The Syracuse Orange men’s basketball team beat Pittsburgh on Wednesday night, thus recording the most important result with regard to their NCAA Tournament hopes for this year. The victory gave them 20 on the year, avoided a “bad” loss and pretty much locked up a bid given what the bubble below them looks like.
Rather than look at results around the country through the lens of the bubble, I’m comfortable looking at them just in terms of what could potentially affect the Orange’s seeding, be that positive or negative. Obviously if Syracuse manages to upset Duke on Thursday night, we’re having an entirely different conversation come Friday morning.
So here are the results from Wednesday night that could have some sort of impact on where SU winds up in the field:
NC State 59, Clemson 58
The Pack got by Clemson, fair or not, and as a result, the Tigers’ bubble has probably burst. State potentially just got themselves safely in. If they pull off an upset over Virginia, they’ll be contending with Syracuse a bit more.
Louisville 75, Notre Dame 53
The Cards keep pace around a similar seed line to Syracuse and also keep the Orange’s win over them looking good. Louisville’s in, same as Syracuse. But they could be jockeying for similar position if neither scores an upset tonight.
TCU 73, Oklahoma State 70
The Frogs kept themselves alive to maybe play into a better seed via the muddled Big 12 Tournament picture. For now, they’ll remain below SU.
Colgate 84, Bucknell 80
The Raiders win the Patriot League, and that means Syracuse has another win over a team in the NCAA Tournament field. That probably doesn’t matter much to the committee. That’s fine.
St. John’s 82, DePaul 74
A recent losing streak put the Red Storm’s hopes in doubt, but this probably righted the ship enough to put them in barring some chaos this week. They’re another win away from getting into similar conversations to SU.
West Virginia 72, Oklahoma 71
OU couldn’t really afford a bad loss with a 7-11 Big 12 record coming in. This should secure a better seed for the Orange than the Sooners can attain as Oklahoma probably drifts down to the 10/11 range now.
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So a positive night for the Orange, for sure, as OU gets out of the way and obviously SU picks up their own win. Quite a bit more on tap for Thursday, however, as a lot more teams in similar seed ranges will be in action with changes to move up/down the bracket.