Monday of Championship Week is typically a showcase for the mid-major conferences.  None of the major conference championships start until Tuesday and Wednesday.  And so all the games are from the smaller conference – including the championship finals of the Southern and MAAC Conferences.

The Southern Conference Championship was of particular interest this year, because it is very rare when you see a ranked team from the Southern Conference.  But that is what Wofford was tonight – as they brought their 20th ranking in the AP poll and 28-4 record to Asheville, NC to play against 2nd seed UNC-Greensboro, who was no slouch at 28-5.

And with 5 minutes and 41 seconds left in the game, UNC-Greensboro led 55-50.  And every team on the bubble’s worse nightmare was starting to become a potential reality – that the 20th ranked Wofford Terriers who have a NCAA NET ranking of 14th would need an at-large bid to get into a tournament – one the Selection Committee most likely would have given.

Then, for the next 4 1/2 minutes, the Terriers went on a 16-0 run, going on to win the Southern Conference Championship 70-58 and ending UNC-Greensboro’s upset bid.  The Spartans now have to hope that their 28-6 record, a close game against Wofford (well – close if you actually watched the game, it is unusual that a team leads for most of the game and ends up losing by 12) and NET ranking of 58th and their close 6 point loss at LSU in November will be enough to get in the tournament.  Unfortunately for the Spartans, if the Selection Committee does what it normally does, that will not likely be enough – which is why the rest of the Bubble was hyper-ventilating for 35 minutes and can suddenly catch their breath.

Wofford is the Southern Conference Champions and will be heading to the Big Dance.  And there will be one more team from the bubble making their way into the tournament because the Terriers had an amazing final 5 minutes to save their undefeated conference record and gain the automatic bid.  Congratulations to the Wofford Terriers!

It is that time – the Lunatic is ranting in full force – and so it must be time to Stomp the Lunatic!!!!!!

My goal is to get the box scores loaded onto the site over the next few days (sorry, I was actually enjoying the games too much to format the files that I have pulled down – but it looks like I solved my box score problem and have all the games through Saturday, March 9th) – will hopefully get those up tomorrow or Tuesday for those who want to start building their models or digging through the data.

But the 2019 Stomp The Lunatic Contest has officially been announced – so for the next week, enjoy my ranting about the conference tournaments (and anything else going on that I want to ramble about on college basketball).  And get ready to STOMP THE LUNATIC!!!!!

Congratulations to Gardner-Webb, Liberty and Bradley – as they will be dancing in the NCAA Tournament.   Gardner-Webb jumped out to a fast start and never looked back to win the Big South Championship.   Liberty kept playing strong in a physical game against Lipscomb – but managed to hit a key three pointer with 11 seconds to claim the Atlantic Sun Championship.  And then, there was Bradley, who came back from being down 18 points to stun Northern Iowa and take the Missouri Valley Championship.

You have to really have a little bit of pity for a mid-major regular season champion.  Because in the cruel world of March supremacy – for these teams, it only matters what you do in 3 games in March – if you are lucky enough to get that far.

Saturday was the perfect example.  In the Missouri Valley conference, last year’s final four darling Loyola-Chicago found themselves the #1 seed in the conference tournament semi-finals.  But #5 seed Bradley did not care about the fact that the Ramblers were going to try to repeat their magical run.  The Braves’ Nate Kannell hit a three pointer to put Bradley up 53-51, and unlike last March, Loyola-Chicago could not hit the three pointer before the buzzer.  So, Bradley advances to the tourney final and Loyola-Chicago will have to bring their act to the NIT.

Of course, the Missouri Valley was ultra-cruel.  That is because #2 seed Drake was actually the regular-season co-champions with the Ramblers.  With the bracket opened up, Drake found themselves in a tight game with #6 seed Northern Iowa.  And after Drake’s Tremell Murphy hit a layup to tie the game at 58 with 8 seconds left, the Panther’s Wyatt Lohaus hit a layup before the buzzer to give Northern Iowa the 2 point victory.

The Summit conference also watched their top seed go down as South Dakota State was upset in the quarterfinals by Western Illinois 79-76.  And so the 24-8 team heads to the NIT and the 10-20 team advances.

If Duke and Virginia play each other for the ACC Tournament Championship next weekend, both teams – win or lose – might still be #1 seeds when the Selection Committee announces the tournament brackets.  But today, in the Atlantic Sun, if top seed Lipscomb (who is 25-6 and won at TCU earlier this season and only lost by 4 at Louisville) loses to second seed and regular-season co-champ Liberty (who is 27-6 but doesn’t have as good of a non-conference profile as Lipscomb), they will be hoping that the Selection Committee gives them a chance as one of the last teams in – while they know they will likely be heading to the NIT.

