One of my favorite parts of the season is the small tournaments that are essentially playoffs.
Wisconsin Green Bay was upset yesterday. That's PROBABLY not an at-large bid stolen away, but they do have a win against UVA and a decent overall profile.
Our favorite team, Vermont, steamrolled their conference in the regular season but is down double digits in the second half of their semifinal game.
Yeah, my first impression without thinking about it too hard is to agree with you. Nice win over UVA, but not a whole lot else there.
Davidson and Vermont just lost as well. The absence of those three teams is going to make big first round upsets a little bit less likely.
Headed to the Southern Conference tournament final tomorrow night here in Asheville. Always good fun, and with WCU in the final, should be a great crowd.
Anyone else expecting us to get NCCU as our first game?
William & Mary plays in the CAA championship game Monday night. W&M is coached by former UNC player Tony Shaver, and it will be playing Delaware (formerly coached by Brey and David Henderson -- what's Henderson doing these days?). W&M is one of the "forgotten five" (schools that have never made the NCAA D1 tourney: Army, The Citadel, Northwestern, and St. Francis being the others) (I guess that's schools that have been around and eligible since the tourney began in, what, 1939?).
http://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2014/tony-shaver.php
For the first time ever, Stanford was not in the championship game of the PAC-12 women's tournament. Fifth-seeded USC, who upset the Cardinal on Saturday night, rode a big second-half run to a nine-point win over Oregon State.
The women of Troy will likely be a nine or ten seed, and they're pretty dangerous at that level. I wouldn't be shocked to see them win their first game.
So Con final in Asheville last night was lots of fun. Great crowd in a small stadium, two rather surprising finalists, both campuses a relatively short drive from the game.
Wofford jumped on WCU early. Neither team was an offensive juggernaut, but both were extremely scrappy. WCU fought back admirably, and if they had hit a decent percentage of shots from within 5 feet of the basket, they would have won by double digits.
But they didn't. Somehow, it felt like thy shot 15% in the paint. Yet, they were in position to take a good look at a 3 to take it to overtime, but missed. This means Your Wofford Terriers will represent the Once ACC Laden Southern Conference in the NCAA tourney.
Two takeaways:
1) Small conference tourney finals are friggin awesome. The energy of the crowd and the players was really something. Very cool to see a team of guys who don't get the UNC institutional treatment play hard for the chance to go up against the Big Boys and try to shock the world.
2) Wofford's surprise victory and passionate fans meant I got to see the other side of the "rushing the court" argument. After the final buzzer, there was an extremely organized and methodically slow onslaught of fans who queued up to take the floor. It was kinda cute.
Ladies and gentlemen, your 2014 Wofford Terriers.
unofficial slogans for conferences ...
http://www.sportspickle.com/2014/03/...all-conference
For those who are interested, NC Central is the heavy favorite to come out of the MEAC.
They started their attempt to make their first tournament by CRUSHING Howard in the Quarterfinals 92-46. Not sure if he'd leave, but LeVelle Moton should seriously be considered for other coaching jobs after this year's performance.
<devildeac> anyone playing drinking games by now?
7:49:36<Wander> drink every qb run?
7:49:38<loran16> umm, drink every time asack rushes?
7:49:38<wolfybeard> @devildeac: drink when Asack runs a keeper
7:49:39 PM<CB&B> any time zack runs, drink
Carolina Delenda Est
The ACCT makes me feel like I'm watching other people's conference tournaments. Mainly the Big East's.
A movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
---Roger Ebert
Some questions cannot be answered
Who’s gonna bury who
We need a love like Johnny, Johnny and June
---Over the Rhine
Stanford in action in the Pac-12 tournament right now. The Cardinal are tied with Washington State at 47 with under 10 minutes to play.
This is potentially a career-altering game for Johnny Dawkins. Win and Stanford is in the NCAA tournament. Lose and Johnny might possibly be out a job without ever having reached the Big Dance in six years as a head coach (most analysts believe Stanford needs at least one victory in the conference tournament to stave off NCAA elimination).
Stanford advances. The Cardinal will face Arizona State later tonight at 11:30 p.m. on FS1.
Tonight's victory should propel Johnny to his first NCAA appearance. Congrats to him and Coach Schrage.
After looking further into Stanford's résumé, perhaps I am early on the felicitations.
Stanford
Record: 20-11
RPI: 45
vs. RPI Top 25: 0-3
vs. RPI Top 50: 4-8
Best Wins: UConn, @Oregon, Arizona State, UCLA
While Stanford should be safe since most think the Pac-12 is a six-bid league, if the Cardinal lose tonight and a team with a similar résumé such as Utah or Cal advances to the Pac-12 title game or wins the whole thing, then there might be some cause for concern.
There's nothing terrible, though. The only thing you can call a bad loss is @Oregon State. Which is roughly in @Wake territory.While Stanford should be safe since most think the Pac-12 is a six-bid league, if the Cardinal lose tonight and a team with a similar résumé such as Utah or Cal advances to the Pac-12 tittle game or wins the whole thing, then there might be some cause for concern.
The committee doesn't decide in advance how many bids a given conference is going to get. What they're supposed to do, and what they say they in fact do, is compare teams to each other. This means that Stanford isn't just competing against Utah and Cal, but against other teams whose resumes are similar to theirs, such as BYU, Tennessee, Minnesota, Nebraska, St. Joseph's, Dayton, and others.
Yeah, I realize that. I am just saying that if, for example, Utah runs the table in the Pac-12 tournament and secures a bid, there might not be enough room for the conference to get more than six bids (assuming the first five are locks), depending on how the rest of the teams in that "bubble territory" fare across the country and ultimately stack up with Stanford. In that case, it's possible a Utah run could pop Stanford's bubble.
First time poster here, but my terriers making the tournament has brought me out of obscurity. As both a Wofford and Duke graduate I'd love to see the Terriers matched up against Duke in a 1st round game one year. I Don't know if that has a chance of happening this year or not.
For those who follow Wofford basketball, our conference championship does not come as a surprise. Because of their great run many folks think the SoCon is a practice league for Davidson, but that isn't the case. We've won the championship three out of the past five years. We even came close to knocking of Wisconsin in our first year in the NCAA tournament. Get used to seeing the terriers in your bracket!
Go Duke and Go Terriers!