The Lunatic is so excited – the tournament is literally around the corner. And his Boilers are giving him hope that they can still achieve some of their goals of the season as they have made it to the Big 10 Championship final against Michigan. There would certainly be no harm in losing to the Wolverines, who will be one of the top 4 seeds of the tournament as only Wisconsin and Duke have lost to them. But it would certainly be a statement that they have come back from their losing streak to end the regular season.

Bubble teams should thank Arkansas for ending the reign of terror in Nashville being caused by Ole Miss, despite needing overtime to do it. The Rebels certainly are not making the at-large field at 15-20, but they were an overtime period away from playing Vanderbilt for the SEC title today.

Bubble teams should be afraid of Dayton, as the Flyers knocked off St. Louis in one of the most exciting games of the day. Is VCU’s at-large bid secure based on making it to the Atlantic 10 final, or do they need to beat the Flyers to keep their spot in the field. This is one of those places where I think the Sunday championships are detrimental. I know for a fact that the committee creates alternative brackets based on the results of the 5 games today. But this is one of those games where you simply think – it would be so easy to list the winner of the VCU / Dayton game as the first automatic qualifier as a 12 seed. I trust the committee has done the right thing – and theoretically, that means that if Dayton upsets the Rams today, the Atlantic 10 could be seeing 3 teams in the tournament.

What to do about the final #1 seed? Florida seemed to have a strangehold on it until Vanderbilt dismantled them. It doesn’t seem right that UConn claims the last spot when they didn’t get either the Big East regular season or tournament championship – as St. John’s took them down convincingly last night at Madison Square Garden. Houston might have made the best argument for it – but they couldn’t complete their comeback against #3 Arizona. I am going to give the nod to the Gators, but I am interested to see what the Committee does.

If you believe in karma (and the Lunatic believes in lots of superstitious things but especially karma), the final game of the night might have been one of those examples. The WAC tournament opened with some drama of threatening to remove its regular season champions Utah Valley over exit fees that the school was refusing to pay and had not put into escrow while the court case was being decided.

Well, Utah Valley did comply and put the money is escrow and were allowed to play in the tournament. And it looked like they were going to win the automatic bid last night as they held a 59-52 lead with just 3 minutes to play as Jackson Holcombe got fouled while making a layup and hit the free throw to complete the three-point play. But California Baptist’s Dominique Daniels Jr would hit three 3 pointers including one with 17 seconds left to cap off an 11-2 run to take the lead 63-61. The Wolverines would get one more chance, as Trevan Leonhardt almost ran the pick and roll play with Isaac Davis to perfection as the Lancers converged on Leonhardt and could only watch as Leonhardt’s lob pass went up to the outstretched hands to Davis above the rim. And then Davis missed the dunk and the clock hit zero sending California Baptist to the dance.

The Lunatic managed to complete 4 of his 5 goals. He certainly watched some good basketball, his Boilers won, he got the data converted, and got to spend some time with Charlie, Katie and Elizabeth as we had a wonderful dinner out with one of our good friends, Anna. I even had managed to spend some time collecting information from the Websites that I can’t scrape with Python (such as the Kenpom, KPI and BPI rankings) to help with my Bracketology. And then my old body tired out once we got home from dinner – I did at least get to watch the ending of the Duke / Virginia game. The Cavaliers really gave the Blue Devils a battle as they held Cameron Boozer in check, but Isaiah Evans scored 20 including a big three-pointer to give them a 3 point lead with about 5 minutes left, and Cayden Boozer added 16 including a layup with about 2 minutes left to keep the Blue Devils ahead. And then Duke’s defense held off any late rallies from the Cavaliers to lock in their spot as the number 1 team in the country.

So, I have a ridiculous amount of work to do today on bracketology. I don’t even know how I am going to answer the bubble questions. But it still was a very nice day for the Lunatic.

With 5 championships all that is remaining in the schedule, lets look at what we have.

We start at Noon on ESPN2 as the Ivy League decides their bid with regular season champion Yale (24-5) plays Penn (17-11). Yale has decent NET numbers but without a Quad 1 win, they need to claim the Ivy’s automatic bid.

At 1 pm on ESPN, #17 Arkansas plays #22 Vanderbilt at what will feel like a home game for the Commodores in the SEC Championship in Nashville, TN. Both teams are close to each other in rankings, so this might be the difference between which team is a 4 seed and which one is a 5 seed.

At 1 pm on CBS, the Atlantic 10 tips off with the most bracket-influencing game of the day as VCU will play Dayton in Pittsburgh. With many of the bubble teams losing early, it was believed that VCU would hold on to its at large bid if it reached the final. But that was because it was believed they would be playing regular season champion St. Louis – can their resume withstand a loss to Dayton?

At 3:15 pm on ESPN, the American Conference has regular season champion South Florida trying to defend their championship against 2nd place Wichita State. South Florida has a NET ranking of 45 so it will be interesting to see what the selection committee does with the Bulls if they can’t claim the automatic bid from the conference.

And finally, at 3:30 pm on CBS, my 18th ranked Boilers will play the 3rd ranked Michigan Wolverines and try to become only the second team in the Big 10 to beat the mighty Wolverines. Seeding for these teams will probably be set regardless of the outcome, but it should be a fantastic game to watch.

And of course, at 6 pm on CBS, the Selection Committee will announce the 68 teams for the NCAA men’s basketball championship. And then, it will be time to Stomp the Lunatic!!!!