Leading Off: Follow the Bouncing Bubble Teams

Lm Otero/Associated PressKansas State’s Frank Martin should be happier after the Wildcats’ latest victory.

This is the time of year when we begin to feel badly for bubbles. Normally, bubbles live great little lives, making children giggle when they are blown through plastic wands, livening up bath time. But thanks to a tortured sports metaphor, in late February and early March the bubble is where college basketball teams do not want to be. It is a dangerous place, as likely to burst and plop a team into the dreaded National Invitation Tournament as it is to bounce it into the N.C.A.A. tournament.

So, feel free to cringe every time bubbles are maligned in sports coverage for the next few weeks. I mean, really, would you want Kansas State parked on top of you, with Frank Martin playing the role of human firecracker? Fortunately, a second win over a supposedly top-flight Missouri team might propel the Wildcats safely out of bubble territory. Their victory Tuesday night was a show of resilience, writes Jason King on ESPN.com, and qualifies them among the hottest teams in the nation, Kellis Robinett writes in The Kansas City Star. It sure felt like a punch to the stomach of No. 3 Missouri. Its otherwise impressive season now has two bruises in the shape of the Wildcats logo, largely because Kansas State is a matchup nightmare for the not-quite-tough-enough Tigers, Bryan Burwell writes in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

No. 8 Georgetown suffered a similar fate, absorbing a bit of a thrashing by Seton Hall while stumbling on that little part of the game called defense, writes Tarik El-Bashir in The Washington Post. Pirates fans, however, definitely need to work on that rushing-the-court thing.

For Kentucky, there is no potential bubble bursting until it falls short in the N.C.A.A. tournament again, which Thayer Evans of Foxsports.com believes is a distinct possibility after watching the Wildcats struggle to beat Mississippi State. Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com saw it differently, however, and declared Kentucky even more impressive because of its resilience.

Binghamton is one team that would love to be mentioned in the same sentence as any sort of bubble after spending the season parked at the bottom of basketball’s forgotten well. But there is nothing like 26 straight losses to make one victory — Tuesday night’s over Vermont — feel like Christmas morning. Go outside and wave a bubble wand in its honor.

Sort of hilariously, college football tried to home in on the fun Tuesday when the highly touted recruit Davonte Neal ended his personal drama by committing to Notre Dame. This was hours after not showing up for his own announcement, scheduled for a Phoenix elementary school that left a crowd of 600 mostly elementary school students a bit peeved.

The N.B.A. took a breather from drama Tuesday night — unless the Cavaliers’ 1-point win over the Pistons got you fired up — with the Heat trampling another hapless opponent (Sacramento) on their way to Thursday’s date with the Knicks and Linsanity. The Knicks did not play Tuesday night, which gave Twitter a much-needed rest, and George Willis of The New York Post writes that the Knicks could use one, too, just to exhale, which makes the coming All-Star break a good thing. The Lin phenomenon shows no sign of abating — Sports Illustrated is putting him on the cover for a second straight week — and Charles P. Pierce writes on Grantland.com that perhaps we should be letting up on the poor guy a bit.

But the guy truly earning our sympathy is Portland’s Greg Oden, whose injury woes make him perhaps the N.B.A.’s unluckiest player, writes Ray Ratto on CBSSports.com. If you’re counting, it is now five knee surgeries in a career with so much promise that never got off the ground, writes Jason Quick in The Oregonian.

Meanwhile, the N.F.L. off-season has descended into manufactured drama. It is headlined by the Broncos backup quarterback Brady Quinn, who popped off about his own teammate, Tim Tebow, in a GQ magazine article by Michael Silver, then half-apologized and half-whined about being portrayed incorrectly. Of course, he did it in consummate modern athlete fashion, via Twitter.

Stunningly, the N.C.A.A. bubble does not have a Twitter page, and it really should. Bubbles are so misunderstood.

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