This edition, in honor of the regular season’s final week, looks at five teams in “must-win” situations heading into their final games:
Syracuse
At worst a split of Georgetown at home or Villanova on the road is essential if the Orange want to make the Tournament. The ‘Cuse picked up a nice win at Providence to [...]

Providence
The Friars missed one of their best chances to separate themselves from the bubble by losing late at Notre Dame on Thursday. PC may need to sweep their remaining regular-season games (home to West Virginia and Syracuse, at South Florida and St. John’s) to get serious consideration.
Purdue
It was an excellent week for Purdue, which [...]

Missouri State
The official BracketBuster event is this coming weekend, but we saw an unofficial elimination game in the Missouri Valley Conference on Saturday. The Bears of Missouri State went into Cedar Falls and knocked off Northern Iowa, taking the Panthers out of contention for an at-large bid, and virtually assuring themselves of their own [...]

It’s the NCAA version of six degrees of separation this week…except there are only two degrees…can you spot the key link in the chain?
Illinois
The Fighting Illini held off Michigan State in Champaign on Tuesday, despite horrendous free-throw shooting down the stretch, and now have themselves in position to make a late-season run. Illinois’ entire [...]

This week, we’re going to focus on the Missouri Valley Conference, where things are heating up not only in the conference race, but in positioning for the NCAA Tournament. There is simply no way to predict which teams will hear their names called on Selection Sunday at this point.
Southern Illinois has all but locked [...]

Boston College
The big off-court news this week came out of Chestnut Hill, as BC coach Al Skinner dismissed Sean Williams and Akida McLain from the team for disciplinary reasons. BC will likely present a case similar to Cincinnati’s last year after it lost Armein Kirkland, albeit to injury rather than suspension/dismissal. And Bearcats [...]

Northern Iowa
It was rough past week for the Panthers, as they gave up their MVC lead with losses at Illinois State and at home to Creighton. Things don’t get any easier for UNI, as they sandwich a home game with surprising Indiana State between trips to MoState and SIU. It’ll take a great [...]

Winthrop was seconds away from sending its 2006 first round NCAA Tournament game with Tennessee to overtime in its attempt to become the third-ever 15-seed to pull off an upset.
Then Tennessee guard Chris Lofton ruined the Eagles’ season. A fall-away jump shot off a sideline inbounds pass made the Eagles were the victim a 63-61 [...]