Joe Lunardi says.....

[MUwarrior1090]

There is an ESPN Insider Article today. It talks about how there are basically 9 spots left for the NCAA Tournament, everyone else has locked up bids or they will be rewarded to single bid conferences. I don't want to post the whole article here since it's behind a paywall, but the gist is that those 9 spots will come down to 24 remaining teams. 7 of those are classified as "long shots" which means that they have a chance to get in if they win out to the conference championship, but typically no teams actually are capable of making that run.

Here is the excerpt:

Long shots (7). These teams aren't completely off the board, but they better not lose before their respective conference-championship games. In a typical year, no one from this category actually makes the tournament: BYU, Stanford, Creighton, Clemson, Florida State, Marquette, Georgia Tech.

He was also quoted as saying that RPI has less of an effect every year, so we (teams in general, not just Marquette) shouldn't be overly concerned with it.

Bottom line: Lunardi thinks we could get in if we win the next four. I don't necessarily agree, but he's far better at this than me. So unless we lose this week, I'm considering our at-large hopes alive.