It is that time as I look for something to bide the time until Saturday.\u00a0 \u00a0I could watch the NIT championship – where Penn State is playing Utah.\u00a0 \u00a0But lets face it – it is more fun to rant.<\/p>\n
In my grading, I rank based on how they do against their expected seed performance – and then I made some adjustments to come up with a final grade, because it is my rant.<\/p>\n
America East – A+ (+1) –\u00a0<\/strong>They only won a single game.\u00a0 But unless Loyola-Chicago continues to win the entire championship, the most memorable moment of this tournament will be from UMBC.\u00a0 Assuming one of the blue bloods win, 20 years from now, people will likely even have a hard time remembering off the top of their head who won the championship this year.\u00a0 But everyone will remember this is the year a 16 seed beat a 1 seed.\u00a0 UMBC will be showed every time a 16 seed even comes close to winning a game – it might be every time a 1 seed plays their first game.\u00a0 That is one hell of a victory.<\/p>\n Missouri Valley – A+\u00a0 (+4) –\u00a0<\/strong>Loyola-Chicago was a trendy pick as an 11 seed to pull a first round upset.\u00a0 Then, the Ramblers went and beat Tennessee, Nevada and Kansas State to make the Final Four.\u00a0 They are only the 4th 11 seed in history to make it this far.\u00a0 If they can pull two more upsets, they will become the most unexpected champion in NCAA history.\u00a0 While UMBC had the most memorable victory, it was one game.\u00a0 Loyola has won 4 games and is looking to rewrite history.<\/p>\n Big 12 –\u00a0A+ (+4)\u00a0<\/strong>While Kansas was a number 1 seed, even Vegas didn’t think they were going to win the Midwest.\u00a0 \u00a0Now the Jayhawks are in the Final 4.\u00a0 Texas Tech and Kansas State both made the Elite 8 – and Kansas State was a 9 seed.\u00a0 West Virginia also made it to the Sweet 16.\u00a0 Only 1 of the Big 12 teams fell to an upset (TCU lost to Syracuse).\u00a0 Of the major conferences, the Big 12 clearly did the best.<\/p>\n Conf USA, MAC, Mt West and Atlantic 10 – A+ (+3.5)\u00a0<\/strong>Marshall won as a 13 seed to represent Conf USA.\u00a0 \u00a0Buffalo won as a 13 seed for the MAC – completely destroying Arizona.\u00a0 Nevada from the Mountain West overcame a late-season injury to one of their starters to make it all the way to the Sweet 16.\u00a0 And Rhode Island and St. Bonaventure both won games for the Atlantic 10.\u00a0 \u00a0 As a combined group, these mid-majors pulled off some memorable upsets in the tournament.<\/p>\n Big 10 – A- (+0)\u00a0<\/strong>The Big 10 only got 4 teams in the tournament.\u00a0 But one of those teams, Michigan, is still playing in San Antonio.\u00a0 The Wolverines made up for upsets to Purdue and Michigan State.\u00a0 \u00a0However, I also give the Boilermakers a little bit of credit for managing to win their second round game despite losing their star center.\u00a0 All in all, the Big 10 did very well in the tournament.<\/p>\n Big East – B (-3)<\/strong> The Big East is down 3 because of Xavier getting upset in the 2nd round to Florida State when they were supposed to be playing in the Final Four.\u00a0 However, Villanova is playing in the Final Four, and is likely the favorite to cut down the nets in San Antonio.\u00a0 With the Wildcats being in the Final Four, it is hard for this grade to be worse than a B, even with Xavier’s early exit.<\/p>\n SEC – B- (-1)\u00a0 <\/strong>Regular season co-champsTennessee and Auburn were supposed to make the Sweet 16 and ended up leaving early in the 2nd round.\u00a0 \u00a0Kentucky and Texas A&M picked up the slack and made the Sweet 16.\u00a0 But Kentucky blew a great chance to take the South when Virginia went down.\u00a0 And while seeds didn’t expect the SEC to get pass the Sweet 16, it has to be considered a little bit of a disappointment that they had 8 teams and couldn’t get one of them to the Elite 8.<\/p>\n ACC – C (-1.5)\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Virginia will go down in history as the first 1 seed to lose to a 16.\u00a0 3 of the top 6 seeds according to the Selection Committee were from the ACC, and the ACC had 9 teams in total in the tournament.\u00a0 Yet, in a conference that measures success in number of National Championships, there are no ACC schools making the trip to San Antonio.\u00a0 This grade would be much lower if it wasn’t for Florida State’s impressive run to the Elite 8 from a 9 seed, Duke making it to the Elite 8 as they were supposed to, and Syracuse surprising everyone as going from the last at-large team in to the Sweet 16.\u00a0 \u00a0But a couple of nice upset stories is not how the ACC typically is measured – this year was not good for the conference most consider as the best in college basketball.<\/p>\n American – D- (-4)<\/strong> – A lot was made of the fact that Wichita State upgraded from the MVC to the more talented American Conference and they were rewarded with a 4 seed.\u00a0 They took that reward and lost to Marshall (and meanwhile, the conference they left has a team in the Final Four).\u00a0 Cincinnati was supposed to get to the Elite 8 as a 2 seed, and they lost to another mid-major team in Nevada.\u00a0 This was supposed to be the year where the American was going to show that they are as good as some of the major conferences, and they left with only two wins for their star teams.<\/p>\n Pac 12 – F (-3)\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Lots was made about that it was unfair that the Pac 12 only got 3 teams in the tournament.\u00a0 And then UCLA and Arizona State both had to go through the play-in games in Dayton.\u00a0 But then, UCLA lost to mid-major St. Bonaventure.\u00a0 \u00a0Then, Arizona State lost to Syracuse, the last at-large team to make it into the dance.\u00a0 But everyone still expected Arizona to do well.\u00a0 Then, the Wildcats with a player who is potentially going to be one of the top 3 players drafted by the NBA lost by 21 points to Buffalo.\u00a0 The Pac 12 could have came out and showed how they deserved more teams in the dance.\u00a0 \u00a0And instead, this major conference’s season was over by the time Thursday in the first round was over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is that time as I look for something to bide the time until Saturday.\u00a0 \u00a0I could watch the NIT championship – where Penn State is playing Utah.\u00a0 \u00a0But lets face it – it is more fun to rant. In my grading, I rank based on how they do against their expected seed performance – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1357,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions\/1357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}