Saint Mary's 80, Davidson 68

I know, it's a little weird to be writing about the NIT when I haven't posted in forever and the NCAA Tournament is ongoing. I'm going to try to break down each of the Sweet 16 matchups a bit later in the week.

I'm making this post because I caught this game last night and during the broadcast, ESPN analyst Hubert Davis made a point to say at least once, and probably several times (I was fast-forwarding a lot) that these teams deserved to be in the field of 65.

Nope.

Every year, and this year more than most, I feel that the bubble teams, with rare exceptions, do not have much room to argue their exclusion. After having seen Davidson last night, the Wildcats have no argument whatsoever.

I'm a little more sympathetic to Saint Mary's, who really lost its chance to go dancing when it dropped three of four games in late January and early February, including a two-point loss to Sweet 16 conference foe Gonzaga. A big reason for those setbacks was the loss of their star, Patrick Mills, to a wrist injury. If Mills plays, they could easily have won all of those games -- and they won five straight without him, including a BracketBuster win over Utah State, another tournament team -- and in that case may have earned an at-large bid. Given that Mills was back and healthy by the time the Selection Committee was making its decisions, they had a case for a bid.

The Gaels aren't just all Mills, though. They have some very strong post players up front in Omar Samhan and Diamon Simpson, and some guards who can knock down open jumpers.

Davidson, on the other hand, is all Stephen Curry. As much as I like to watch Curry -- and I do -- the rest of his teammates are terrible. I wasn't tracking it the whole game, but I paid pretty close attention for most of the second half, and the number of wide-open layups or short jumpers his teammates missed far outnumbered the number of shots they hit when faced with any defense whatsoever. These guys have perhaps the easiest job in college basketball -- play four-on-three while the other team focuses on Curry -- and none of them is worth a damn offensively.

I'm not sure what's more amazing: That Curry can lead the nation in scoring while being double-teamed all the time, or that his teammates can be this ineffective while playing a man up all the time.

Obviously, then, I disagree that Davidson deserved to be in the field of 65. I know what they did last year, and it was a blast to watch, but they just aren't a very good team.