Games to watch (or at least follow) this weekend

I must say that I love ESPN.com's Bracketology. It puts some numbers behind the seed speculation, and its creator, Joe Lunardi, is almost always right.

So here's who Penn needs to win (or lose, depending on your perspective) this weekend to have a chance to move up the list.

Obviously, the Quakers need to win as well to stay where they are -- currently the fourth No. 14 seed.

Penn wants the teams in bold to win:

Winthrop (19-7, 12-3 Big South) at Birmingham Southern (19-7, 12-3), Saturday, 8 p.m. (BSU's RPI is much worse than Penn's, while Winthrop's is much higher)

Tennesee Martin (13-13, 9-10 Ohio Valley) at Murray State (20-6, 16-3), Saturday, 8:30 p.m.

McNeese State (14-10, 9-4 Southland) at Northwestern State (19-7, 12-1), Saturday, 3 p.m. (NWSU actually has two more games next week before their conference tourney, while the other teams do not)

Manhattan (17-9, 13-4 Metro Atlantic) at Iona (20-6, 13-4), Sunday, 6:15 p.m. I actually am not sure who I want to win this game, because Manhattan is currently in first place in the MAAC via a tiebreaker, but Iona's RPI is much higher, and both teams have better RPIs than Penn. So I guess the Quakers need both teams to not win the MAAC tournament, with Sunday's game irrelevant.

Miami-Ohio (16-8, 12-3 Mid-American) at Kent State (20-7, 13-2), Saturday, 2 p.m. Actually the same problem as the previous game, although the two teams play twice each next week, so there is still some room for them to lose before the MAC tournament.