It's hard to believe, but the start of March is only three days away and the madness will soon be upon us. The Huskies are a lock for the NCAA tournament, that much is certain. However, that's about all we know right now. There are three games left before the Big East tournament, and the Huskies position for both tournaments is very much in flux. With all of the relevant Big East games in the books for today, this is a good time to take a look at what thus Huskies need to do, and need done for them, in the last week of the season.
The key thing at this point is conference positioning. If the Huskies finish well and make some noise in the Big East Touranment, I think they'll be comfortably looking at a four or five seed. If they keep playing like they have been (i.e. poorly), that number could slip to a six or seven, and maybe even lower.
In terms of conference positioning, only five of the 16 Big East teams matter to the Huskies. Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, St. John's, Louisville and Syracuse are all far enough ahead that barring a freak occurrence, the Huskies will not catch them. Conversely, Seton Hall, Rutgers, Providence, South Florida and DePaul are so far back we do not need to worry about them. That leaves us with standings that look like this:
6. Cincinnati 9-6
7. Georgetown 10-7
8. Villanova 9-7
9. Marquette 8-7
10. UConn 8-7
11. West Virginia 8-7
The top eight seeds all receive a bye into the second-round of the BET, so finishing in the top 3 of that group is crucial. Hit the jump to find out UConn's prospects:
The first thing you need to know is that you need to be rooting against Villanova , who UConn owns a tiebreaker against. Luckily for the Huskies, Villanova is in an absolute downward spiral. The Wildcats have lost four of their last six (the two wins came against Seton Hall and DePaul) and have a brutal final two games: at Notre Dame and at Pittsburgh, with both schools welcoming Nova for their senior day. If Villanova drops their last two games, which seems probable, it's great for the Huskies.
No matter what UConn does, the real key is that they basically control their own destiny because they still have matchups with Cincinnati and West Virginia. Of course, the bad news is that controlling your own destiny doesn't mean much when you've been playing like crap (the more I stare at these standings, the more upset I am we lost to Marquette -- that was killer). The game that will go the farthest to determining their fate is tomorrow's matchup at Cincinnati. Here's what the standings will look like with either a Husky win or loss. For this exercise, I'm assuming Marquette will take care of Providence at home and West Virginia will beat Rutgers, both are likely results, though an upset by either underdog would help UConn a lot.
With a win:
6. Georgetown 10-7
7. Marquette 9-7
8. UConn 9-7
9. Cincinnati 9-7
10. Villanova 9-7
11. West Virginia 9-7
With a loss:
6. Cincinnati 10-6
7. Georgetown 10-7
8. Villanova 9-7
9. Marquette 9-7
10. West Virginia 9-7
11. UConn 8-8
So yeah, a win tomorrow is big. It'd guarantee a .500 conference record (something that is important with a road trip to WVU and final matchup with Notre Dame to end the season). Plus it would give the Huskies a tiebreaker over 3 of the 5 teams they're fighting against, with a chance to earn a 4th at WVU (the Marquette split means figuring a tiebreaker between the two is a nightmare). This is doubly important because multiple-team ties go to a mini-conference to be broken.
On the flip side, a loss means the Huskies would probably need to win out (unlikely) to even have a shot at the bye.
Just for reference purposes, if the Huskies did win out, they'd be guaranteed to finish in the Top 8. If they go 2-1, they have a really good shot at the bye, especially if those two wins come against Cincinnati and West Virginia. They could still back into a bye by going 1-2, but that one win would have to come tomorrow, and then the Huskies would need a Chris Wright-less Georgetown team to travel to Cinncinati and beat a Bearcats team that held them to 46 points earlier this week. Going winless means UConn will be playing on Tuesday, though the plus-side of that will be watching the boneyard melt down (especially when Providence beats us in the BET).
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