Interesting reading.

I am in the minority believing in expanding to 128 and including regular season and tourney champs for the mids till the NCAA makes the bigs come out of their houses and play true road games.

The selection committee sent a message by giving deference to those teams that went on the road and did not neccessarily win but did not get blown out on the road. MTSU got in based on who they beat on the road and who they played and got beat by .....giving them credit for at least trying.

Blah, blah, blah.  Just another shill for the Big 6.  Big East Conference, good.  Anything below them, bad.   How is Middle Tennessee State losing a debacle but no mention of the fact that Big 6 schools regularly earn bids by doing well in their tournaments?  I'll tell you why so many people are up in arms. Because it keeps an undeserving middle of the pack Big 6 school out of the dance.   I would call the tournament format right now nearly perfect and that includes the conference tournaments.  Saturday night was a huge disappointment for us but a wonderful spectacle.   It was never designed and should never be designed as the best 68 teams.  It's a tournament that lets nearly every team in the country have a shot.  It's why the end of college basketball is so invigorating while college football is a massive letdown.  Do you think the author really cares who makes it from the Sun Belt?  

IMO, Conference Tournament Week is spectacular!!!

As much as the NCAA tournament is one of my favorite sporting events of the year, I enjoy all of the conference tournaments as a close second.  It is one of the purest forms of sport, watching teams step up and lay it all out on the line.  There are few moments greater than seeing a group of players' excitement when they win a conference tournament, knowing the prize that awaits them.  They may go on to get slaughtered against a blue blood but for that moment they are on top of the world they live in.  I think knowing our Bobcats were so close to that on Saturday but didn't get there made the loss so much more painful.  

I think it can provide an excellent lesson to the student-athletes about grabbing opportunities as they present themselves and making the most of them. 

Conference tourneys are exciting, but in smaller conferences, they render the regular season virtually worthless.  I hate the idea of expanding the NCAA tournament, but Bornacat's suggestion seems to be the only fair resolution.

It sure doesn't feel like the regular season is worthless to me when we are playing it and without a true round robin schedule anymore the regular season doesn't really show definitively who should be the champion anyway.   And in cases of ties do you really want a tiebreaker to determine who gets the bid?