Southern Conference and Sun Belt Championship Games Monday

We only have 14 basketball games today, but everything from here on out are conference tournament games. Although it is a light schedule today, there are some extremely important matchups for bubble teams, seed jockeying for the NCAA Tournament and of course, our pool. The SWAC first round tips off today at 1:00 PM CST, but it does not impact our pool as it is the 10 and 11 seeds, fortunately nobody reached that far. We do have two conference tournament championship games tonight, with a possible significant impact to our pool standings. Below summarizes what to watch for. 👀

Southern Conference

Tipping off at 6:00 PM CST tonight, the championship game will feature (6) Furman against (1) East Tennessee State. 12 people are on the favorite, and we have 2 people on Furman. If East Tennessee State wins, we will not see a significant impact to the top of the standings, however it will help bring everyone closer together and bunch up the standings, which is what we want. If Furman wins, Novakii and Heffron, who are already at the top of the standings, are going to strengthen their position. Even though this game has a large disparity in seeding, the oddsmakers have East Tennessee State as only a 1 point favorite, we should expect a good, close game.

     

Sun Belt

At this point everyone knows how much I hate this, but this championship also tips off at 6:00 PM CST. So. Fucking. Stupid. (1) Troy plays a team that has won 5 games in 5 nights, making (10) Georgia Southern an extremely dangerous opponent. Similar to our other championship game tonight, if the favorite wins it is really good for the pool as it brings everyone closer together and holds the people at top somewhat in place. We do have one person on Georgia Southern, B.I., and with a win he is very likely to lock in the Lowest Winning Seed bonus money. I'm not sure we'll see a seed higher than 10 win a conference tournament championship game. Vegas has Troy as a 5-point favorite, which means a win is not a lock, I expect another close, fun championship game.

I probably do not need to keep repeating this, but I will keep the standings updated throughout today, and every day, as losses impact our pool. We are on version 2.4 of the standings which means I have posted 14 updates to the standings in the last 7 days.

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

I'll attempt to post a blog entry as late as possible tonight that catches the championship games, along with other critical action, but the second West Coast semifinal doesn't start until 10:30 PM CST, so I may miss the (2) Saint Mary's vs. (3) Santa Clara matchup. That should be a fantastic game to watch! 🏀