This is the season when bubbles get burst.

Selection Sunday for the NCAA men's basketball tournament is a week away, which means conference tournaments -- for the major conferences, anyway -- get going this week.

For many college basketball fans, it is actually the best week of the season, with meaningful, intense, do-or-die games taking place virtually every day and night.

Of course, there will be the usual suspense regarding which teams are on the bubble -- the final half-dozen or so schools with not-so-secure chances of making the Big Dance.

But don't get your hopes up if you are a fan of one of those teams -- a Notre Dame, San Diego State or UConn, for instance.

ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi, responding to a question in a conference call last week regarding the perceived weakness of this year's tournament field, said the "bubble" is as weak as it has ever been.

"But I don't think the field itself is overly weak," Lunardi said. "What might be giving that impression is that it is composed differently."

Whereas longtime powers such as North Carolina, UCLA, Indiana and Arizona are on the outside looking in this year -- barring conference tournament championship wins -- Lunardi says some schools not normally viewed as powerhouses are better than people think this year.

"The brand-name quality of the field is off," he said. "But New Mexico and BYU are good out of the Mountain West and there are good teams in the Atlantic-10 and elsewhere."

On the top end of the spectrum, most experts agree that the top four seeds are almost set.

Top-ranked Syracuse, No. 2 Kansas and No. 3 Kentucky will get No. 1 seeds, regardless of what happens in the Big East, Big 12 and SEC conference tournaments.

After that, it gets tricky.

On an eight-game winning streak, Duke (26-5) was seemingly headed toward a No. 1 seed before it fell 79-72 at court-storming Maryland on Wednesday, and now the Blue Devils will probably have to win the ACC tournament to regain their standing as a No. 1 seed.

Incidentally, that fourth No. 1 seed will most likely be sent by the selection committee to the West Region and will land at Salt Lake City's EnergySolutions Arena if it makes it to the Sweet 16.

BYU fans are already dreaming about a potential Duke-BYU matchup at ESA, although it appears that the Cougars will be sent to the East Region and New Mexico to the West, seeing as how the MWC duo can't go to the same region and the Lobos will "stay home" due to a better seed than BYU.

Lunardi has Kansas State as the fourth No. 1 seed in the projections he released Friday. Villanova and Purdue are also possibilities, although the Boilermakers have lost star forward Robbie Hummel for the season with a knee injury and are no longer as good as their 25-4 record suggests.

Speaking of MWC regular-season champ New Mexico, the Lobos can probably earn a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament if they can win the MWC tournament, and especially if they can knock off No. 14 BYU for a third-straight time in the championship game.

New Mexico is hovering between a No. 2 and a No. 3 seed right now, Lunardi said, and probably has the best chance of any so-called mid-major team of making the Final Four.

"I think there's actually a decent chance of [a non-BCS team] making it this year because of the strength of the Mountain West and A-10," he said. "To my eyes, those are not mid-major leagues. They didn't used to be called mid-major leagues until the BCS football exploded. BYU draws 23,000 a game. Is that a mid-major? Xavier has been to two Elite Eights in the past six years. Is that mid-major?"

drew@sltrib.com