NCAA Tournament 2015: Bubble Teams Playing Their Way out of Field

Although teams currently on the NCAA tournament bubble have a few more weeks to prove themselves, a few squads are headed in the wrong direction.

This is the time of year where college basketball programs are put under a microscope to see if they are truly worthy of a bid to the Big Dance. For teams with questionable profiles, the last thing you want to do is pile on more losses and open yourself to increased scrutiny.

These squads all could be in the NCAA tournament if the year ended today, but some poor play as of late might cause them to be on the outside looking in.

Texas

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Even though Texas has a promising roster with a number of close losses, you can't consider this a tournament team without it actually winning.

The Longhorns are just 1-10 against the top 50 teams in the RPI, with the only win coming against West Virginia over a month ago. The only other victory against a potential tournament team came against Iowa on Nov. 20.

Sure, you can complain about the toughness of the Big 12, but three losses in a row and a 3-7 record in the last 10 games is not up to par for this team. Unsurprisingly, head coach Rick Barnes is forced to answer questions about being on the hot seat.

"I am not going to allow myself to change the way I do things based on other people’s opinions,” Barnes recently explained, via Mac Engel of the Star-Telegram. “When my time is up here, God has a plan for me. I’m going to do my job one day at a time."

Texas still has a chance to turn things around, but the next few games won't be easy, with a road game at Kansas and home against Baylor. If this group can't pull out some wins, it will be looking at the NIT.

Stanford

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Like Texas, Stanford has struggled earning wins against the top teams in the nation. In fact, the squad's best win all season came against the Longhorns.

To make matters worse, the Pac-12 lacks tons of opportunities for quality wins. Losses against Arizona, Utah and two against UCLA, even though they were close, ruined those chances for the Cardinal.

Add this to a stretch of four losses in the past six games, and Stanford is running out of time to make a positive impression to the committee.

The final four games feature just one chance for a standout win, but this will obviously be difficult on the road against Arizona on March 7. Otherwise, the squad simply has to just stay above water and win the games it should against Oregon State, Oregon and Arizona State.

With another loss or two in this stretch, it won't even matter what happens against the Wildcats.

Temple

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After a stretch of seven wins in a row, it seemed Temple was ready to punch its ticket to the NCAA tournament. The squad has an extremely impressive 25-point win over Kansas from earlier in the season to go with some solid wins within the American Athletic Conference.

Unfortunately, things started to go south over the past week, with losses to SMU and Tulsa.

Chase Senior of Temple TV gave his opinion on the two-game stretch:

The losses themselves were understandable, as those remain the two best teams in the AAC. Still, this was a chance for the Owls to prove they deserved to be considered among the top squads in the conference. They failed to do that in a pair of games where they only averaged 48.5 points per game.

Temple has a solid defense and can beat plenty of tournament teams. However, it hasn't done a great job of showing it, and it won't have many more chances to do so.

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