In the power conferences, there will be some critical games this week as teams on the bubble try to convince the Selection Committee they belong as one of the 37 best at-large teams. But in the world of 15 of the mid-major conferences, their regular seasons are over and this week is the beginning of their conference tournaments.

The simplest way of thinking of the NCAA Tournament is that it is a great 68 team single elimination tournament. But in reality, it is a 300+ team tournament with wild and different bracket structures that for many teams will be a single elimination tournament, with a strange break in the middle where a selection committee decides that 37 teams will get a second chance and then will reseed everyone. While I haven’t checked where teams stand, I suspect for many of the 15 conferences that have started the conference tournaments this week, these teams are playing games where if they lose, their season is over.

This can be heartbreaking for teams like 27-4 High Point or 26-5 Belmont, who won their conference regular season titles by multiple games, and now in order to get the rewards of playing for the NCAA National Championship, they must win their next 2-3 games. But that is the life of being in a mid-major conference – their champions do not get the benefits that teams like Michigan, Duke and Arizona get when their tournaments start.

If Nick Boyd from Wisconsin (who averages 20 pts a game) gets hot and blows up for 46 points to upset Michigan in the Big 10 tournament, the Wolverines will still be the #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. If Radford’s Dennis Parker Jr (who averages 18 pts a game) gets hot and blows up for 46 points to upset High Point, then High Point is heading to the NIT. There will be so much more attention to the power conference tournaments next week – but the most pressure-packed tournaments are starting right now.

Some conferences have structured their tournaments in ways to try to give those regular season champions. Some give their champions byes until the semi-finals so they only need to win 2 games. Some play the games on the campus of the better seed so that they have to huge advantage of playing in front of their home crowd.

The Horizon Conference does a fascinating tournament where they had their 10th and 11 seed play into the 1st round, the remaining ten teams play the first round today. Then, the worst two seeds play to get into the semi-finals, which then have the best remaining seed play that winner while the other two winners from the 1st round play each other.

But the one method that has caught my attention the most is done by the Sun Belt and the WCC. I think I have heard others refer to it this way – but I call it the gauntlet. The tournament bracket has two paths – the worst 4 teams play first. Waiting for the winners of that game is the next two teams, and so-on until you get to the semi-finals where the top two teams are waiting.

In principle, there is a lot to like about this tournament. If you are regular season champion Troy, you need to win two games to earn the conference’s automatic bid. If you were last place UL-Monroe, you need to win seven games to claim the championship. This tends to be unlikely – when a team goes 1-17 in the season, they don’t typically make a 7 game run (and they did not here as well – they lost by 7 to Old Dominion last night). So it has a redeeming quality that if a team is going to claim the championship from the regular season team, they have to basically win more games.

But the Sun Belt tournament has received some additional attention this year because of the closeness of the league. While I don’t think that a team from the Sun Belt is going to suddenly make the Elite 8 once the tournament begins, it should be an incredibly competitive tournament based on the conference standings. It is also the year that the gauntlet style tournament goes from redeeming to unfair. That will make sense once you see the bracket. And not just because I am rooting for JMU with my son.

SECOND ROUND – tonight (all games in Pensacola, FL – top line plays the winner from the previous top line)

• 9 – James Madison (9-9, 17-14, NET 209) vs 12 – Louisiana (7-11, 11-21, NET 310)
• 10 – Georgia Southern (8-10, 16-15, NET 252) vs 11 – Old Dominion (7-11, 12-20, NET 253)

THIRD ROUND – Thursday

• 8 – Southern Miss (9-9, 16-15, NET 223) vs top line winner
• 7 – Arkansas State (11-7, 20-11, NET 145) vs bottom line winner

FOURTH ROUND – Friday

• 5 – Texas State (11-7, 19-12, NET 234) vs top line winner
• 6 – South Alabama (11-7, 21-20, NET 177) vs bottom line winner

QUARTERFINALS – Saturday

• 4 – Appalachian State (11-7, 19-12, NET 184) vs top line winner
• 3 – Coastal Carolina (11-7, 19-12, NET 217) vs bottom line winner

SEMIFINALS – Sunday

• 1 – Troy (12-6, 20-11, NET 138) vs top line winner
• 2 – Marshall (11-7, 19-12, NET 163) vs bottom line winner

FINAL – Monday at 6 pm on ESPN2

That’s right. Troy won the conference with a 12-6 record and then there was a 6 team tie for second just one game back. So, because of the tie-breaker system (that I am not sure I understand and certainly not going to try to explain), Arkansas State finished in a tie for 2nd and will need to win 5 games in 5 days to claim the Sun Belt automatic bid, while Marshall will only need to win 2 games in 2 days to claim the trip to the NCAA Championship.

Friday night, Coastal Carolina was down 1 with 10 seconds to play at JMU when Joshua Beadle drove to the lane and then sank a last-second, step-back fade-away jumper from 18 feet to win the game. If Beadle missed that shot, Coastal would have fell from 3rd to 8th and needed to win 5 games in the tournament instead of only 3. That’s right – a last second buzzer beater was the difference of having to play 2 extra games.

According to the NET, Arkansas State is the 2nd best team in the conference. But because of the 6 game tie-break (and apparently the bad luck that 4 of their losses came to JMU, Marshall, Troy and South Alabama), they will have to win 5 games while Marshall only has to win 2 games.

Lets put this closeness into perspective. If you look at the 5 power conferences

• ACC – Duke has a 2 game lead over Virginia and a 3 game lead over Miami
• Big 12 – Arizona has a 2 game lead over Houston and a 3 game lead over Texas Tech
• Big 10 – Michigan has a 3 game lead over Illinois
• Big East – UConn and St. John’s are tied with Villanova 3 games back
• SEC – Florida has a 3 game lead over Alabama and Arkansas

So, if the major conferences played the same gauntlet.

The teams 3 games behind the regular season champion would need to play.

• ACC – 3 games – bye to the quarterfinals (3rd)
• Big 12 – 3 games – bye to the quarterfinals (3rd)
• Big 10 – 2 games – bye to the semi-finals (2nd)
• Big East – 3 games – bye to the quarterfinals (3rd)
• SEC – 2-3 games based on tiebreak – worst is bye to the quarterfinals (3rd)

The last team in the Sun Belt that was 3 games behind the regular season champion will play 6 games since JMU finished 9th (well tied for 8th). And the 6 teams tied just 1 game behind the champion have to play somewhere between 2 – 5 games. That is just brutal for a conference where the only team that will go to the dance is the one that wins the final next Monday night.

The Sun Belt gauntlet should lead to an incredible week of close games between a conference that has several teams all of the same talent level. And it certainly gives Troy, the regular season champion an easier path as it is designed. I guess there is a question about a streaking team getting comfortable with the neutral court – but they will still potentially be playing their 4th or 5th game in that many days. But in general, it has to be better to only win 2 games in a row vs. 3-6 games.

But if you are a fan of Arkansas State, it is a little heartbreaking to realize that if they had won one of the two overtime losses to South Alabama this season, they would be watching the gauntlet as everyone beats each other up for the previous 5 days until Sunday’s semi-final instead of starting the gauntlet on Thursday and having to be the team beating everyone up for the next 5 days. Of course, you could probably say that for any of the 6 teams that finished in the 6-way tie – they all had a close game somewhere that they probably wish they could have back now that the gauntlet is set.

If they were in the Big 10, it probably wouldn’t matter since a six way tie for 2nd would likely lead to at large bids for all 6 teams. But in the Sun Belt, you either win the gauntlet or your season is over. That is the brutal nature of Mid-Major Madness.