Game of the day

West Coast Championship – #4 Gonzaga (31-1) vs #19 St. Mary’s (28-3) – This might be the easiest pick of the week.   Mid-major conference championship between two ranked teams with only 4 losses combined.   Gonzaga is responsible for 2 of those 4 losses as the swept St. Mary’s this year.   But St. Mary’s is coming off a 31 point destruction of BYU – the team that ruined Gonzaga’s unbeaten season, so they have to be coming into this game confident.   Should be a great game

Conference Championships:

• Northeast – #1 Mt St Mary’s (18-15) vs #4 St Francis (PA) (16-15) – Mt St Mary’s struggled in the non-conference season, but went 14-4 in conference to take the regular season title.
• Summit – #3 Omaha (18-13) vs #4 South Dakota State (17-16) – South Dakota St took out regular season champs South Dakota to give them a chance against Omaha to head to the dance.
• Horizon – #4 Northern Kentucky (23-10) vs #10 Milwaukee (11-23) – This has been a wild conference tournament that saw 3 of the 4 semi-finalists have losing records.   Milwaukee only won 4 of 18 games in conference, but they now find themselves 1 victory away from the NCAAs after upsetting Detroit, regular-season co-champs Valparaiso, and UIC.  Northern Kentucky was the only one of the top 4 seeds who didn’t lose in the quarter-finals, and now find themselves the favorites in a conference tournament that has not necessarily been the best position.

Other Games of Interest:

•  Wake Forest (19-12) vs Boston College (9-23) – the ACC 1st round games have started – other than enjoying fun ACC games, these are important as Wake Forest (as well as Clemson, Georgia Tech or Pitt) can’t afford a loss in the 1st round if they want to make a late run into the tournament.   Wake gets the nod because they might only need to win this game, while the others definitely need to go deep to get in consideration.

Enjoy the games!!!!