The postseason is officially here as there is a Horizon Tournament play-in game between IU-Indy and Cleveland State tonight. Use this thread to talk all things conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament.

Yearly reminder that the Horizon has the best conference tournament format. It's gotten a little wacky with 11 teams and everyone gets in. But play-in between IU-Indy and Cleveland State on campus. Winner gets 1 seed Wright State and the second round is all campus sites. Then a complete re-seed with the bottom two remaining seeds doing a play-in game before playing the top remaining seed in the semis. They constantly protect their top teams, more than half the teams get one last home game for the fans, semis and finals are neutral site, and no team has to play more than three games in as many days.

https://x.com/TroyMachir/status/2028483500555255940/photo/1

Meanwhile the Sun Belt, WTF is this?

https://x.com/SunBelt/status/2027621057381761179/photo/1

This leaves the possibility of playing seven games in seven days, all games played in Pensacola- a corner of a somewhat geographically disparate conference. How do you even plan travel to this if you're a fan of a mid to lower seed team?

Good follow to keep track of who's eliminated from national championship consideration: https://x.com/champcountdown . Pretty funny that Miami's best player from last year, Kam Craft, transferred to Georgia Tech and they're the first power conference team eliminated.

Sun Belt has the worst tournament bracket I've ever seen.

It makes it 10x worse when you realize seeds 2/3/4/5/6/7 all have the same damn record, so they all get shuffled out into seeds by whatever random ass tie breakers they have to use.


The #2 seed, Marshall (19-12, 11-7) gets a free pass into the Semi-Finals. One win sends them to the Championship.

The #7 seed, Arkansas State (20-11, 11-7) will play 4 games before getting to the Semi-finals.

South Alabama, #6 (21-10, 11-7) has a similar road to Arkansas State despite both winning more games than Marshall.



Throw it all in the trash.

Some good first round action last night. Gardner-Webb was at risk of having the worst win percentage in the country but they advance in the Big South with a win over USC-Upstate.

We have our first March moment.

https://x.com/i/status/2029742494389284954

Another one, with some controversy on the side.

https://sports.yahoo.com/mens-college-basketball/article/...

In other news...

Detroit, who was 1-31 two seasons ago, plays Wright tonight for the Horizon title.

Santa Clara probably vaulted themselves into the field and steals a bid with a Q1 win over St Mary's in the WCC semis. Herb Sendek should be taking a fourth program to the tournament.

Hofstra gets a March moment: https://x.com/DylanBrxtt/status/2031220129044824293?s=20 . Why does every student broadcaster sound like that?

Wright State going dancing after coming back from an 11 point 2nd half deficit against Detroit.

Bubble teams be grateful for Wes Miller. Complete choke job by UC.

FInal nail in the coffin

miami oh winning 31 games in a row reminds me of the 1994-95 season. miami got an at large bid that year and they finished 23-7. that suggests they should be given an at large this year since they are now 31-1 this year. but there might be one thing that people aren,t thinking about. what if toledo beats akron in the mac tourney championship tonight. could akron possibly have a shot at an at large bid? after all they have jhon groce as coach and i think they may have some well known star players.

What a dagger shot for Scott and Akron to take another title in Cleveland.

The way Akron struggled past Toledo last night, neither MAC team has a snowball's chance in hades of doing any damage in the dance.

Especially if one is matched up against somebody like Tennessee with a front line that goes 6-10/6-11/6-11 and just lost twice in one week to their in-state rival. Let's see Suder try to take it in the paint against those guys!! LOL!!!

It's all about the new metric they are using Wins Against the Bubble (WAB). It will help schools in any conference who have an excellent record like Miami did without Quad 1 wins. Sports Illustrated defines it this way: "WAB stands for Wins Above Bubble, and it measures — broadly speaking — the number of wins a team has against its schedule relative to how an average bubble team would fare against that same schedule."