The Bubble Bursts: Oh, the Humanity

It’s all over now -- whew -- time for a bubble bath.

Dick Vitale screamed so much that hernia surgery will be required (really).

Jordan Farmar needed a spittoon for his fingernails.

“I’m going to be nervous, on the edge of my seat,” the UCLA freshman said of the weekend position he planned to stake out after his Bruins bombed out of the Pacific 10 Conference tournament.

Poor kid, he’s so new at this.

Didn’t he get the memo about UCLA’s being a lock even though it lost to Oregon State in the first round and made Staples Center smell like the circus just left town?

“I just don’t trust it until I see it,” Farmar said of the process that would return UCLA to the tournament once known as the UCLA Invitational.

There it is, Jordan, the NCAA bracket. It arrived Sunday, gift-wrapped, courtesy of CBS.

UCLA is playing Texas Tech, in Tucson, on Thursday.

See it.

Feel it.

Touch it.

Just don’t bet on it.

Some call the NCAA tournament the most exciting three weeks in sport, but if you count Bubble Week, it’s the best four weeks.

Bubble Week is the bar fight outside to get in the dance; for some, it’s the prelude to a dis.

It is the week that careers are made and wrecked, jobs are won and lost, happy and sad tears flow in equal streams and coaches go into spin cycles.

UCLA Coach Ben Howland, not taking Joe Brackethead’s word for it, made sure to sing Oregon State’s praises just in case the Beavers went on to win the conference tournament and forced the NCAA selection committee to consider five Pac-10 teams instead of four.

“That’s a very, very good team,” Howland said of Oregon State, which posted its first win of the season away from home against UCLA -- then got blown out by Arizona the next day.

Actually, that’s a very, very OK team.

Bubble Week is wondering what might have been.

Arizona State won 18 games this season but lost its Pac-10 regular-season finale to Arizona by two points and then lost in overtime to Washington in the first round of the Pac-10 tournament.

Sun Devil guard Steve Moore scored 22 points in the lost-cause loss against Washington, including a last-second layup to extend the game to overtime.

What motivated Moore?

“I didn’t want to lose,” he said. “I was a senior. I didn’t want to go out like that.”

Turn those two heartbreak defeats into wins and Arizona State is likely in.

Instead, in the catacombs of a foreign arena, Arizona State Rob Evans put his arm around wife Carolyn and walked out of Staples to an uncertain coaching future.

Bubble Week can be so:

* Cruel.

It comes down to a zero-sum game. There are only 65 tickets.

In the end, someone gets in only when someone gets out.

“It is an excruciating process; I can’t say it any other way,” said Bob Bowlsby, chairman of the NCAA selection committee.

For certain, one “bubble” team received an NCAA tournament bid as a direct result of human suffering.

Imagine having to root against Memphis freshman Darius Washington on Saturday as he stood at the foul line with a chance to beat Louisville in the Conference USA title game.

Yet, there was no comfortable way around this: Some team out there needed Washington to choke ... was it you, Alabama Birmingham?

See, Memphis didn’t have the numbers to make the tournament unless it beat Louisville (which was in no matter what) and earned the automatic bid.

Washington, fouled while shooting outside the three-point arc, had three chances to overcome a two-point deficit.

He made his first free throw, but missed the next one ... and then the next, collapsing to the floor and burying his head in his jersey.

And someone else was in the NCAA tournament.

Yippee.

Sometimes waiting is the hardest part.

St. Mary’s sat on the bubble so long it had to be treated for a rash.

It had been six days since the Gaels lost to Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference tournament title game.

St. Mary’s 25-8 record seemed to ensure that the WCC would get a second team in.

Gael Coach Randy Bennett said he would have to question the process if his team were left out.

“I think we’ll get in,” Bennett said. “But you ask if I’ll be nervous? Yes. It’s out of our hands at this point.”

Tuesday ... no sweat, right, we’re a lock.

Wednesday, tick, tick, tick ... remember us?

Thursday ... hello, selection committee, that’s St. M-A-R-Y with an apostrophe “S.”

No sweat. The Gaels made it and will face Southern Illinois.

Sometimes it comes down to one game, Minnesota vs. Indiana, in the first round of the Big Ten tournament -- loser goes home, or worse, to the National Invitation Tournament.

Indiana was one of the most curious bubble cases to come down the pike, a team with a 10-6 record in conference play but only 15 wins overall.

No team with 15 wins has ever been deemed NCAA dance-worthy.

Coach Mike Davis’ job was possibly at stake. The selection committee was looking for a reason to believe in Indiana ... and didn’t get one.

Minnesota rolled to a 71-55 victory.

Davis, his name already mud in some Hoosier Internet chat rooms, couldn’t believe his team was going to be left out of the NCAA equation.

“Do the math,” Davis kept saying.

Fifteen wins. A Ratings Percentage Index of 78.

The committee did the math.

It didn’t add up.

* We’re in, we’re out, we’re in, we are ...

Maryland. We are a selection committee’s worst nightmare. We entered the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament with two wins over Duke but a losing record in league play. We have made the NCAA tournament 11 consecutive years.

A win over Clemson in the first round of the ACC tournament could have made this easy.

Final score: Clemson 84, Maryland 72.

We are still Maryland. We are 16-12. We have lost four in a row.

We are ...

“Really anxious,” forward Travis Garrison said after the Clemson loss. “It’s up to the selection committee to just give us a chance. I just pray that we make it.”

We are Maryland.

We are out!

* We’re in, we’re out, we are ...

Iowa. We were toast before the Big Ten tournament began. We had to prove we could win without Pierre Pierce. We needed to prove having our athletic director as head of the selection committee was not a factor even though we finished 7-9 in conference play and Indiana finished 10-6.

We had to make a run in the Big Ten tournament. Losing on a buzzer-beater to Wisconsin in the semifinals might do the trick.

We are Iowa.

We are in!

* We’re in, we’re out, we are ...

Notre Dame. We couldn’t hold serve against UCLA at home and then went belly-up against Rutgers in the first round of the Big East tournament.

We hoped against hope the bubble would loosen up over the weekend.

It didn’t happen.

Final word: The Irish are out!

We are ... Northern Iowa. For the sake of argument, call us the last team in. We would like to thank everyone who made this possible -- Texas El Paso for keeping the Western Athletic a one-bid conference; the Atlantic 10 for sending only its Founding Father, George Washington.

We are Buffalo. Call us the last team out. Curse you, Utah State, for beating Pacific and making the Big West a two-bid entry.

Niagara is in the field, and you could say, in terms of local bragging rights, they have us over a barrel.

Thanks for nothing.

Times staff writers Eric Stephens, Robyn Norwood and Jason Reid contributed to this report.