A question to get the week started: Who is the only D1 team that has yet to experience a game that was six points or closer at the end of regulation? Read on for the answer.

Now that an undefeated season by Illinois can be officially termed ‘realistic,’ we’re going to see the usual diet of columns addressing whether a regular season loss would be good for them. Seth Davis got the ball rolling last week. He made the case that a regular season loss is beneficial, though he used circular reasoning.

I’m not as interested in the can-they questions as much as the big should-they question, as in: Do you really want to go into the NCAA Tournament undefeated?

My answer to that is no — unequivocally, immutably, unquestionably, no. The last team to win a championship without a loss was Indiana in 1976. There’s a reason nobody has done this in 29 years. It’s hard enough to win six games in the tournament without having to wear the undefeated mantle.

So you don’t want to go in the tournament undefeated because hardly anybody ever goes into the tournament undefeated – only twice has it been done in the 29-year period Davis uses.

To turn the argument around, over the last 30 seasons, four teams have entered the tourney unbeaten and one won it. That’s a 25% success rate, which is probably better than the pre-tournament favorite has fared during that time.  (And it happened twice in ’76, so only one of the two unbeatens could win it that season.)

This is not to say that Davis’ conclusion is wrong, and in fairness he offers more evidence than just the snippet I copied. It may well be good for Illinois to remove the burden of going unbeaten before the tournament. But everybody without a reason to dislike Illinois should be pulling for them. An unbeaten Illini in the championship game would bring attention to the sport that hasn’t been seen since the much anticipated ’79 final.

The answer to the question posed at the beginning is North Carolina. If we’re going to ponder whether a loss is good, then we might also want to consider whether experiencing the tension of a close finish is beneficial also. (True, it’s a point that probably will be rendered moot during the remainder of UNC’s conference schedule.)

The only unbeaten team I have seen enter the post-season was UNLV in 1991. In their semi-final loss to Duke, it didn’t seem as though the unbeaten pressure did them in as much as their unfamiliarity with late-game pressure.

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With the passing of the Super Bowl, hoops gets the national sports stage to itself for a while. Last season, I started doing projections of the tournament field at this time. Then I learned that if-the-season-ended-today projections are pretty useless. For instance, if the season ended today, Vermont would probably be at-large worthy. But if Vermont’s season ends before the America East championship game, then they won’t get in without a win at Nevada on February 19th.

Additionally, there are a whole lot of people out there doing bracket or field projections – and spending a lot more on it that I would. So why duplicate the effort? However, I will give some piecemeal observations as the bubble picture becomes clearer.

Right now, I have 32 teams that I’m pretty confident will make the final field. Most are no-brainers:

ACC – UNC, Wake, Duke, Georgia Tech
Pac 10 – Washington, Arizona, UCLA, Stanford
Big East – BC, Syracuse, Pitt, UConn, Villanova
Big XII –  Kansas, Oklahoma St., Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech
Big Ten – Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan St., Minnesota
SEC – Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi St.
WCC – Gonzaga
MVC – Southern Illinois, Wichita St.
CUSA – Louisville, Cincinnati, Charlotte
MWC – Utah

A few of those teams could play themselves out of the field, but based on what has transpired so far, all should do enough down the stretch to get an at-large bid. These teams represent ten conferences, so if they snap up all the automatic bids – which is wishful thinking – it means that 22 of the 34 at-large spots locked up.