It is the cruel world that a mid-major champion lives in.  If you are in the ACC or Big 10, or Big 12 or SEC, you can lose in your conference tournament, and it is viewed as you ran up against a desparate bubble team who upset you in a crazy tough conference.  But in a mid-major conference, you are expected to win your tournament – you are not often afforded a second chance – even if your loss is to a 27-6 team.

So, enjoy the mid-major tournaments – these teams are much better than everyone realizes, and there is some really good basketball that is being played when you get two good teams on the court and both of them realize that this might be the last 40 minutes of their season.

 

The Ohio Valley Conference championship has been decided – by the OVC’s biggest star.  Murray State finished off Belmont 77-65 as Ja Morant scored 36 points to lead the Racers to the tournament.

It has been a great day of basketball – watching Virginia come back to beat Louisville and take a share of the ACC.  Watching North Carolina come out a couple down at halftime and take a big lead before holding off one last Duke run to win the other share of the ACC.  Michigan State came back from down 9 to knock off Michigan and win a share of the Big 10 championship.

And while those games are all big – and matter a lot in the seeding of the top teams, there is only one game tonight that ensured a team a ticket to the dance – and that ticket belongs to the Ohio Valley Champions – the Murray State Racers!

Congratulations to my Purdue Boilermakers of being one of the two 2019 Big 10 regular season co-champions!!!!!  It wasn’t always pretty, but Purdue managed to stop a few Wildcat runs in the second half and won at Northwestern 70-57.

The Boilermakers have now won 24 Big 10 regular season championships, the most of any of the Big 10 teams!!!!

The BTN staff mentioned something that might make this even more incredible.  They mentioned that this team has managed to win the Big 10 championship with no recruits who were ranked higher than 60th.  These players understand their roles and play hard, and that effort and the development that they have shown under Matt Painter is a great success story that you can win in college basketball without needing to get 1-and-done stars.

Great job Boilermakers!!!!!!!   BOILER UP!!!!!!!

If today doesn’t get you excited about March Madness, you are probably not a college basketball fan.  Just think about this list of games:

• The Ohio Valley Conference will become the first team to officially send a team to the tournament tonight at 8 pm – their conference championship game should be fantastic – it is Belmont (26-4) vs. Murray St (26-4).  Both teams are very talented, and both probably deserve to be in the Tournament.  But when you are from the Ohio Valley Conference, it is wise to win the automatic bid.
• Obviously the game I am most interested in – Purdue is at Northwestern – if the Boilermakers win, they win a share of the Big 10 championship.  Then, tonight Michigan and Michigan State play to decide the rest of the title.
• In the ACC, Virginia will try to wrap up a share of the conference championship if they can win at home against Louisville
• In the Big 12, Texas Tech plays at Iowa State and Kansas State hosts Oklahoma – if both win, they will share the Big 12 championship.
• In the Big East, Villanova can claim the title outright if they win on the road at Seton Hall (who is playing to try to stay on the bubble).  If they lose, Marquette can share the title if the beat Georgetown (who is also on the bubble).
• In the SEC, Tennesse can claim a share of the title if they beat Auburn.  LSU also could claim a share of the title against Vanderbilt.

And we haven’t even talked about all the bubble teams trying to get one more win and be in a safer position before the major conference tournaments start.

Oh – and of course, there is that game at 6 pm – as #3 North Carolina hosts #4 Duke – as the Tar Heels have a chance to win a share of the ACC championship, and Duke tries to get revenge for the loss in Durham and show that they still are the team deserving a #1 seed in the tournament.  Of course, there is the drama surrounding if Zion Williamson will play tonight – as he recovers from a knee injury suffered in the first meeting between these two powerhouses.

Final weekend of the major conferences regular season.  Many of the smaller conferences are playing their conference tournaments.  Bubble games all over the place.  And Duke / UNC.   It must be March!!!!!  Enjoy the games!

Well – you have to figure the LSU administration was under a lot of pressure – as they came out today announcing that based on the evidence in the Yahoo! Sports story on the FBI investigation and wiretaps, they have indefinitely suspended head coach Will Wade.

But before we get too far about lauding LSU for doing the right thing, lets remember this is all about illegal recruiting and paying players.  Will Wade has been at LSU for two years.  He has recruited 13 players to the Tigers – 2 of which were kicked off the team for disciplinary reasons, 2 of them have transferred, and the other 9 (including Javonte Smart – the believed recruit that was being discussed in the wiretap) are still playing on the #10 LSU Tigers.

