Creighton athletic director Bruce Rasmussen, who is serving as chairman of the NCAA Tournament selection committee, was at Pinnacle Bank Arena to take in Nebraska’s regular-season finale vs. Penn State on Sunday.
It marked at least the third time Rasmussen had seen the Huskers play in person this year along with NU’s losses to Kansas and Creighton.
After NU’s impressive 76-64 win, Rasmussen walked into the post-game press conference room while players Evan Taylor and Jordy Tshimanga were fielding questions.
By little coincidence, a reporter asked Tshimanga what he would say to Rasmussen about Nebraska’s case to make the Big Dance if he had an opportunity to sit down and talk with him.
“Let us in,” Tshimanga said with a grin.
Rasmussen and countless national bracketologists have likely been hearing from Husker fans on a daily basis about why Nebraska is deserving of an at-large bid to the tournament.
On the surface, NU certainly has a strong argument, having racked up 22 win and a school-record 13 conference victories en route to locking up the No. 4 seed in next week’s Big Ten Tournament.
However, as most of those bracketologists are quick to point out, the Huskers’ resume is lacking in terms of quality despite all of that quantity.
Based on the NCAA’s new Quadrant rating system, which factors in the strength of an opponent based on RPI and where the games were played, Nebraska currently holds just one valuable Quadrant 1 victory - a 72-52 rout of Michigan on Jan. 18.
Aside from that, the Huskers lost the five other Q1 games (home games vs. RPI teams 1-30, neutral games vs. 1-50, and road games vs. 1-75) they’ve played this season. They’re also 2-3 vs. Q2 opponents (home: 31-75, neutral: 51-100, road: 76-135).
As a result, many still think that despite Nebraska’s impressive regular-season record, it will still have to win at least one more game vs. a quality foe - ideally a rematch with No. 5 seed Michigan - in the Big Ten Tournament in order to punch its ticket.
Asked if he felt his team had done enough at this point to deserve a spot in the NCAA bracket, head coach Tim Miles said the Huskers’ value goes well beyond just what shows up in the analytics and metrics.
“It looks like an NCAA Tournament team to me,” Miles said. “Our schedule hasn’t broken the way, we had some bad luck with our conference schedule, but we’re willing and able to play anybody."
It was no surprise that Miles’ players shared that confidence.
“I feel like we should be in, I honestly do,” Taylor said. “I feel like we’re a team that’s playing well right now, and I feel like when or if we get in the tournament, we could beat some teams. Hopefully we get that opportunity, because we deserve it.
“This team has been through everything. We persevered, we’ve worked hard, we’ve stuck together through the good and the bad. I would hate to see our season end and us not be in the NCAA Tournament, because I feel like we’re an NCAA Tournament team.”
The good news is there are some historical numbers that bode well for Nebraska’s chances.
Since the start of the modern 64-team bracket format in 1985, 304 of the 306 teams to win 13 league games in a Power Five Conference have gone on to make the NCAA Tournament. Of those 304, 112 earned an automatic bid and 192 got at-large bids.
The lone exceptions both came in 2011-12, when Washington and Oregon of the Pac-12 missed the cut due to the league holding the No. 10 RPI among NCAA conferences that season.
As far as the Big Ten is concerned, all 61 teams that have won 13 or more conference games went on to play in the NCAA Tournament.
All of that aside, Miles said he doesn’t intend to discuss what needs to happen to earn a bid with his players over the next few days. Instead, he wants Nebraska's focus to be taking its postseason fate out of the hands of the selection committee and locking up a spot by being Big Ten Tournament champions.
“I don’t even think I’m going to talk about that with the guys," Miles said. "I’m going to talk with a single-minded goal: let’s go there and try and win that tournament, be Big Ten champions… We want to go win the Big Ten Tournament. That’s the goal, to go cut the nets down. That’s just where it begins and ends.”
With every victory the Huskers can add to their resume at Madison Square Garden, the higher their chances of making the NCAA Tournament rise. A team that has now won 10 of its last 12 games, NU has no intention of slowing down anytime soon.
“We’re not going out to New York to just play around,” senior guard Anton Gill said. “We want to win that, too. We really feel like we’ve got the best team in the Big Ten. More wins would obviously help, but if you ask me my opinion, we’ve proven throughout the year that we’re a tournament team.”
