Editor's note: The NCAA tournament Bubble Watch has been updated through games of Wednesday.
It has long been the stated position of the NCAA men's basketball committee that teams are not evaluated directly on metrics like straight wins and losses, conference records or their ranking on various rating systems.
Strictly speaking, that is indeed correct. Bubble Watch has spoken to enough people who have been "in the room" to know that no argument on behalf of this or that team was ever won by citing wins and losses or a straight ranking.
Nevertheless, tournament teams do, of course, tend to cluster within certain numerical boundaries .