If Will Wade truly paid a player – which it appears based on the wiretap that he did – then the player he paid is most likely still on the team – which means the Tigers are playing with an ineligible player.  LSU is suspending Wade because it looks like they are doing the right thing in the media.   But the right thing would not be simply suspending Wade – it would be suspending the team from post-season play.

If all of this is true, LSU is eventually going to be punished with a likely ban from the NCAA Tournament.  But if that happens at the speed of a normal NCAA investigation, that punishment won’t happen while the players who committed the infraction are there (since those are the players that some believe could make the Final Four with the right draw).  The players that will be punished will be the ones who are not even at the university yet – the ones who theoretically did nothing wrong (since it would be pretty gutsy for the university to continue to pay players to play while they are being investigated for it).

But the media is talking about how LSU did the right thing.  That was what they wanted everyone to believe – that way, they can still compete for a National Title while they have all this talent.  The right thing would have been to suspend the team – not just the coach.

 

Just figured I should mention as I came down pretty hard on Kansas yesterday – at a time when their fan base might be down.  So want to make several things clear by going on another ridiculously long rant that probably doesn’t clear anything up.

I actually have always liked Kansas, and I had a lot of respect for how amazing a coach both Roy Williams and Bill Self have been.  They always seem to be a title contender – which is amazing to be in the mix every year.  (By the way, not saying that Roy Williams is involved in any of this – just saying that Kansas has had amazing coaches).

It also might be that this player was involved with the Adidas runner because of another school, and somehow ended up changing his mind and going to Kansas.  There are lots of pieces of information that are unknown – and the only public information implicates the player, not the school.

It also might be that all the schools are guilty of this – everyone does it, and it just happens so far behind the scenes that the NCAA looks the other way.  I really hope this isn’t the case, but with all the stories you hear, it is hard not to believe that some of the players are being paid behind the scenes and that it is not isolated to 4-5 schools.

My problem with what Bill Self said is that the NCAA’s punishment was vindictive for what is a clear violation to the rules.  As a Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame basketball coach, he needs to be making statements about how we need a fair playing field and these players being paid by runners and agents is a major problem.  He could have said something like De Souza knows what he did was wrong and is really sorry for it, and considering past punishments for this type of violation, two years seems like too much.

But there is a difference between saying that a violation happened and the punishment doesn’t meet the crime, and saying that the NCAA is being vindictive to a player who didn’t commit a violation (despite a federal case sending people to jail for that non-violation).

If he believes the players should be paid, he should work behind the scenes with the NCAA to change the rules – I am sure a hall of fame coach would have some weight in that conversation if he approached it correctly.  But what is happening with the FBI investigation into college basketball recruiting is a big deal – saying the player did nothing wrong is a horrible message to send.

In the meantime, it came out in a Yahoo! Sports Exclusive today that LSU’s coach Will Wade is actually on the wire-tap talking to the runner who was sentenced to six months in federal prison discussing an offer about a current recruit and a future recruit.  Once again, this makes me sad because I like Wade – he was VCU’s coach for a couple seasons before heading to LSU.

But it shows why this is a problem.  LSU was 10-21 the season before hiring Wade.  And in only 2 years Wade helped LSU achieve the 17th and 4th best recruiting classes in the country according to 247Sports, and now are 24-5, tied for first place in the SEC and are the #10 team in the country.  Pretty amazing turnaround for a program.  That is amazing unless the program is paying these top recruits to come to LSU…..

Another problem is there is a difference between a Yahoo! sports article saying that the FBI has this evidence vs. the evidence has already been revealed in federal court.  The FBI has federal charges of bribery being tried in April where Wade and Arizona coach Sean Miller have been subpoenaed to testify.  Maybe during that trial, these wiretaps will be officially revealed.

If the report is correct, the NCAA should be ruling the LSU Tigers are immediately ineligible for the Tournament and Will Wade will no longer be able to coach in college basketball.  But I don’t know that the NCAA can act to suspend Wade for wrong-doing  and potentially impact whether the federal bribery case can get a fair trial (although I guess can they get a fair trial if Yahoo is reporting evidence that a potential jury pool can see).  Maybe LSU would step in and do the right thing and suspend Wade and the team.   I doubt that LSU will do that with the money that is potentially available from the tournament, but stranger things have happened.  While I hate to admit it, one of the comments that ex-Louisville coach Rick Pitino said rings true – the NCAA can take away our banners, but they can’t change what happened on the court – we won that National Championship.  Hard to do the right thing when winning is so important to everyone….

