Nevada is a Top 25 team, and was set to be one of the higher-seeded mid-majors in the NCAA Tournament. The Wolf Pack lost tonight, which is horrible news for bubble teams.
Nevada entered tonight at 27-6, and was the prohibitive favorite in the MWC Tournament. The league is not as strong as it has always been, and Nevada was the only real team in tournament discussion.
Well, now the league’s automatic bid is going elsewhere. And Nevada is almost definitely good enough to make the field as an at-large.
San Diego State dropped Nevada in a big way, 90-73. As a result, the conference title comes down to either the Aztecs, or the winner of Utah State and New Mexico.
None of those team have an at-large resume at all. That is bad news for fans of schools like Syracuse, Louisville, Baylor, and Notre Dame.
Nevada's loss to San Diego State is bad news for other leagues. Nevada will get an at-large bid on Sunday, meaning MW will be a multiple-bid league and someone from another league will get left out because of it.
— J.P. Murrieta (@KOBSports) March 10, 2018
With an RPI of 14, Nevada is essentially an NCAA Tournament lock.
The Bracket Matrix compiles the latest brackets from numerous sources online. It is a pretty good sense of where the entire world of bracketologists have a team positioned.
Right now, the average seed line for Nevada is 6.76. The highest seed that a few bracketologists had Nevada at was five, while one person had the Wolf Pack as a 10.
All 107 have the program in the field. No other Mountain West team was mentioned before tonight’s upset.
Right now, the site has Baylor, Middle Tennessee, Syracuse, and Oklahoma State as the first four teams out. Marquette, Notre Dame, Mississippi State, and Nebraska are the next four.
Whichever team winds up being the first team out of the field can probably blame this Nevada loss. With the bubble field being huge this year, there are a lot of extremely nervous fans out there.