Gettin' In: Only in March does such madness make sense

Team whose dream remained alive Saturday: Few traditionally successful major college coaches have been ridiculed more readily than Bruce Weber this season, and never mind that he was playing for a national title three years ago. This is a live-in-the-moment business, you know? And Weber's most-recent moments at Illinois have been mostly bad, proof being the 13-18 record his team took into the Big Ten tournament. But who cares about that now? The Illini's 54-50 victory over Minnesota will have them playing for the league's automatic bid Sunday afternoon. And if they win then everybody will stop talking about how a lack of recruiting is killing Illinois' program, at least until July.

Team whose dream was crushed Saturday: Dreams can be unrealistic, can't they? If so, then Tulsa did technically have an NCAA tournament dream, because if the Golden Hurricane woke up and somehow managed to beat Memphis in the Conference USA final, then it would make the field by way of the league's automatic bid. Predictably, that dream didn't last long. The Tigers jumped to a 39-11 lead before much of the nation had paid too much for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, then rolled to a 77-51 victory that must've had Tulsa coach Doug Wojcik wondering whether edging UTEP in the semifinals was worth the nationally televised butt-kicking it forced him to take.

Performance I hope you witnessed Saturday: Bill Self will not coach a first-team All-American this season, primarily because none of his players have the statistics that typically garner awards. Kansas instead uses a balanced attack with five guys averaging at least 9.5 points per outing. But things got quite unbalanced in the Big 12 semifinals thanks to Brandon Rush, who scored a career-high 28 points in the Jayhawks' 77-71 victory over Texas A&M by making 9 of 13 shots (including 5 of 8 3-point attempts). "Everything," Rush said afterward, "was just falling for me."

Performance I hope you missed Saturday: Kyle Singler is one of the best freshmen in the nation, but the Duke star didn't look that way against Clemson. He missed 8 of 9 field goal attempts -- including all five from beyond the arc -- in the Blue Devils' 78-74 loss in the ACC semifinals. It was easily the worst performance of Singler's short career, and of more concern should be that it continued a string of disappointing efforts in which the Oregon native is averaging just 5.7 points and 4.7 rebounds in his last three outings. Duke is 1-2 in those games.

Three random notes

1. That Wisconsin beat Michigan State 65-63 to make the Big Ten final should come as no surprise. The Badgers entered this season having made the league tournament title game three of the past four years. So now it's four of five, which is Reason 748 why it's always stupid to bet against Bo Ryan.

2. A testament to the quality of the upper half of the Big East is that the seventh seed in the league tournament won the league tournament, and it wasn't really much of a surprise. In fact, I could argue that Pittsburgh was the best No. 7 seed in league tournament history, and you'd have a hard time arguing against me. And I'm not sure any team in the nation helped itself more this weekend than the Panthers, whose 74-65 victory over Georgetown late Saturday further enhanced their NCAA tournament credentials, the result of which should be recognizable when the bracket is unveiled.

3. And the MEAC's automatic bid goes to ... Coppin State? Yep, Coppin State, otherwise known as the MEAC's No. 7 seed that spent Thursday beating the No. 2 seed (Hampton), Friday beating the No. 3 seed (Norfolk State) and Saturday beating the No. 1 seed (Morgan State) by a 62-60 margin. That means Coppin State is in the NCAA tournament with 20 losses, and it's one of the few schools that won't have to wait until the selection show to learn where it will play first. (Get ready to go to Dayton for the play-in game!).

What's on tap for Sunday: In Charlotte, Clemson and North Carolina will play for the ACC tournament title. ... In Indianapolis, Illinois and Wisconsin will play for the Big Ten tournament title. ... In Kansas City, Texas and Kansas will play for the Big 12 tournament title. ... In Atlanta, Arkansas and Georgia will play for the SEC tournament title. .... And finally here in New York, the NCAA tournament bracket will be unveiled at 6 p.m. ET on CBS.

Final thought: The consensus is that Tennessee lost its No. 1 seed Saturday.

Obviously, there's a decent chance of that happening.

But I'm not certain it will because the Vols still have the nation's No. 1 RPI and No. 1 Strength of Schedule -- even after that 92-91 loss to Arkansas in the SEC tournament semifinals -- and that's usually the stuff of a No. 1 seed. As proof, I offer the fact that the No. 1 team in the RPI has received a No. 1 seed 11 times in the past 14 years, with the only exceptions being North Carolina in 1995, Cincinnati in 2000 and Kansas in 2005. And when you consider the only reason UC wasn't a No. 1 seed in 2000 was because Kenyon Martin broke his leg in the C-USA tournament, and thus left the selection committee little choice but to penalize the Bearcats given how they were entering the NCAA tournament without their best player, that really means the No. 1 team in the RPI hasn't received a No. 1 seed just twice in the past 14 seasons.

So will Tennessee join that exclusive club?

Again, it's possible.

But the guess here is that the Vols might just hang on based on their entire body of work.