We made it to our first conference tournament championship game, which will be a chalky match-up of (1) Tennessee State vs. (2) Morehead State in the Ohio Valley. We have nine people in our pool backing Tennessee State and six on Morehead State. This is the first opportunity for the standings to be flipped upside down as a win will shoot people right to the top of the leaderboard. While it is always nice to get a win under your belt, and rack up wins, without any bonus points being handed out tonight, this shouldn't be a pivotal conference to determine the winner of the pool. At least that is what everyone that has been eliminated should be telling themselves. 🏀
While I am not going to break down every single game or conference, I included a few important updates and things to keep an eye on today. 👀
5 conferences are playing semifinals games today, which means losses should accumulate across the board. Starting in the Atlantic Sun, (1) Central Arkansas plays (5) Florida Gulf Coast and then (2) Austin Peay takes on (3) Queens. 24 out of 36 people are still alive in this conference and we have all four teams covered. This conference tournament is so popular a traffic advisory was issued! Next, we have the Big South semifinals featuring (1) High Point playing (4) UNC Asheville and then we have (2) Winthrop against (6) Presbyterian. Our pool is overwhelmingly backing High Point, but we do have a few sprinkles of Winthrop, nobody picked UNC Asheville or Presbyterian.
Living up to its name, we have some wild match-ups in the Missouri Valley Arch Madness semifinals. (5) UIC plays (9) Drake and then (2) Bradley goes up against (6) Northern Iowa. Amazingly, we have every single one of those teams covered in our pool. Unless 2-seeded Bradley can pull off winning the tournament, this could be the frontrunner for the Lowest Winning Seed payout. Over in the Northeast Conference semifinals, teams that are ineligible for the NCAA Tournament (3) Mercyhurst and (5) Stonehill play each other for a chance to play in the championship game, while (1) Long Island takes on (7) Wagner. Two thirds of our pool is on the favorite, but we do have Mercyhurst and Stonehill covered.
Our last semifinals breakdown takes us to the Summit League, and up until today I'm confident that none of their games have been available to watch yet, either on TV or streaming. (1) North Dakota State plays (5) Omaha while the next games features (2) St. Thomas-Minnesota playing (3) North Dakota. Looks like North Dakota proved to be the superior Dakota. The majority of our pool is on the 2-seed, but the 1-seed is not that far behind, and we do have a few people backing North Dakota.
I just wrote 5 paragraphs, and we only made it through 6 total conferences, but 15 of the 31 conference tournaments will have tipped off as of Saturday. We will have a full day packed with conference tournament games, ranging from a handful of meaningless first round matchups, quarterfinals, the Sun Belt chugging along to round 5 of 7, to the all-important first ticket being punched to the NCAA Tournament. 🎫
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