{"id":237,"date":"2012-03-09T01:46:59","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T01:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=237"},"modified":"2012-03-17T03:20:46","modified_gmt":"2012-03-17T03:20:46","slug":"random-thoughts-about-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=237","title":{"rendered":"Random thoughts about the week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So very excited about the conference tournaments &#8211; they always bring such great storylines.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am strangely turning towards enjoying the tournaments.\u00a0 I have always believed that it seems so unfair that a team can go 16-2 in their conference, win the regular season, and then not get to go to the tournament when they get upset in their conference tournament.<\/p>\n<p>However, the concept is growing on me.\u00a0 There is something strangely appealing about the concept.\u00a0 If you want your season continue, it is simple &#8211; win your next game.\u00a0\u00a0 And so many of the conference finals have been really great games to watch because of that.<\/p>\n<p>Some of my thoughts so far about Championship Week:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The entire bubble let out a sigh of relief when Murray State took the Ohio Valley championship with a last second basket against Tennessee State.<\/li>\n<li>Then, they held their breath again until Creighton finally finished off Illinois State in overtime at the Missouri Valley&#8217;s Arch Madness.<\/li>\n<li>VCU made all of Richmond happy as they held off Drexel to take the Colonial.\u00a0 I really hope the committee lets Drexel dance as well.\u00a0\u00a0 It would seem a shame to not let in a team that won 25 of its last 27 games.<\/li>\n<li>Valparaiso ended any chances of another amazing run from Butler.\u00a0 But then sadly got destroyed by Detroit in the championship game.<\/li>\n<li>An amazing story in the Sun Belt.\u00a0 In January, Western Kentucky fires their coach after going 5-11 and seeing attendance at home games plummet.\u00a0 Interim coach Ron Harper goes 4-7 and gets named full time coach for turning the program in the right direction.\u00a0 Harper and the Hilltoppers reward that decision by winning their next six games &#8211; including coming back from being down double digits in the Sun Belt championship game against North Texas and will be dancing.\u00a0 Remember &#8211; just keep winning, and you get to keep playing.<\/li>\n<li>Harvard earns a bid to the tournament while simply watching the Princeton vs. Penn game.\u00a0 Thanks to a great regular season and the Ivy league rewarding their regular season champion with the NCAA invite, they did their work last weekend to claim at least a share of the title, and then enjoyed watching one of their biggest rivals do them a favor and prevent Penn from tying them.<\/li>\n<li>South Dakota State earns its first ever NCAA bid in an exciting overtime game against Western Illinois.\u00a0 And while this was a wonderful story for the Jackrabbits, you have to feel for WIU.\u00a0\u00a0 They had a 9 point lead with 7 1\/2 minutes left, and could only muster up 8 more points the rest of the game &#8211; including the 5 minute OT &#8211; watching the opportunity for their school&#8217;s first ever invitation to the dance slip away.<\/li>\n<li>I am not a fan of Syracuse &#8211; in fact, I normally root against them (long story).\u00a0 But I have to tremendously thank the Orangemen for beating UConn this afternoon &#8211; simply so that I don&#8217;t have to go through an entire weekend of listening to the press ask if the Huskies can repeat their unlikely 5 game run to win the Big East Championship.<\/li>\n<li>Is it possible for multiple teams to get a bid from the Pac 10, and have neither one of them be the regular season champion.\u00a0\u00a0 Washington found a way to lose to Oregon State today &#8211; making the pundits question if the Huskies will be in the tournament.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, it sadly looks like the longest drought will continue.\u00a0 Northwestern lost in OT to Minnesota in a game they desparately needed.\u00a0 When the Wildcats needed just a few baskets to save their season, they couldn&#8217;t find one.\u00a0 They went 1-6 with 2 turnovers in the last 7 1\/2 minutes of the game, and then repeated that performance in OT as they watched the Gophers slowly pull away.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And I am probably missing something that was a big moment of the week.\u00a0 But enough rambling for now &#8211; need to go cheer for my Boilers &#8211; as they are starting their Big 10 tournament game against Nebraska.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So very excited about the conference tournaments &#8211; they always bring such great storylines.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am strangely turning towards enjoying the tournaments.\u00a0 I have always believed that it seems so unfair that a team can go 16-2 in their conference, win the regular season, and then not get to go to the tournament when they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","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=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}