Imagine the following scenario…..Next week, Big 10 regular season co-champions Wisconsin and Michigan State (or Maryland – remember this is simply a hypothetical, so I picked the top 2 seeds.\u00a0 Nothing against the Terps…..) survive the gauntlet of the Big 10 tournament to reach the final.\u00a0 In an amazingly entertaining game that goes back and forth, the Badgers find themselves down 1 with 11 seconds to play, come down the court, and make a last second shot for a 1 point victory over the Spartans.\u00a0 And as Wisconsin celebrates at mid-court for their championship and invitation to the NCAA tournament, Michigan State players sadly walk off the court knowing that after an amazing season, they will probably not even be heading to the NIT…….<\/p>\n
Of course that is ridiculous.\u00a0 Because we all know that a 24-10 Big 10 co-champion would certainly get an at-large bid from the committee, especially after losing in a thrilling buzzer beater.<\/p>\n
However, lets change the name – and no longer deal with hypothetical.\u00a0 The conference name is now the Ohio Valley Conference.\u00a0 The co-champions are Belmont (25-7) and Murray State (23-8).\u00a0 And their game went exactly as I said above – when Belmont won in the final seconds on a beautiful play.\u00a0 And now Murray State, with their NET ranking being 135th and not getting the benefit of the automatic NIT bid (since Belmont won the tie-breaker and was the #1 seed in the conference tournament), will be waiting hoping that someone (whether it be the NIT, CBI or CIT) will invite them to play a few more games.<\/p>\n
That is what life is like in these conference tournaments for the mid-majors.\u00a0 For conferences like the Big 10 or the ACC, it is a chance for teams to strengthen their seed, or for a bubble team to earn their way into the field.\u00a0 But in conferences like the Ohio Valley, losing means your season is likely over.\u00a0 It is win or go home.<\/p>\n
Take the Missouri Valley.\u00a0 Northern Iowa was 25-5 going into the tournament with a NET ranking of 36.\u00a0 Then, they got upset in the first round of the MVC tournament to 8th seeded Drake, and their NET ranking slipped all the way to 48th.\u00a0 And now it looks like there is a very good chance that they will be going to the NIT.\u00a0 If Wisconsin gets upset on Friday by #8 Rutgers or #9 Michigan, no one will bat an eye as they put the Badgers into the field.<\/p>\n
Now, I am not trying to make an argument that Murray State or Northern Iowa should be in the tournament.\u00a0 Murray State’s best victory this season is their home game against Belmont.\u00a0 Northern Iowa is resting their hopes on a schedule that only has a victory at Colorado and on a neutral court against South Carolina.\u00a0 It is simply to illustrate how much Championship Week means to these schools.\u00a0 You can go 19-1 in conference like Stephen F Austin did, go 28-3 overall – and if you don’t win 3 games in back-to-back days of your conference tournament, not even your road victory against Duke will likely save your season.\u00a0 Because you will still have a NET ranking of 78 and be compared against teams with a lot more losses, but a lot more wins against other tournament worthy teams.<\/p>\n
Right now, only Gonzaga (WCC), Dayton (Atlantic 10), and San Diego State (Mt West – who lost in their tournament on a buzzer beater) look like they can easily survive a tournament lost.\u00a0 American co-champion Houston at 21st looks like they are probably safe as well (but it is best for them not to get upset in the first round like Northern Iowa did).\u00a0 East Tennessee State (who will be playing for the Southern championship on Monday at 40th) and Northern Iowa (who are hoping the committee will look at them at 48th) will at least get some consideration from the committee.\u00a0 And while technically, Yale (Ivy – 69th), Akron (MAC – 73rd), Stephen F Austin (Southland – 78th) and Vermont (America East – 79th) are in the top 80 and hovering around bubble team UCLA, it is very clear that they better win like Atlantic Sun champion Liberty did today.\u00a0 And there are still several regular season mid-major champions that did not even get mentioned in that paragraph.<\/p>\n
That is the life of a mid-major regular season conference champion.\u00a0 If you get a chance, watch some of these games.\u00a0 For one reason, there are some really good teams playing in these games (as I said, SFA beat Duke at Cameron – that doesn’t typically happen if you are not a good team).\u00a0 But the passion in these games will be incredible.\u00a0 It isn’t that teams like Duke or Kansas won’t also play with emotion – everyone wants to win a conference championship.\u00a0 But unlike Duke or Kansas, these schools know their season is over if they lose.\u00a0 It is worth watching – and it is worth our admiration.\u00a0 Good luck to all the regular season conference champions this week!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imagine the following scenario…..Next week, Big 10 regular season co-champions Wisconsin and Michigan State (or Maryland – remember this is simply a hypothetical, so I picked the top 2 seeds.\u00a0 Nothing against the Terps…..) survive the gauntlet of the Big 10 tournament to reach the final.\u00a0 In an amazingly entertaining game that goes back and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog2020"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725","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=1725"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1729,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions\/1729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}