Today a couple more teams earned their dance tickets, including Western Kentucky (15-18) winning the tragic Sun Belt conference tourney. Upsets in the non-power conferences have been a theme lately. Western Illinois stunned #1 seeded Oral Roberts Monday night and nearly did the same to #2 seeded South Dakota State, but South Dakota State came back to win in OT and claim the Summit championship. Red hot Detroit beat Valpo at home to take the horizon.
So far we twelve conference champions crowned:
Atlantic Sun - Belmont
Big South - UNC Asheville
Colonial - VCU
Horizon - Detroit
Ivy - Harvard
MAAC - Loyola (MD)
MVC - Creighton
OVC - Murray State
Southern - Davidson
Summit - South Dakota State
Sun Belt - Western Kentucky
West Coast - St. Mary's
There won't be too many at-large teams from the above conferences: Gonzaga, Wichita State, and Drexel should be it. Thus, we have almost a quarter of the field set -15 of the 68 teams.
Three more auto-bids will be claimed tomorrow. In the Big Sky, #1 seed Montana will play #2 Weber State in great matchup for the conference championship. Montana is an early 5 point favourite.
The Patriot league will crown their champion when #1 Bucknell plays #2 Lehigh. Bucknell is an early 4 point favourite.
The Northeast will also crown their champion with LIU Brooklyn playing Robert (not Phillip!) Morris. LIU is an early 1 point favourite.
Along with the Big East and Atlantic 10, more power conferences are beginning their tourneys on Wednesday. We have some early leans for potential teaser teams in the PAC12 and BIG12 - i.e. garbage teams, playing decent teams :
- Colorado (-13.) vs Utah
- UCLA (-13) vs USC
- Oklahoma State (-8.5) vs Texas Tech
- Stanford (-10) vs Arizona State
Conference Tourney madness is in full swing - more to come!
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