NCAA Tournament Bracket: Missouri State Basketball's Bubble Bursts

Read More: Kyle Weems (F - SW Mo), Missouri St Bears

Missouri State basketball's status in on the bubble was seriously in doubt the moment they lost to the Indiana State Sycamores in the Missouri Valley Tournament finals—they were one of Joe Lunardi's last four out for the rest of bracketology season—but Selection Sunday's big NCAA Tournament bracket revealed what Bears fans had worried about all along: The MVC regular-season champs weren't among the 37 at-large bids revealed, and will be left to fill out 2011 NCAA brackets from the outside looking in. Indiana State will represent the MVC as a 14th seed, set to take on Syracuse. 

Missouri State was 15-3 in conference play to seal the regular season title in the Missouri Valley Conference, but Kyle Weems and company couldn't outshoot a dogged Sycamores team in a low-scoring MVC final, and a 25-8 record wasn't enough to counteract the NCAA selection committee's long-suspected antipathy toward (or indifference to) mid-major teams. Formerly known as Southwest Missouri State, the Bears last reached the NCAA basketball tournament in 1999, when they lost in the Sweet 16 to Duke.