The Final 36 Hours of Conference Tournaments

We are down to the final 36 hours of conference tournament basketball and all of us have taken a pounding with losses the last few days. However, some are in a much better position than others. A few notable upsets include, but are not limited to, undefeated and 1-seed Miami Ohio losing in its first round against the Frank Martin led (8) UMass team in the MAC, popular bonus point pool pick (5) UC San Diego losing in the Big West quarterfinals and in the MEAC, another popular bonus pick (4) Norfolk State lost. That was just Thursday! 📅

Friday brought us gifts of even more upsets and losses. Keeping with the theme, a popular bonus point pick (4) Illinois lost in overtime to (5) Wisconsin in the Big Ten, (2) Sam Houston was knocked out of the Conference USA tournament, leaving zero people alive in the pool, and (2) Arizona beat (4) Iowa state on a buzzer beater in the Big 12. Additionally, in the SEC, (2) Alabama was beat by a team that is having a crazy run, (15) Ole Miss, and yes, that is fifteen seed. Finally, extremely late Friday night, and into Saturday morning, in the Mountain West (2) San Diego State defeated our most popular pick (3) New Mexico, potentially reshaping the standings for the final 36 hours. 🏀

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

The standings order has not dramatically changed due to not having conference tournament championship games over the last few days, but we now have a better sense of how we all stack up as we make this final push. The key metrics to look at outside of the overall standings are Accuracy and Max Points. Our top 14 is where we should focus, but that doesn't mean that someone outside of this top 14 can't jump into the top 4 spots 📈

• Cox has a commanding lead in every metric, and this is his pool to lose at this point. Key teams for him are (3) Tulsa and (3) Southern, if both those teams win he has a 99.4% chance to win, the pool. I did make that number up, but it is probably true.
• Thomass, Heffron and Novakii are all tied with 10 points and are battling each other for spots two through four. One slip up from one of their teams and they can get left in fourth, or lower.
• Our dark horses to watch are Rory & Webb with 23 Max Points and Corey with 22 Max Points. If they can get their picks correct the rest of the way, with some luck above them, they can finish in the top 4 spots
• Unfortunately, we do have some people eliminated, and that is updated on the spreadsheet. The only reason Balls Boy and Team TNT are not eliminated is they have (3) Penn and can pray their way into 4th place with some tiebreakers.

As a reminder, for those of you that are not doing well in the 2026 Conference Tournament pool, you still can win up to $500 without coming in first place. Zero power conference championship games have taken place, there are still several low seeds in play and the SEC championship game is Sunday afternoon.

• (1) Most bonus points - The person with the most total bonus points (picking 3 seeds or lower winners) will win $150. 💰

• (2) Most power conference points - The person with the most power conference points (wins + bonus points) will win $150. 💸

• (3) Lowest winning seed - The person who has the lowest winning seed conference tournament champion wins $150. 😍

• (4) Closest SEC championship game score - The person with the closest SEC championship game score wins $50. 😎

Only 15 of the 31 tickets have been punched, which means 16 opportunities are still available in our pool. Every game on Saturday is either a championship game or a semifinal, this should be a great day of basketball games. One last note, I will likely be gone for the majority of Saturday, still peak at the blog once in a while just in case, but don't expect any updates or new standings until later in the evening. 🌜