Bracketology update: Lunardi bumps Cougs, Zags still in

ESPN's Joe Lunardi updated his Bracketology projection today, giving WSU a pretty good upgrade to a No. 5 seed after the win against Washington on Saturday. He previously had the Cougs on a No. 7 line.

In other news, he's got Gonzaga still in the field as an at-large, although now as a No. 11 seed. If the Zags take care of business int he WCC, you'll see that number climb some, but they're not going to skyrocket up the RPI with the damage simply playing WCC teams will do to their strength of schedule. They need to beat the decent RPI teams left on their schedule -- Stanford (No. 37, Jan. 31) and Memphis (No. 15, Feb. 17) -- and hope like crazy that the teams they've played from power RPI conferences win lots of games. It'll really help if the teams they beat (North Carolina, Texas) can win.

Lunardi apparently wasn't as impressed by Stanford's split at the Oregon schools as I was, dropping the Cardinal from the bracket as one of his second four out. Not sure how that works, but that's why he works for ESPN and I have a blog on Blogspot. That leaves the Pac-10 with five bids, and all still are pretty comfortable: UCLA (No. 1), Oregon (No. 2), Arizona (No. 5), WSU (No. 5) and USC (No. 9).

Jerry Palm updates his bracket on Fridays, I believe, so I'll be checking it out then.