bid stealers

Thieves can leave you heart-broken. They can steal something from you that was rightfully yours and was something you worked hard to get. This applies to people all over the world, including college basketball teams during March Madness. There are a lot of border-line or bubble teams that need everything to go the right way for them to get in the NCAA tourney. You can receive an automatic bid by winning your conference tournament. Unfortunately, some bubble teams don’t quite win their tournaments and therefore root for the favorites of the other tournaments. This is so because those favorites are already good enough to be guaranteed a spot in the tourney in most cases. If they lose to a different bubble team, and that bubble team secures a bid with a conference tournament title, they potentially eliminate a spot for another border-line team that thought they were getting in. Or as some would say, stealing a spot from another team. Southern California was thought of as one of the teams that would just miss out on the tourney. But they stole a bid from a bubble team when upset Arizona State in the Pac-10 final. LSU was thought of as a clear favorite in the SEC and possibly the only team from the conference to go dancing in the NCAA tourney. But what do you know, they lost in the SEC semifinals to Mississippi State. By winning the SEC title game as well, MSU will steal another bid away from an already stressed and anxious bubble team while LSU will still have a decent seed. Butler stayed in the top 25 most of the year and secured their bid a long time ago. So some more bubble teams were crying when Cleveland State knocked Butler off in the Horizon League championship game to steal yet another spot in the Big Dance. Border-line squads like Arizona and Penn State are two teams in particular who were hurt by these bid thieves. They were both considered just out of the tournament and they both needed a lot of help and a lot of things to go their way. With these three bids gone, Arizona’s streak of 24 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances will likely come to an end, and Penn State probably won’t become the 8th Big Ten school in the tourney. But hey, anything can happen on Selection Sunday, dreams will become reality, and hearts will be broken by the sneaky and shocking bid stealers.