In a perfect world, the NCAA would send more of a message – while they might not have enough evidence to stop LSU from playing in this year’s tournament and due process is necessary for such a major claim of breaking the rules, they have enough probable cause to suspend Wade indefinitely until all the evidence plays out.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  And if that evidence is true, his coaching career should be done.  Sadly though, this case will probably drag out for a long time, and we all know NCAA investigations are anything but fast (I think the UNC academic scandal first came to light in 2011 and the investigation ended in 2017 with no punishment…)

Maybe Self is right – considering academic scandals don’t get a school punished, why should a player be suspended 2 years for taking money.  I just hate to think that is right – we have rules for a reason that should be followed.  But sadly, the NCAA simply isn’t very consistent with its rulings.

With any streak, it eventually has to end.  What the Kansas Jayhawks had done was incredible – and might never be matched again.  Kansas had won 14 straight Big 12 championships.

But last night as I was yelling at my computer about why I had all these scores of 0-0, I didn’t even realize that I could be watching history.  That is because the Kansas Jayhawks were on the road being upset by the Oklahoma Sooners (on the Sooners’ Senior Night).  The Jayhawks were always going to need help – as they were behind both Texas Tech and Kansas State going into the week.  But they are now 2 games back of both teams with everyone only having one game left to play.  There will be no regular season banner in Lawrence this year.

Kansas was supposed to be amazing this year – there have been multiple years where pundits would say this streak would finally end just to watch the Jayhawks chalk up another title.  This was not supposed to be one of those years – they were the preseason #1 team in the country.  Not just the #1 team in the Big 12 – the entire country.  But injuries and suspensions and a strange leave of absence have turned this title contender into simply a really good team which can be beat by other good teams with the right circumstances.  Oklahoma on Senior Night trying to get off the bubble certainly qualified.

That being said, I do have to rant – and the bad karma that has hit the Jayhawks gives me a reason to.  That is because the school’s reaction to sophomore Silvio De Souza’s further suspension is ridiculous.

For those who don’t know, Silvio De Souza because in October, it was revealed in federal court that Adidas consultant TJ Gassnola had paid De Souza’s guardian $2,500 – presumably as a payment to go to college at Kansas and eventually sign with Adidas.  And so, he has been sitting ever since – until February, when the NCAA ended the suspense and ruled him ineligible for the rest of this season and all of next season.  This situation prompted the following statement from Kansas head coach Bill Self.

“In my 30-plus years of coaching college basketball, I have never witnessed such a mean-spirited and vindictive punishment against a young man who did nothing wrong.  To take away his opportunity to play college basketball is shameful and a failure of the NCAA.”

So, to be fair – I know nothing about Silvio De Souza – maybe he is a great kid and simply an innocent pawn in the horrible dark side of college basketball that the NCAA would rather just have swept under the rug instead of be brought out into the headlines from time to time as the FBI successfully shows evidence of the corruption that happens to get top college basketball recruits.

But regardless of if this young man himself did nothing wrong, his guardian was paid money (and proven by the FBI) – the NCAA has to penalize him.  To be quite honest, considering how high profile the FBI case is, I am surprised he was given the chance to play a senior season if he sticks around.  In most of these cases, by the time the NCAA can identify the corruption, the player is already long gone to the NBA – and the only punishment that can be given is to the school.  Silvio De Souza is part of what might be the biggest scandal in NCAA athletics – and is still a student that can actually be declared ineligible.  The NCAA had to act – and act swiftly to try to show how stiff the penalty will be for this.

That being said, you have to wonder.  Kansas has been great for so long.  They have won 14 straight Big 12 championships as well as making it to 3 Final Fours during that span with a National Championship in 2008.  Every year, they have one of the best recruiting classes in basketball.  I would like to believe that is because they have had great coaches and top players like to go to successful programs.  But it is really hard to believe that De Souza was an isolated case that Kansas knew nothing about.

It is really unclear what other evidence is out there and how involved Kansas is in this – while it is hard to give them the benefit of the doubt, I do truly believe that the evidence needs to come out completely before any school can be dragged into this mess.  It appears as though the NCAA isn’t going to be allowed to truly investigate the schools on this until the FBI is done.  Who knows how much the FBI knows about the corruption of college basketball recruiting – and how much of that the NCAA already knows vs. will eventually be told.  But Bill Self’s statement – while might seem like he is standing up for his player – is totally out of line.  While the evidence in the federal court might not have fully led to Kansas, it clearly revealed that this particular student athlete’s family was paid and thus, he should be ineligible.

If Bill Self is going to come out and be righteous and make this type of declaration, I really hope that he is truly not involved in any of this corruption.  For if he is, he might actually find out what a mean-spirited and vindictive punishment  really is by the time the NCAA gets finished with him and the Kansas basketball program.