This was fun last year – so I will try to do again. Not sure I will update every day this week between taking Katie to rugby practices and figuring out my own bracketology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today and tomorrow are important days for the mid-major tournaments. Most of the major conference bubble teams don\u2019t start playing until Wednesday or Thursday, so it is an opportunity for the conference championships to take the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two more teams will punch their ticket to the dance – both playing on the ESPN channels at 7pm EST. In the Sun Belt, 2nd seeded James Madison (30-3) will take on the Arkansas State (18-15) team that shockingly took out Appalachian State on a wild and well defended buzzer beater on Sunday. Both the bubble teams and JMU fans will be rooting for the favorite – it is unclear that the committee would leave out a 30 win team, but with the only win on that resume against a possible tournament team being their opener at Michigan State, it would be great for everyone if they simply take the Sun Belt\u2019s auto-bid. It should be a good game as these teams played to a 4 pt game in the season – and Arkansas State is playing their best basketball of the season at the right time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Southern, regular season champion Samford (28-5) takes on East Tennessee State (19-15). Samford swept the regular season with a close 3 point win at ETSU and a 16 point win at home, so they will need to win one more time to go dancing. ETSU has already upset the 2 seed (UNC-Greensboro) and an exciting overtime victory over the 3 seed (Chattanooga) so it should also be a great game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After that, the West Coast conference has their semi-finals starting at 9 pm – as their top 4 teams will fight it out. This is always a great night (especially if you are a nightowl and can stay up until 1:30-2 am). Don\u2019t think the new polls are out yet – but #23 St Mary\u2019s plays first against Santa Clara, and #19 Gonzaga plays San Francisco. While basketball fans are probably hoping for a rematch in Las Vegas between Gonzaga and St. Mary\u2019s, the bubble is desperately hoping that San Francisco or Santa Clara don\u2019t become bid-stealers over the next two evenings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The regular season champions from the Coastal (Charleston), Horizon (Oakland) and Summit (South Dakota State) conferences also play in their semi-finals tonight as they look to keep their dreams of going to the dance alive – so lots of good basketball tonight!! And a chance to maybe check out a team that possibly will be in that 12-14 range which always provide the fun upsets that make March special (if you are looking for that, definitely check out JMU, Samford, and Charleston).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Enjoy the games!!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was fun last year – so I will try to do again. Not sure I will update every day this week between taking Katie to rugby practices and figuring out my own bracketology. Today and tomorrow are important days for the mid-major tournaments. Most of the major conference bubble teams don\u2019t start playing until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757","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=2757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2758,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions\/2758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}