So for college basketball fans, this time of year is like the weeks leading up to Christmas, as we come ever-closer to March Madness and finding out who’s playing for the championship and who’ll be left out. Talk of who’s on “the bubble” is pretty widespread–Andy Glockner, for example, does some fantastic analysis, and the Bracket Project is great for a more wisdom-of-the-crowds-type perspective.

But last year, BP’s Drew Cannon came up with a way of predicting the bubble that’s eerily accurate for its simplicity: add each team’s RPI and Pomeroy rankings, order them from lowest to highest, and just go down the list. The “Easiest Bubble Solver” correctly picked every team but one in 2012 and 2010, and only missed two in 2011.

It doesn’t look like anyone’s carrying the EBS torch for 2013, so I threw together a script that automatically calculates every team’s EBS ranking. Here’re the top 75 teams in EBS as of this morning, with their ranking on the left (ignoring ties) and EBS value (averaged) on the right. RPI data is from Jerry Palm’s Nitty Gritty Report:

This year’s tournament has 37 at-large bids, so Oklahoma’s bolded up there as the nominal cutoff. Practically, though, more spots will open as top teams claim their conference championship bids: this will almost definitely happen for at least four conferences (B10, BE, ACC, B12) and is fairly likely for 4-7 more (MWC, P12, SEC, A10, MVC, WCC, and maybe CUSA). At this point, I’d say anyone at #37 or above is “in”, 38-42 are on the bubble but more likely than not to be dancing, and 43-50 have some ground to make up to feel safe. Connecticut, at #39, is ineligible for championship play this year.

Some interesting notes:

Belmont is considered to be a marginal bubble team, at best, by most, but they’re safe at #26(tie) in these rankings thanks in part to a 22 RPI. A loss in the weak Ohio Valley Conference could bump that down to the mid-30s or worse, though, so if they need an at-large bid (after losing in the tournament) they may not be in as great shape to get one.

On the other hand, Notre Dame (#47) is looking much shakier than many would predict–they’re averaging a 6-7 seed in The Bracket Project, for example. Is EBS starting to crack or, with an unimpressive nonconference schedule and losses to Providence and St. John’s, are the Fighting Irish actually close to being in danger?

There’s more than two weeks of pre-tournament play left, so these numbers are nowhere near final, but I think this still provides an interesting–and unique–perspective on where some of these teams may stand. I’ll keep following this personally over the next couple of weeks–if there’s interest, I can post some more updates on here or elsewhere.