NCAA Brackets 2015: Predicting Top Bubble Teams on Selection Sunday

The bubble watch is either the best or worst part of Selection Sunday, depending on your perspective.

For neutral observers, it's a lot of fun trying to get into the minds of the selection committee as they weigh the merits of each school trying to snag at at-large bid.

For fans with an emotional investment, it can be nerve-wracking waiting to see whether their favorite school gets into the field of 68.

The three schools below are all firmly on the bubble, and their fortunes could easily go either way today.

Colorado State Rams

Isaac Brekken/Associated Press

Wyoming winning the Mountain West title game really throws things out of whack in the conference, and the battle between Colorado State and Boise State for an at-large bid gets a whole lot more interesting.

The Broncos won the regular-season Mountain West title and own two wins over San Diego State. On the other hand, they also have losses to Fresno State, Utah State and Loyola (Chicago), which are pretty bad.

Colorado State didn't do as well inside the Mountain West, but when you compare the resumes of it and Boise State, the Rams gain a clear edge.

	Boise State	Colorado State
Record	23-8 (14-4 MW)	26-6 (13-5 MW)
RPI	44	28
Non-Conference W-L	9-4	13-1
Non-Conference SOS	174	77
Non-Conference RPI	76	31
vs. RPI Top 25	0-1	0-0
vs. RPI Top 50	3-3	2-3
vs. RPI Top 100	4-5	5-5
vs. RPI Top 150	8-7	10-5
vs. RPI 150 and Below	15-1	16-1

A regular-season title only goes so far. If it was truly valuable, the NCAA would award the champions an automatic berth in the Big Dance instead of the National Invitation Tournament. The Rams finished just a game behind Boise State and split the regular-season series.

The RPI is by no means the perfect measurement of a team's strength, but it can help to compare head-to-head resumes like in the above example.

Both the Rams' and Broncos' tournament fates are hanging by threads at the moment, and Colorado State should narrowly edge out its Mountain West counterpart.

LSU Tigers

USA TODAY Sports

Normally, you'd see a team like LSU punished for getting knocked out of its conference tournament by a 15-19 team. The Tigers were on the bubble entering the SEC tournament, and they remain there after exiting in the quarterfinals.

As Scott Rabalais of The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, posited, the Tigers can't point the finger at anybody else if they're on the outside looking in on Selection Sunday:

With that said, LSU will really benefit from Ole Miss' and Texas A&M's losses in the second round. The Rebels and Aggies could've jumped ahead of the Tigers but instead fell flat on their faces.

When examining LSU's resume, the selection committee will obviously look at the defeats to Auburn, Missouri, Clemson and Mississippi State. What will probably stick out the most, though, are the Tigers' two road wins over West Virginia and Arkansas.

When they're at their best, the Tigers can be a dangerous team. ESPN's Andy Katz thinks they could go as far as the Sweet 16 should they make the Big Dance:

As they headed to Nashville, LSU trended toward the positive end of the bubble spectrum, and that shouldn't change with so many teams around it losing this weekend.

BYU Cougars

Young Kwak/Associated Press

In all likelihood, getting to the West Coast Conference final was all BYU needed to secure a place in the NCAA tournament. Beating Gonzaga would've been nice, but the selection committee won't hold a defeat to the Bulldogs against the Cougars.

"That's not my job to decide that," said guard Kyle Collinsworth when asked whether BYU is a tournament team, per Jeff Call of Deseret News in Salt Lake City. "We're going to keep working hard and let those people take care of that and see what happens. We've had a great run this last stretch and we're playing the best basketball we've played all year."

ESPN's Joe Lunardi didn't sour on BYU after Tuesday's game, listing the team as one of his "Last Four In":

"

Despite the loss to Gonzaga, BYU remains in the tournament field in Joe Lunardi's latest Bracketology. pic.twitter.com/y10nNOsGpr

— ESPN College BBall (@ESPNCBB) March 11, 2015"

What might cost the Cougars is Wyoming's Mountain West tourney title. The Cowboys rob somebody of an at-large bid, and BYU might be the team to get bumped:

KenPom.com has BYU ranked 30th in the country. Like Gonzaga, the Cougars are a good team hindered by an average conference. They have a road win over the Bulldogs and nonconference victories over Stanford and UMass on their tourney resume. Defeats to Pepperdine and San Diego will hurt, but the good should outweigh the bad.