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Time for a Bracketology update! Over the last few weeks, Cal's tournament position remains relatively unchanged. The Arizona win certainly bolstered the tournament resume while the road losses continue to haunt the Bears, preventing them from moving to a higher seed. The aggregation masters at the Bracket project have the Bears penciled in as a nine seed for the NCAA tournament. Cal will have to continue their dominance at home to further improve their position, including beating the visiting Stanford Cardinal this upcoming Saturday afternoon. With their next three contests at home, Cal has a big opportunity to strengthen their tournament portfolio and perhaps put themselves in better position for the final four weeks of conference play.
The aforementioned Bracket project, which aggregates all of the Bracketology lists out on the internet into one awesome master list, has seven other teams in the tournament from the Pac-12. Not too mention an additional two more teams included in the first eight out. With a lot of time left in conference play, expect this to change even further.
Alternatively, Joe Lunardi of ESPN has Cal in a play-in game to secure an eleven seed. Jerry Palm of CBS sports also has Cal as an eleven seed, potentially matching up with Kentucky in the first round of the tournament. What a blast that game would be, especially as Cal looks to stake their claim on John Calipari's recruiting dominance.
If Cal is able to beat Stanford, as well as Oregon and Oregon State through the next ten days, expect them to jump up to a higher position in the rankings for the NCAA tournament. If Cal's home winning streak comes to an end from an opponent not named Oregon, I would expect them to drop even further in the rankings. It certainly isn't a make or break situation, but going 3-0 over the home stand would solidify the Bears position as a tournament team this season.
Below is a quick recap of the Bears latest loss on the road in Colorado.