...is shared by the committee then losing to Wake and bid steals can't hurt us. Losing to Wake (again) might drop us to a consensus 9/10 but we'd still have about a 4 to 6 spot cushion above the play-in games so there would have to be a fair amount of chaos at this point to bring that in play (and zero chance of being left out).

My fear is that the committee's opinion may not match that consensus. Maybe the committee has us in right now but as more like a 10, or even a high 11 (last 4 byes, for example). Then we lose tonight. And Houston or somebody wins the AAC. And Rhode Island or somebody wins the A-10. And MTSU is rated ahead of us but blows the C-USA. And, I don't know, Georgia wins the SEC (not like that hasn't screwed us before). Now you're talking about a scenario where a play-in game would be the best case scenario. It all just depends on how the committee views us relative to our impression of what the national consensus is at this point.

In terms of bid steals, the easiest way to think of it is that it isn't the bozo team that wins the conference tournament that is taking some bubble team's slot. It's that conference's favorite who is still going to be in the field ahead of the bubble teams (often way ahead). So, for example, let's say Tennessee wins the SEC tournament. It's not like Tennessee would necessarily get an 8 or 9 seed and therefore push out a bubble team. They might get a 12 or 13. (I think Georgia was a 13 or 14 in 2008.) But Kentucky is still getting a 2 or 3 seed and now that is an at-large bid, which means the cut-off in the seeding for the 36 at-large bids is going to be one slot higher on the S-curve. It's not that we would be behind Tennessee necessarily...it's that we would (obviously) be behind Kentucky. (Or Cincinnati or Dayton or Oregon, etc etc)