Cobra Commander Posted March 5, 2023 Posted March 5, 2023 Meanwhile the end of Memphis/Houston was cut off in some markets to go to Bradley/Drake. Congrats to Pete on his job at CBS. 1
RIPPA Posted March 5, 2023 Posted March 5, 2023 Fairleigh Dickinson became the first team to qualify for the NCAA tournament thanks to Merrimack being the middle of transitioning from DII to DI Merrimack is the Northeast Conference's #1 seed and made the finals. So the winner of the other semifinal would automatically make the NCAA tournament without having to win the Final. (Fairleigh Dickinson beat St Francis (PA)) The two teams will still play the Final on Tuesday
RIPPA Posted March 5, 2023 Posted March 5, 2023 Kennesaw State UNC Asheville Drake Southeast Missouri State They all clinched berths today
Cobra Commander Posted March 6, 2023 Posted March 6, 2023 feels like a few upsets would be necessary to keep SE MO State out of Dayton.. speaking of that, Lafayette beat American in double OT to advance to the Patriot League title game. UNC Asheville had to pull a comeback to beat Campbell The end of SEMO/Tennessee Tech last night was chaos until the overtime Kennesaw State sealed the win with a free throw with a few seconds left and unfortunately for Pete, Bradley got beat down by Drake from the start today
Pete Posted March 6, 2023 Posted March 6, 2023 The alma mater got ethered on network television. Props to Drake... they came to play and nothing went right for us. They're going to put the fear of Garfield in some unsuspecting 5-seed. I'm hoping Bradley can run the NIT gauntlet to the Garden... I'll be there with bells on if it happens.
RIPPA Posted March 6, 2023 Posted March 6, 2023 13 hours ago, Cobra Commander said: feels like a few upsets would be necessary to keep SE MO State out of Dayton.. speaking of that, Lafayette beat American in double OT to advance to the Patriot League title game. It was so frustrating. AU constantly struggled with the shit teams in the Patriot this year BTW - it should be noted that Lafayette is going into the final with an 11-22 record
Pete Posted March 6, 2023 Posted March 6, 2023 Monster upset in the Big Sky tournament as top seed Eastern Washington get bumped off by #9 Northern Arizona. E-Dub went from 16-0 in conference play to dropping their last two regular season games to going one-and-done in the conference tourney.
Kuetsar Posted March 6, 2023 Posted March 6, 2023 14 minutes ago, Pete said: Monster upset in the Big Sky tournament as top seed Eastern Washington get bumped off by #9 Northern Arizona. E-Dub went from 16-0 in conference play to dropping their last two regular season games to going one-and-done in the conference tourney. Losing to ISU was a sign. . . .(and I say that as an ISU alum, our mens team always stinks)
Pete Posted March 6, 2023 Posted March 6, 2023 Oooooooof. There's horrible ends to your season and then there's THAT.
Cobra Commander Posted March 7, 2023 Posted March 7, 2023 Teams winning autobids tonight: Louisiana(-Lafayette), their first appearance since 2014 Furman, their first appearance since 1980
Pete Posted March 7, 2023 Posted March 7, 2023 FURMAN UP. One year after that hideous buzzer beater loss to UTC, the Paladins get their revenge and are dancing for the first time since the Carter administration.
Cobra Commander Posted March 7, 2023 Posted March 7, 2023 Furman's last NCAA tournament game came against Tennessee at the Greensboro Coliseum. The Vols got 6 points in 8 minutes from bench player Kevin Nash in that game 1
Contentious C Posted March 7, 2023 Posted March 7, 2023 I once had someone from Furman tell me that because of their geographical proximity, they were rivals with Clemson. It was good for a laugh, especially since she meant *football*. I had no idea their basketball program was even less accomplished.
Cobra Commander Posted March 8, 2023 Posted March 8, 2023 tonight's conference title games UNC-Wilmington vs Charleston in the CAA Northern Kentucky vs Cleveland State in the Horizon Fairleigh Dickinson vs Merrimack in the NEC (FDU advances no matter what because Merrimack can't play in the tournament) North Dakota State vs Oral Roberts in the Summit and... Gonzaga vs Saint Mary's in the WCC Every tournament eligible team playing in a title game tonight has made the tournament since 2017. Merrimack is located in North Andover, Massachusetts (not Merrimack, NH). Which is a few towns over from Lowell, where UMass Lowell is playing a semifinal game in the American East. UMass Lowell has their own arena, they don't play in the Lowell Memorial Auditorium (site of the HBK/HHH match from December 1997) because that building likely isn't large enough to fit a basketball court in.
