Monday and Tuesday are the calm before the storm for the Lunatic. Its a chance for him to try some analytical methods to predict the bracket that always tend to look terrible before he desperately drops everything and spends multiple days watching conference tournament games and pouring over team pages.
But Monday and Tuesday is also nice for another reason. Because these are the days that the attention is all on the non-power conferences. None of the power conferences are playing until Tuesday, and those games are of the last place teams trying desperately to win 5 games to keep their season alive. If a bubble team is playing, they typically have to win multiple games to make it interesting to watch.
That is not the case for most of the games on Monday and Tuesday in the non-power conferences. You have a bunch of semi-finals and finals filled with teams that know their season hinges on one or two last wins.
But before we preview tonight’s slate, a couple teams earned some recognition from Sunday. In the Big South, regular season champ UNC-Asheville found themselves down 14 pts to Campbell with 7:37 to play. And then senior guard Tajion Jones lifted his team on his shoulders and led a rally, scoring 16 of UNCA’s last 25 points to lead them to a 77-73 victory.
In the Atlantic Sun, co-regular season champs Kennesaw State and Liberty met in a game that went to the wire. Liberty’s Colin Porter drilled a three-pointer with 23 seconds to play to tie the game at 66. But Kennesaw State’s Terrell Burden drove to the basket and got fouled with less than a second, hit one of the free throws, and Kennesaw State will be going to their first ever NCAA Tournament!
And while not as exciting, it was still equally impressive. In the Missouri Valley, Drake jumped out to a big lead early and cruised to a 77-51 victory over MVC regular season champion Bradley to win the Valley’s auto-bid.
Tonight, at 7 pm, there are two more auto-bids up-for-grabs. In the Sun Belt, 2nd seed Louisiana (25-7) will try to stop the upset run from 8th seed South Alabama (19-15). In the Southern conference, regular season co-champ Furman (26-7) will try to stop 7 seed Chattanooga (18-16). Will the top teams remaining win their conference tournament, or will the two Cinderella teams knock off the top 2 teams from their conference to steal the bid (as South Alabama took out Southern Miss and Chattanooga took out Samford on Saturday).
We also have some significant regular season champions playing their semi-finals. Oral Roberts (28-4, NET 42) play in the Summit semis at 7 against St Thomas. Youngstown State (24-8, NET 117) defend their regular season title in the Horizon semis at 7 against Northern Kentucky. And College of Charleston (29-3, NET 53) plays at 8:30 in the Colonial semis against Towson (21-11). Oral Roberts and Youngstown State have no Quad 1 victories so while they have 28+ wins, it is important they get 2 more victories.
But the true main event starts at 9 pm when the West Coast semis start in Las Vegas. First, #16 St. Mary’s (25-6) will take on BYU (19-14). And then, #9 Gonzaga (26-5) will take on San Francisco (20-13). If you are a fan of a bubble team, you need to be rooting for both Gonzaga and St. Mary’s to win tonight. Otherwise, there will be some very nervous fans on Tuesday hoping that BYU or San Francisco can’t steal the WCC auto-bid. And if you follow the WCC teams, we all know that while Gonzaga and St. Mary’s are clearly the best in the conference, BYU (who has beaten #24 Creighton, Dayton, and Utah this year) and San Francisco (who beat Arizona State and lost by 2 to Gonzaga earlier in the season) are both dangerous teams.
So while the power conferences might not be playing, there should be some great basketball tonight. Enjoy the games.