Can UNC, UConn and Florida all get the shaft this year?

Can the schools responsible for six out of the last 11 national championships all whiff on March Madness this year?  There’s a strong possibility that might come to pass.

Even after an 84-75 thrashing of 4th ranked Villanova over the weekend, UConn is sitting at 15-11 overall and 12th in the Big East.  Some might get the notion that now that Jim Calhoun is back from his medical leave of absence, the Huskies will catch fire coming down the stretch.

I’m not so sure that’s going to be the case, because while UConn was 3-4 without Calhoun, the team was only 2-4 in the six games before he took his break.  The New York Stock Exchange fluctuates less than this erratic bunch.

I think the Huskies have to win their last five regular season games and at least one in the Big East Tournament to get an at-large bid.  And that’s a very tall order for a team that hasn’t won three games in a row since December 27.

Florida’s another school sporting recent NCAA title hardware (’06 and ‘07) that’s in danger of not making the NCAA field this year.  And for Billy Donovan, that’s starting to be a very alarming pattern.  Since that last title, he hasn’t taken a team back to the Big Dance.

The Gators currently sport an underwhelming 6-4 SEC record, and while the league is improved over last season, don’t mistake it for a power conference just yet.  But at 17-8 overall, this team has a decent shot to clear the 20-win barrier that’s so important in attracting the love of the tourney selection committee.

But how decent of a shot does this team REALLY have to clear 20 victories?  Florida gets three ranked SEC East foes coming down the stretch (#2 Kentucky, #17 Vanderbillt and #20 Tennessee), which presents a very real opportunity to do some RPI boosting.  The problem is that they’ve already lost to every one of these teams…who’s to say they can salvage a split with any of them?

While UConn and Florida at least appear  to have an outside shot at sucking it up and doing enough to get in, defending champ North Carolina doesn’t have a chance in hell.  This squad started off 7-1 but now sits at 14-12 overall.  The downward spiral just continues in Chapel Hill.

Oh, there’s technically a chance that Roy Williams can work some magic in Greensboro and lead UNC to an ACC Tournament crown that would provide an automatic bid to the NCAAs.  But a team this sloppy and ineffective on the offensive end will most likely be bowing out of that event very early.

It’s pretty signficant when teams sporting this much championship hardware from recent years are sitting at a combined 46-21 on the season.  If all three fail to get into the Big Dance, the landscape of America’s best sporting event is radically changed.  This is definitely a year when a mid-major or two can make some noise.

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