Congratulations to Yale and Austin Peay – our first two teams to get their invitation to the dance.<\/p>\n
Austin Peay did it in classic Cinderella style.\u00a0 As the number 8 seed in the Ohio Valley (and a protected bracket set up to try to avoid this scenario), the Governors won 4 games in 4 days – beating the 5 seed, 4 seed, 1 seed and 2 seed to claim the championship.\u00a0 After an exciting overtime victory over Belmont, where the top seed missed a last second three-pointer in overtime and made the rebound and lay-up after the buzzer had gone off, the underdogs hit a school record 16 three-pointers to beat Tennessee-Martin for the championship.<\/p>\n
Yale’s path is the traditional way in the Ivy League.\u00a0\u00a0 The Bulldogs did what they did all season in conference.\u00a0 They went on the road to Columbia and beat the Lions\u00a0by 16 points on the way to a 13-1 regular season championship.\u00a0 Yale will be going to NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1962, which makes this bid extra special.\u00a0 Thanks to the Ivy League being the only conference that rewards their regular season championship with the bid, the Bulldogs will be dancing for the first time in 54 years!<\/p>\n
Well, make that maybe the only conference that rewards their regular season champion….\u00a0 Madness is happening in the Atlantic Sun tournament – thanks to the 7th seeded Stetson Hatters.\u00a0 Stetson is ineligible this season for the NCAA Tournament due to an audit ruling them under the Academic Progress Rate guidelines based on their 2012 team.\u00a0 There is a decent explanation of the full story on the CBS Sports site (as probably other sites – since this has gotten a little bit of outrage).\u00a0\u00a0 That is because\u00a0in the other semi-final, Florida Gulf Coast went onto the home court of the A-Sun’s regular season champ, North Florida, and beat the Ospreys by 33 points.<\/p>\n
Despite the oddity of the circumstances, I actually don’t buy into the outrage that it should go to FGCU if they get upset on Sunday.\u00a0\u00a0 Basically, based on the CBS story, the Atlantic Sun didn’t feel it was fair to punish the Stetson players who were not the reason the school was ruled ineligible, but in doing so, they have punished other teams.\u00a0 Stetson has been on a tear in the tournament, beating #2 seed NJIT by 15 and #6 seed Lipscomb by 21.\u00a0\u00a0 Is it fair that NJIT and Lipscomb had their season ended by a team that can’t play in the post-season – why should the outrage only happen if FGCU loses the championship?\u00a0\u00a0 By putting Stetson in the tournament, the conference essentially decided that it was fair.\u00a0\u00a0 And once they made that decision (which I would not have done), I think they have made the fairest decision possible.\u00a0 If Stetson blows out FGCU, should NJIT get the bid if they played Stetson the closest, or should it go to FGCU simply because they got the farthest in a 3 day tournament.\u00a0 Why answer that question when you can simply give the bid to the team who won the most games in the conference all season?<\/p>\n
Sadly, it is a bad situation with lots of wrongs.\u00a0 The NCAA is to blame by not making a timely decision.\u00a0 Stetson was punished in 2015 after an audit on their 2012 team.\u00a0\u00a0 It is ridiculous that they can’t make those decisions faster – this leaves students without options but playing on a team that can’t compete for the ultimate goal of a championship.\u00a0 But if we are going to rule a team an ineligible for post-season, the Atlantic Sun shouldn’t be allowing them to play in the post-season.\u00a0 While it is hard to accept, the NCAA can’t punish the players who already left.\u00a0 They punish the institutions that don’t follow the rules, and the conferences should enforce those punishments.\u00a0 But everyone who is complaining now\u00a0are complaining too late about the wrong thing.\u00a0 They are upset because a team could get into the dance after losing by 33 points the night before in the tournament.\u00a0 The outrage shouldn’t be about FGCU being cheated if they lose after beating North Florida\u00a0– no one complained for NJIT and Lipscomb, and so Florida Gulf Coast shouldn’t get any sympathy either (unless of course, you were complaining before the tournament started).\u00a0 The honest answer is conference officials figured there was no harm in letting a 4-10 team play in their tournament since they wouldn’t go far and it would let the students still get to play – and now, that decision is backfiring (unless you go with the opinion of people are talking about the Atlantic Sun tournament, and so it was brilliant).<\/p>\n
So, on Sunday, Florida Gulf Coast will be playing in the Atlantic Sun tournament for a chance to dance.\u00a0 And Stetson will be playing for pride to claim a title no one thought they would be competing for.\u00a0\u00a0 And if the Hatters cut down the nets after the victory, it will be North Florida who will get a rare second chance to put on their dance shoes.<\/p>\n
Lets not forget the Big South and Missouri Valley – who will also have their conference tournament championships decided on Sunday.\u00a0\u00a0 And both of them watched their regular season champions, High Point and Wichita State, lose today in the semis.\u00a0\u00a0We have a team who hasn’t been to the dance in over 50 years and a team who needed all 4 conference tournament victories just to get above .500 in winning percentage.\u00a0 The bubble has gotten tighter thanks to Wichita State losing in their conference tournament, and we might see a team tomorrow win their conference’s bid by watching at home on television.\u00a0 And we still have an entire of week to add to this craziness before the dance even begins.\u00a0 The Lunatic is so thrilled – it must be March!!!!\u00a0\u00a0 Let the Madness BEGIN!!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Congratulations to Yale and Austin Peay – our first two teams to get their invitation to the dance. Austin Peay did it in classic Cinderella style.\u00a0 As the number 8 seed in the Ohio Valley (and a protected bracket set up to try to avoid this scenario), the Governors won 4 games in 4 days […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog2016","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818","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=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}