This comes from the cutting room floor of my story for tomorrow, which explores both the bad bubble and the pleas of coaches to expand the NCAA tournament. There's a disconnect there, obviously.
Maryland obviously gets a mention, but when I talked to collegerpi.com's Jerry Palm on Thursday, the Terps weren't the focus of the entire discussion. But they did come up, and he pointed to their biggest coup -- the Jan. 19 win at North Carolina.
"If that's all they have, somebody is probably going to come and take their bid," Palm said. "If they don't have anything else, they can probably start making plans for the NIT."
The inference there is Palm believes Maryland probably needs three more victories. The Terps play Virginia tomorrow. A win gets them the No. 5 seed and a date with N.C. State. A victory over the Wolfpack would get them a shot at the loser of tomorrow's Clemson-Virginia Tech game.
(At this point, pretty much everyone agrees Maryland would be in dire straits if it lost at Virginia tomorrow).
It's still a lot of conjecture at this point, but Palm's as well-versed in this stuff as anyone.
More on the ACC, the CAA tournament (where I'm at right now) and more in the next 24 hours.
