NCAA Tournament March Madness

#314 Northern Arizona

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Projection: need to automatically qualify

Northern Arizona’s profile makes clear why its path to the NCAA tournament is essentially through the Big Sky’s automatic bid: its few bright spots are home victories over modest opponents and a solid neutral outing that showed it can score, but those wins do not carry the kind of heft a committee looks for, while its worst results are lopsided road losses at Arizona and Arizona State and damaging defeats away at Montana and other conference venues that expose uneven defense and a lack of road resilience. The team’s résumé is further weakened by a string of losses in true road environments and a failure to beat teams that would be considered signature wins, so regular-season momentum is not enough to overcome those blemishes. Upcoming opportunities at Idaho State and Weber State and against Montana State and Sacramento State give Northern Arizona chances to demonstrate toughness and rack up resume-improving road victories, but until those happen the safest and most realistic route to the field is winning the conference tournament and securing the automatic spot.

Date Opponent Ranking Outcome
11/3(N)Drake176L77-71
11/11@Arizona2L84-49
11/24Cal Poly248W93-87
11/26SE Missouri St242W79-72
12/3S Dakota St191L75-62
12/6@N Dakota St125L69-68
12/9@Arizona St77L73-48
12/13@San Diego202L78-69
12/18Southern Utah277W65-57
12/21@Incarnate Word251L90-66
1/1@Montana151L78-64
1/3@Montana St156L77-68
1/8Weber St215L78-65
1/10Idaho St218L81-79
1/15@CS Sacramento249L83-69
1/17@Portland St136L63-52
1/19Montana151L98-72
1/24N Colorado186W81-77
1/29E Washington232W92-86
1/31Idaho182L79-62
2/5@Idaho St21819%
2/7@Weber St21519%
2/12Portland St13622%
2/14CS Sacramento24945%
2/21@N Colorado18615%
2/26@Idaho18214%
2/28@E Washington23222%
3/2Montana St15626%