NCAA notebook: What we know about the tournament field already

No one is a lock at this point. But more teams than you might expect are close.

With five or six weeks left in most conferences' regular-season schedules, just over half of the NCAA tournament field is now far more likely than not to make the cut than not. According to PlayoffStatus.com, nine teams now have at least an 87-percent chance to qualify with at-large bids. All but one of those high-ranking teams are in the Big Ten or NCHC; the lone exceptions are the ECAC teams Quinnipiac and Dartmouth.

But perhaps just as important is that we are now at the point in the season where the 14th-ranked team (Augustana) is over 50 percent to make the cut.

There are currently six teams — Michigan, Michigan State, North Dakota, Minnesota-Duluth, Western Michigan, and Quinnipiac — that feel like locks, all