Big Sky, Patriot League and Southland Championship Game Previews

It is a weird day of conference tournament championship games ahead of us today, from a pool perspective, and this is the last chance to earn wins, and points, until Saturday. Starting with StarchMadness, the Big Sky championship will feature some surprising teams as (4) Montana plays (7) Idaho, no chalk to be found. The impact to our pool is minor, only B.I. and Jack are on Montana, but they are also in 31st and 36th place. In the Patriot League, only three people survived and the matchup is (2) Lehigh vs. (4) Boston, which is not a crazy matchup, but so many of us were on the 1-seed, Navy. All three people in our pool are on Lehigh, and they sit right in the middle of the standings, making this a potentially nice win. Finally, we have our most meaningful championship game in the Southland when (1) Stephen F. Austin takes on (2) McNeese. Except for two people, we are about split between these two teams, making this a really important win as we head into the most brutal part of the conference tournament on Thursday and Friday. 🏀

        

Click here to see the latest version of the pool standings. 🏅

I ran through the standings and ensured everything was completely updated, and calculating accurately, as I always miss crossing out a few teams that lost earlier in the week. Also, I cannot eliminate anyone from making the Top 4 spots in the pool yet, which is great! That means we have enough unique picks still left that would allow someone at the bottom of the standings to have a nice run to the top, or at least the Top 4. Our current Top 4 are having an impressive run.

• In first place is Cox, dominating the pool with 12 points, 8 wins and a 57.1% accuracy rate
• Second place belongs to Tomass, posting 9 points, 7 wins and a 50% accuracy rate
• Third place is Heffron with 9 points, 6 wins and a 42.9% accuracy rate, holding the max points tiebreaker over fourth place
• Novakii is hanging out in fourth place with 9 points, 6 wins and a 42.9% accuracy rate
• 20 people have between 5 and 8 points, all ready to take those Top 4 spots!

We are on pace to collectively hand out the most bonus points in the history of this pool. Out of 12 completed conference tournaments, we have witnessed wins by Three 3-seeds, and Two 6-seeds, meaning over 40% of conference tournament champions have not been the top two seeds. We are guaranteed another low seed winner tonight and I'm sure we'll have more over the weekend. Today, we have almost 40 conference tournament basketball games, ranging from first round action to championship games, and starting as early in the morning as 10:30 AM CST. Have fun watching! 😻