{"id":986,"date":"2017-03-05T18:47:22","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T18:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=986"},"modified":"2017-03-05T18:47:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-05T18:47:22","slug":"sundays-games-to-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=986","title":{"rendered":"Sunday&#8217;s Games to Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not sure I will do this every day this week &#8211; but thought this could be fun!!!!\u00a0\u00a0 Here are the games that I am excited about today!!!!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Game of the day:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Missouri Valley Championship &#8211; #21 Wichita State (29-4) vs. Illinois State (27-5) &#8211; this game epitimizes the mid-major conferences.\u00a0\u00a0 These two teams both dominated the MVC, both have RPIs in the top 50, and both have 27+ victories this year.\u00a0 But because they are mid-majors, they don&#8217;t have a lot of wins against other potential tourney teams.\u00a0 The winner of the game will be dancing &#8211; the loser will be sweating out the entire week on the bubble hoping that the committee rewards their amazing success this season.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conference Championships:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Big South &#8211; #1 Winthrop (25-6) vs #7 Campbell (17-16) &#8211; Winthrop had to survive overtime against Gardner-Webb in their attempt to back up their regular season title with a trip to the dance.\u00a0 Will they be able to finish their defense today?<\/li>\n<li>Atlantic Sun &#8211; #1 Florida Gulf Coast (25-7) vs #3 North Florida (15-18) &#8211; FGCU is another regular season champion who needs one more victory to defend their title.\u00a0 Or will North Florida manage the rare feat of having a losing record but earning a bid to the tourney?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Other Games of Interest:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>#16 Purdue (24-6) at Northwestern (21-9) &#8211; how can a Big 10 fan not be excited about watching the regular season champion play the team that might be this year&#8217;s best story &#8211; can&#8217;t imagine a scenario that doesn&#8217;t have the Wildcats finally making the dance<\/li>\n<li>Minnesota (23-7) at Wisconsin (22-8) &#8211; winner claims the 2nd seed in the Big 10 tourney and a double bye.\u00a0 The Gophers are another great story of improvement from only 8 wins last year.\u00a0\u00a0 The Badgers looked like they would run away with the conference title and now are just trying to end a skid that has seen them lose 5 of their last 6 games<\/li>\n<li>Monmouth (27-5) vs Siena (16-16) &#8211; Monmouth has a top 50 RPI this year &#8211; but they were passed up last year with maybe a better profile when they didn&#8217;t claim their conference bid.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hoping that they can win the MAAC so we don&#8217;t have to see if that history repeats itself.<\/li>\n<li>Penn State (14-16) at Iowa (17-13) &#8211; Iowa has come out of nowhere to make a last ditch run at the tourney &#8211; they need to beat the Nittany Lions to continue<\/li>\n<li>East Carolina (14-16) at Houston (20-9) &#8211; can the American conference sneak a third team into the tournament &#8211; the Cougars can&#8217;t afford to lose at home<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Enjoy the games!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not sure I will do this every day this week &#8211; but thought this could be fun!!!!\u00a0\u00a0 Here are the games that I am excited about today!!!! Game of the day: Missouri Valley Championship &#8211; #21 Wichita State (29-4) vs. Illinois State (27-5) &#8211; this game epitimizes the mid-major conferences.\u00a0\u00a0 These two teams both dominated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986","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=986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":987,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions\/987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}