

Locks (25):
Xavier (A-10)
Temple (A-10)
Duke (ACC)
Wake Forest (ACC)
Maryland (ACC)
Kansas (Big 12)
Texas (Big 12)
Kansas State (Big 12)
Villanova (Big East)
Syracuse (Big East)
Georgetown (Big East)
West Virginia (Big East)
Pittsburgh (Big East)
Michigan State (Big East)
Wisconsin (Big Ten)
Purdue (Big Ten)
Ohio State (Big Ten)
Illinois (Big Ten)
BYU (Mountain West)
New Mexico (Mountain West)
Kentucky (SEC)
Vanderbilt (SEC)
Tennessee (SEC)
Butler (Horizon)
Gonzaga (WCC)

Next, we have the teams that aren’t completely locks to make the NCAA Tournament, but are teams that I’m about 90-95 percent about. These teams are going to be in, not just based on what they have already accomplished but also how they have fared and what their resumes look like compared to the rest of the teams in the nation. These teams are in:

In (11):
Richmond (A-10)
Clemson (ACC)
Georgia Tech (ACC)
Baylor (Big 12)
Missouri (Big 12)
Texas A&M (Big 12)
Louisville (Big East)
Connecticut (Big East)
Northern Iowa (Missouri Valley)
Florida (SEC)
Utah State (WAC)

Alright, next we have the rest of the mid-major conferences and their automatic bids. There are 18 “other” conferences that I have tabbed as one-bid leagues. These are the leagues like the MAC and the Metro, the Ohio Valley and the Big West. Below is a look at these 20 conferences and some projections for who I think could earn the bid:

Automatic Bid Mid-Major Conferences (18):
America East (Stony Brook)
Atlantic Sun – (Jacksonville)
Big Sky – (Weber State)
Big South – (Coastal Carolina)
Big West – (Pacific)
Colonial – (VCU)
Ivy League – (Cornell)
Mid-American – (Kent State)
Metro – (Siena)
MEAC – (Morgan State)
Northeast – (Robert Morris)
Ohio Valley – (Murray State)
Patriot League – (Lafayette)
Southern – (Western Carolina)
Southland – (Sam Houston State)
SWAC – (Texas Southern)
Summit – (Oakland)
Sun Belt – (North Texas)

OK, so at this point we have 54 bids sown up. We have 25 teams that are locks, 11 teams that are in the field, and the 18 other automatic bid leagues. That leaves just 11 slots left for the NCAA Tournament. And those 11 slots are exactly what the bubble teams are fighting four.

(This is also why Lunardi is a clown and a tout. ESPN pimps him as an “expert” and they spout off how he has predicted some obnoxious percentage of the NCAA Tournament field and the at-large bids over the past decade. However, as you can see, without even trying – at all - we have nailed down 83 percent of the field. And by the Saturday before Selection Sunday we’ll know all but about five of the automatic bids. So it’s really not that difficult to get 64 out of 65 or 65 out of 65 teams.)

Next, there are five teams that I think are on the cusp of being in the tournament field. These are teams that really just have to avoid a total meltdown in order to march on to The Madness. These teams are bubble teams but they are, as we stand, in the field and I would call this the 80 percent group or the First Tier Bubble Teams:

First Tier Bubble Teams (5):
Florida State (ACC)
Virginia Tech (ACC)
Oklahoma State (Big 12)
Marquette (Big East)
UNLV (Mountain West)

That is now 59 teams that we have penciled in.

So by my estimation we have 16 teams that are fighting for the final six slots. Of that group, realistically, there are five teams that are long shots to earn a bid and will most likely end up in the NIT. And if we eliminate those teams then we’re looking at 11 teams fighting for six spots, so in reality all of the talk in the sporting world about “bubble teams” can really be reduced to these random teams.

Below is a look at the Bubble teams, as well as my projections as to who is going to end up in the field. I’d say that these projections are 50-50 at best. Those last six slots won’t be decided until the early evening of Selection Sunday. But for now here are some NCAA Tournament Projections to round out the field (listed in order of their likelihood to get an at-large bid):

Bubble Teams (11):
Charlotte (A-10) – IN
California (Pac-10) – IN
Mississippi State (SEC) - IN

UTEP (CUSA) - IN
Mississippi (SEC) - IN
Cincinnati (Big East) – IN

Dayton (A-10)
South Florida (Big East)
Northwestern (Big Ten)
UAB (CUSA)
Notre Dame (Big East)

Long Shot Bubble Teams (5):
Seton Hall (Big East)
Memphis (CUSA)
St. Mary’s (WCC)
Minnesota (Big 10)
Rhode Island (A-10)

Now, we need to go back to the list of Automatic Bid Mid-Major Conferences for a second. That list includes some conferences that could potentially “steal” a bid if the tournament favorite gets upset.

If any team from one of the “major” conferences that I haven’t already listed wins the conference tournament then they will “steal” a bid. For example, if a team like Arkansas were to go nuts and win the SEC Tournament they would steal a bid from one of the bubble teams. Also, if Northern Iowa, Utah State, Butler, or Gonzaga were to lose in their conference tournaments then they would be stealing a bid. (We saw this last year when Cleveland State upset Butler in the Horizon League. The year prior Georgia stole a bid by winning the SEC Tournament. And so on. It happens a couple times every year.)

Also, the Pac-10 is a mess. Cal is really the only true “bubble” team. If they win the conference tournament I can only see that league getting one bid. However, if another team were to take it down then there’s a good chance that league will get a pair of teams. But I can’t be sure of that. Cal is not guaranteed of anything.

So here is a look at the main conferences where there is the highest probability of a bid being stolen:

Potential Bid Stealing Conferences (5)
WAC (Utah State)
Missouri Valley (Northern Iowa)
Horizon (Butler)
West Coast (Gonzaga)
Pac-10 (Cal)

If any one of those five teams loses our Bubble Number will go down. But we’ll deal with that if and when it occurs. For the record, I’m projecting that three of those five conference tournaments will be won by teams other than those I listed. These five tournaments are where things get sticky. But there is clearly no way to predict what is going to go down in those leagues because it is, after all, Madness.