Cobra Commander Posted March 8, 2023 Posted March 8, 2023 teams winning autobids so far tonight Northern Kentucky beat Cleveland State Fairleigh Dickinson lost to Merrimack by 1 but FDU makes the tourney because Merrimack isn't eligible Charleston beat UNC-Wilmington Two left. The Summit League title game is at the Sanford Premier Center, which is a court that doesn't look as good as the Sanford Pentagon Court. Which isn't an insult to the Premier Center because the Pentagon court looks awesome. 1
Kuetsar Posted March 8, 2023 Posted March 8, 2023 What's the point of letting an ineligible team in your conference tourny?
Cobra Commander Posted March 8, 2023 Posted March 8, 2023 I don't think there's a minimum number of teams required for a tournament but if the NEC didn't include Merrimack, they would have had 7 teams with their 1st and 3rd place teams not in the tournament. They allow Merrimack in the tourney because they're eligible next year. But Stonehill won't be eligible for a few more years. The NEC also lost two members after last year (Bryant, who won the NEC tourney last year, jumped to America East and Mount St. Mary's went to the MAAC) The WAC has Tarleton and Utah Tech (formerly Dixie State) in their tournament and the WAC also seeds based off of "WAC Points" (therefore the 1 seed is Sam Houston State even if SHSU finished 14-4 in conference and Utah Valley finished 15-3). But neither Tarleton or Utah Tech is a top WAC team. The ASUN had two ineligible teams in the tournament while 4 of the 14 Conference members didn't make the tourney. Last year Bellarmine won the ASUN tourney and didn't go to the tourney. In other words, the conferences do whatever they want with their tourneys.
Cobra Commander Posted March 8, 2023 Posted March 8, 2023 Gonzaga and Oral Roberts won their conference tournaments in blowout fashion tonight
RIPPA Posted March 8, 2023 Posted March 8, 2023 RE: ineligible teams Just because the team can't make the NCAA tournament doesn't mean they shouldn't get a chance to win their Conference championship 1
Dolfan in NYC Posted March 8, 2023 Author Posted March 8, 2023 1 hour ago, RIPPA said: RE: ineligible teams Just because the team can't make the NCAA tournament doesn't mean they shouldn't get a chance to win their Conference championship Unless, of course, they're the Ivy League where only 4 of the 8 teams play for the title. (Seriously... just let them all play one more fuckin' game. We all know it's gonna be Princeton or Penn anyway.)
Cobra Commander Posted March 8, 2023 Posted March 8, 2023 (edited) tonight's conference title games: Northwestern State vs Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the Southland on ESPN2 right now (a Conference title game starting at 4pm local time on a Wednesday?) Lafayette at Colgate in the Patriot League on CBS Sports Network Northern Arizona vs Montana State in the Big Sky on ESPN2 (with a tip time of 11:30pm Eastern/9:30pm local time) Lafayette is 11-22, Northern Arizona is 12-22. So potentially a huge night for determining who plays in Dayton. Edited March 8, 2023 by Cobra Commander
Cobra Commander Posted March 9, 2023 Posted March 9, 2023 A&M Corpus Christi wins the Southland. Prepare to act surprised when Selection Sunday comes and you forgot that they're in the tournament.
Cobra Commander Posted March 9, 2023 Posted March 9, 2023 Unless i'm forgetting something, Lafayette/Colgate is the next to last homecourt conference title game of this week (Vermont plays UMass Lowell on Saturday morning) I'm sure that smaller conferences that have a neutral site make/save some money off of the arrangement, but some of the neutral sites really come off like they have the atmosphere of a November neutral site game. While it's neat to see the Charlotte (Bojangles) Coliseum is still being used, having 2300 people in an 8600 seat arena for the conference title game is rough. And that's more people than 1700 people in the 10000 seat Ford Center for SEMO/Tennessee Tech. To be fair to the OVC... their conference identity is a bit murky since they only have one member school near the Ohio River and half the league is in Arkansas/Tennessee. The OVC is also a conference that had to move their conference tournament out of Nashville to keep Belmont from winning it over and over. Also the OVC has lost 5 members in the last 2 years. And that's not even getting into how many conferences are just playing their tournaments in the Las Vegas metro area.
Cobra Commander Posted March 9, 2023 Posted March 9, 2023 Colgate and Montana State win their conference tourneys. The next autobids come on Saturday when 13 conference tournament finals are played
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