Before we preview the 3 conference tournament championship games taking place this afternoon, we have a few updates to go over first. Well after midnight, over in the West Coast Conference, (3) Santa Clara had a 2nd half meltdown and lost in double overtime against (6) San Francisco. That late night result handed out pool losses to both Team TNT and Nothing but Dubs. 🏀
Additionally, many conferences regular seasons ended last night which means more seeding has been finalized and updated now on the spreadsheet. You will notice that across the board almost all of us have gained and/or lost bonus points, which impacted the standings, so if you see that you have gained or lost ground it is due to finalized seeding across most conferences. The current standings are located here and fully up to date. The regular season for all conferences wraps up tonight, expect additional bonus point and max point movement for almost all of us. 📈
Now that we got that out of the way let's take a deep dive into each of the 3 conference championship games today and how they may impact the pool, in order of tip-off time. We start with the Big South tip off at noon CST and end with the Atlantic Sun tipping off at 2:00 PM CST. The Arch Madness tip off is at 1:00 PM CST which means we will have overlapping championship games.
Big South
Our first conference tournament championship game this afternoon will take place in the Big South where we have (1) UNC Asheville taking on (7) Campbell. The Camels were not supposed to be in this game and this is not a guaranteed victory for UNC Asheville as they are only favored by 4.5 points. UNC Asheville was our pools most popular pick with 46% of us selecting them and before the tournament began TeamRankings gave them an almost 27% chance to win. Absolutely nobody in our pool selected the Camels. 🐫
Missouri Valley
The 1:00 PM CST Missouri Valley matchup is chalk with (1) Bradley vs. (2) Drake. Like the game we just covered, 46% of our pool picks are on Drake, however we do have good representation on Bradley as well. As expected, the line on this game is a pick, so expect a really fun back and forth game. One last item of note is that BI had his team eliminated, this is a good opportunity for the rest of the pack to catch up to him.
Atlantic Sun
In our final championship game of the afternoon tipping off at 2:00 PM CST over in the Atlantic Sun we have another chalk matchup with (1) Kennesaw State vs. (2) Liberty. Almost 66% of our pool pick are on Liberty, but we do have a few scattered Kennesaw State picks. The two seed Liberty is the favorite in this game by 4.5 points, but that is a small spread so we should expect a close game. Even before this conference tournament tipped off TeamRankings gave Liberty a 65% chance to be crowned champion, our pool picks agree with the analytics.
We have several conferences in the semifinals and quarterfinals today, 1 conference in the 2nd round and we welcome the Southland conference to the tournament today! In addition to some more green on the spreadsheet from conference tournament winners we will also have plenty of losses to hand out throughout today. I know many of you will want to see the standings updated immediately after the championship games wrap up this afternoon, however I will not be able to post updated standings and a blog entry until later tonight. Hang tight and I will ensure something is out at a reasonable time in the evening. 🌜
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