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UCLA and the "Soft Bubble"

This week's version of Bubble Watch on ESPN.com focuses on the concept of the "soft bubble", a circumstance created by the continued overall relative weakness of college basketball and the new but not necessarily improved 68 team tournament. Because the Bruins are currently a card carrying member of the bubble, a lot of the points made are of relevance to us.

If anything, we've learned that we -- and by "we," I mean everyone who is talking bubble without the benefit of an S-Curve underpinning their work -- might be judging 2011's bubble denizens a little too harshly.

I think there's a decent argument to be made here that the "eye test" for a tournament team needs to be, if not scrapped completely, at least calibrated to the current field nationwide. A team may not look like it has tournament caliber talent, but the tournament means something different this year. Even the so called "power conferences" overall have been largely disappointing, and nowhere do we see this more than our own Pac 10. The Pac 10 leads the way in power conference weakness, and the difference is especially striking when you remember it was only a few short years ago that every conference game was a slugfest between teams stacked with future NBA players like the Lopez twins, Kevin Love, Spencer Hawes, Brandon Roy, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Arron Afflalo, a bunch of Trogan hired hands, etc. No offense to Jimmer Fredette, but he's the headline grabbing darling of college basketball; a spot that used to be occupied by the likes of Derrick Rose, Greg Oden, and a lot of our own Bruins, and the comparison isn't really close.

So like it or not, all schools draw from the same pool of talent, and if that pool is particularly shallow for a few years, this is the result you get. This is not an excuse for teams to underachieve, however, because that argument goes both ways. If your team is weaker, so is your competition. Nor does this speak to any issues about character and effort, two things that we Bruin fans have unfortunately had to agonize over and deal with over the past 2 1/2 years. 

Now onto the expanded field:

I can't believe we almost had a 96-team field. If Butler is still hanging around this bubble, who knows what sort of sub-mediocre mess would have comprised teams 92-through-96 in the "last four in." Indiana? Iowa? Guh. I'd prefer not to think about it.

Now, as we're discovering, the switch to 68 teams -- and the addition of a particularly soft year on the bubble -- is already proving to be plenty of change.

I have to admit, when I heard about the expansion, I was relieved, because I had figured that an additional 3 teams couldn't possibly have any real effect. But when you realize that those three spots have to be filled in any given year like this one with already questionable talent, it does make you realize what a mess 96 teams would have been. If we're already recalibrating what a tournament team should look like based on a 68 team field, then what would the perception be of a team that barely makes the tournament of 96? Does it even mean anything anymore? People love the tournament for the matchups, the upsets, and the drama. But who is really going to call it an upset when a 22 seed takes down an 11? More importantly, who is going to care?

I hope the NCAA takes a good look at what the selection process is going to be like this year before deciding to expand the field again.

Since the Bruins must absolutely make the tournament this year, obviously the additional three berths are great news. Hell, we're slowly making our way to where we might not be sweating it out on selection Sunday:

Work left to do: UCLAWashington

UCLA's home win over St. John's last week looks better with every Big East opponent the Johnnies take down in Madison Square Garden. Thanks in part to that win -- but also to a Dec. 18 victory over BYU, which boasts the No. 2 RPI in the nation -- the Bruins have the two best top-50 wins of any Pac-10 team. The only bad loss is an early-December head-scratcher to Montana. But UCLA did manage to avoid a letdown against Oregon on Thursday night, and if the Bruins can continue to do that -- and maybe sprinkle in another top-50 win down the stretch -- they should be in good position on this season's soft bubble.

Now, there's certainly no shame in making the field, "soft" bubble or not. Being selected would be a culmination of the hard work and improvement this team put in this year. It does remind me though of the hilarious blowback by some on this site when people treated the expectation of making the tournament this year as some sort of outlandish and ridiculous demand. It's not like it was some big secret from the start that college basketball would be down this year. Sure, these guys could completely fold down the stretch and still end up missing the tournament, but that wouldn't make the expectation any more unfair considering the position we currently find ourselves in. I'd hope that these people were simply misguided and ignorant of the situation rather than preemptively giving up on the team before conference play even began.

It's important to note that we are not a lock, and not even a "should be in" according to Bubble Watch, and I'd have to completely agree with that assessment. Too many trap games remain for anyone to get too comfortable. At least if there's one thing we've seen so far this season, it's that our Bruins do not win pretty or comfortably, but when they play teams they're supposed to beat, they almost always find a way to do it and often in the most dramatic way possible. Not a good trait for our blood pressure, but good for the sake of the Bruins' dance card.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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