NCAA Basketball Tournament 2013: March Madness Bubble Watch

Iowa State has some nice wins this year, but our Cyclones have some work left to do if it hopes to earn a ticket to the NCAA Tournament.

The Cyclones are sitting at 19-8 overall and 9-5 in the Big 12 Conference with four games remaining, including No. 9 Kansas today (Feb. 25): Click the hyperlink for a preview of the ISU-Kansas game. After that, it's Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and West Virginia and then on to conference play.

Several experts have ISU on the bubble to get into March Madness and the NCAA Tournament.

Here's some of what people are saying.

The Bleacher Report lists the Cyclones on the bubble, but also on the rise and that was before ISU took down Texas Christian on Saturday.

That win (over Baylor) in conjunction with the beating they gave TCU on Saturday should be more than enough to push them into next week's projected field of all the bracket experts, provided they don't lose at home to Texas Tech on Saturday.

That seems like a near impossibility, though, considering Iowa State is 14-0 at home and Texas Tech has one win all season against the RPI Top 200. Although, that one win was against Iowa State.

After the Texas Tech game, the Cyclones have a very difficult three-game stretch (vs. Kansas, at Oklahoma, vs. Oklahoma State), of which they'll need to win at least one to feel safe.

ESPN has the Cyclones bubble chances behind Oklahoma State and Kansas State among Big 12 teams. This is from a post on Wednesday before they toppled Baylor on the road:

Iowa State was a No. 10 seed in Joe Lunardi's Monday edition of Bracketology, and that feels exactly right to me: There are a couple of nice home wins over Kansas State and Oklahoma here, but there are bad losses too, and a 2-7 road record. I'm convinced the Cyclones are better than a 10-seed, but their résumé isn't quite there yet. Big game at Baylor Wednesday night.

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