ESPN College Basketball Bubble Watch March 10

First, the new: The Marquette Golden Eagles, thanks to their second-round Big East tournament win over West Virginia, are now a lock to make the NCAA tournament. The Eagles like to make it interesting -- they could have sealed this status weeks ago -- but they're there now, and that was the biggest change the Watch saw in the bracket prospectus on Wednesday.
Now, the old and tired: Since the season's first edition of this feature, the Watch has been saying the same thing about this bubble. In fact, it's been said so often that the Watch now actively avoids the phrase. If it's annoyed, it imagines readers are, too.
But, sorry, it simply must be said, even if it's being said for the 154,403rd time: This bubble is incredibly soft.
Wait! Don't scroll down yet! There's a new development here, too, something the Watch would be remiss to leave unmentioned: In the second week of March, this inexorably soft bubble is getting even softer.
Usually, Champ Week has the opposite effect. Usually, surprising teams win their multi-bid conference's auto-bid and rob at-large bubble teams of a spot in the tourney. High-major at-large teams progress through their conference tournaments and improve their chances as the week rolls on.
This season, however, not only have we not seen any real bid-thieves yet -- Butler and Old Dominion both preserved at-large openings early in the week -- we've also lost a few long-time bubble contenders. On Tuesday, Nebraska and Baylor's losses took both out of the picture for good, which necessitated new inclusions for Penn State, UTEP, Washington State and Missouri State. Those teams were all off the Watch in Wednesday's update, but given the large number of remaining tourney spots, it's hard to imagine the committee considering the current field without at least looking at any of the above.
The only at-large contender to move in a decidedly positive direction in the past 24 hours was Marquette. We'll see if any other bubble-bound squad -- specifically Colorado, which plays Kansas State on Thursday afternoon -- can pull off a similar move. Surprisingly enough, the bids are still there. Plenty of them, in fact.
Frequent readers of the Watch know we've begun tracking the bubble math in this space; below is this week's numerical synopsis. Keep in mind, for hypothetical purposes, we're assuming the tournament winners from the multi-bid conferences will come from the categories of "lock" and "should be in" (a big assumption). Of course, if any bid-thieves spring unforeseen surprises in the conference tournaments, expect the numbers to change a bit.

Total bids: 68
Automatic qualifiers: 31
Total at-large bids: 37
At-large "locks" and "should be ins" in this week's Watch (minus one team from each multibid conference to represent automatic qualifiers): 27
Available at-large bids: 10
Teams currently with "work to do" in this week's Watch: 17