Examining the Bubble

As the basketball season winds down there will be more talk about who is on the "bubble" and who is not.  It's fairly obvious which teams won't be sweating bullets on Selection Sunday; teams who win their respective conference tournaments, teams who are ranked in the top 25 polls, and teams that are awful  can go ahead and DVR the CBS special.
With the exception of the conference tournament winners, teams in the other two categories probably have a pretty good idea of who they are.  Everyone else is on the bubble.  I began listing bubble teams to see how they stack up against one another and to see just how many there are to choose from.  I looked at a variety of categories including each school's record on road and neutral floors, their conference record and RPI, and their record against top competition.  Below are the thirty six teams I listed and how I've ranked them.

School	Record	Conf Record	Road/ Netural	Non Conf SOS	vs RPI      top 50	vs RPI      top 100	Conf. RPI	RPI
UNLV	20-7	8-5	9-4	51	4-4	7-5	7	44
Florida St.	19-7	7-5	7-5	47	3-5	6-6	3	40
Clemson	19-7	7-5	6-5	32	3-5	7-6	3	35
OK St.	19-7	7-5	6-6	139	4-5	4-6	1	29
Louisville	18-10	9-7	4-6	23	2-6	6-9	2	30
VA Tech	21-5	8-4	7-5	98	2-3	6-5	3	45
Florida	19-8	8-4	7-5	156	2-6	6-7	4	54
California	18-9	10-5	5-8	1	0-4	5-7	8	23
GA Tech	18-9	6-7	5-8	113	4-6	8-8	3	31
UAB	21-5	9-3	10-3	97	1-0	6-4	11	33
Marquette	17-9	8-6	5-6	206	3-7	5-7	2	59
ODU	21-8	14-3	7-8	41	3-4	6-7	12	42
Uconn	17-11	7-8	3-8	6	4-6	9-9	2	41
Illinois	18-10	10-5	6-8	132	4-6	6-8	5	71
URI	20-6	8-5	9-4	28	2-4	4-6	6	27
Dayton	18-8	7-5	5-7	18	3-5	5-7	6	43
Cornell	23-4	9-1	14-3	65	0-2	3-3	21	49
St. Mary's	22-5	9-3	10-2	34	2-3	5-5	7	47
Utah St.	22-6	11-2	7-5	76	2-1	8-4	10	36
Miss St.	19-8	7-5	8-6	236	1-3	5-4	4	64
SDSU	20-7	9-4	7-6	58	2-4	4-5	7	39
Neastern	18-10	13-3	9-7	9	2-4	6-5	12	69
Charlotte	18-8	8-4	9-5	163	3-7	4-8	6	55
Memphis	20-7	10-2	6-4	74	1-4	4-5	11	62
Cincinnati	15-11	6-8	4-8	58	4-6	6-11	2	56
Bill & Mary	19-8	11-5	9-6	38	3-3	5-6	12	46
Wichita St.	22-7	11-5	6-7	297	2-3	7-4	9	50
Siena	22-6	15-1	9-6	101	0-4	3-5	15	37
Miss.	17-9	5-7	7-5	137	1-5	4-8	4	63
Seton Hall	15-10	7-8	3-7	149	3-9	6-10	2	52
St. Louis	18-8	9-3	4-7	221	3-1	4-5	6	82
Minnesota	16-10	7-7	3-8	86	3-5	4-8	5	77
Notre Dame	17-10	6-8	2-7	192	1-4	5-8	2	81
Washington	18-9	8-7	1-7	42	2-3	6-7	8	61
Arizona St.	13-13	9-5	5-5	69	1-4	4-7	8	57
LA Tech	21-6	8-4	11-5	310	1-2	4-5	10	65

Thirty one conferences receive an automatic bid and another eighteen to twenty can consider themselves locks leaving fifteen or sixteen available spots.  A few schools I've listed like Cornell and Siena can be expected to gain an automatic bid by winning their conference tournament, but in case they don't they shouldn't assume they're safe.  It's impossible to say just how many of these teams will be able jump off the bubble and into the field of 65 or how many upsets will occur in conference tournaments causing the bubble to shrink.  One thing is for certain, though, if you're sitting at the Old Dominion line or below you have work to do.