Tonight, we have a cautionary tale of how magical March can be, but that for every magical story, there tends to be utter heartbreak. Maybe it was appropriate that I just got home from seeing Moulin Rouge.
In Evansville, Indiana, the Ohio Valley Conference hosted the first championship game of Championship Week, as regular-season SE Missouri State played 2nd place SIU-Edwardsville. The Cougars jumped out to an 11 point lead at half-time, watched as the regular season champions came all the way back to be down 41-40. And then SIU-Edwardsville would outplay the champs the rest of the way, finishing the game on a 28-8 run to win the Ohio Valley Championship.
The magic is the stories that will follow as this is the first time ever that SIU-Edwardsville will be heading to the NCAA Tournament. The heart-break is obviously what happens to SE Missouri State. The Redhawks don’t have the luxury that teams like Auburn, Duke, Houston, Michigan State and St. John’s have. If one of those regular season conference champions lose in their tournament, they are still likely going to get a top 2-3 seed in the NCAA championship. There will be no dancing for the Redhawks – the Selection Committee is not going to be giving the OVC regular season champion who went 15-5 in their conference an at-large bid.
What makes this sadder is realizing what happened in the regular season. In December, the Redhawks played to Cougars at home and won by 16 points. 9 days ago, they made the trip to Edwardsville, and beat SIUE by 15 points. They dominated the Cougars in two games in the regular season. But it can be tough to beat a team three times in the same season, and unfortunately for SE Missouri State, the only game that matters is the one that they lost.
Over the next several days, the other 30 conferences will be determining who gets their automatic bid from their tournaments. But some of the most important ones will be over the next few days. And that is because for these conferences, they have no margin of error. Dominance in the regular season gets thrown completely out, and all that matters is how you play over 3-5 days.
Congratulations to the SIU-Edwardsville Cougars on being the first team in 2025 to earn their invitation to the NCAA Championships.