2021 NCAA Basketball Conference Tournament Challenge

After 10 years of coming close but not being able to win the big one, the stigma is finally off of Tim Husted as he is our 2021 conference tournament pool champion. He also crushed my potential 3-peat. Tim won by a convincing 2 point margin with 17 points. He was tied for 1st with 14 wins , tied for 1st with 3 bonus points and tied for 1st in accuracy at 45.2% . Follow Tim on twitter @BetsWithNumbers for continued March madness content. Congrats Tim! Let's take a look at our final top 4: Tim won convincingly with 17 points and no tiebreakers needed Robb made an amazing run over the past 24 hours jumping into a 6 way tie for second place with 15 points, a 2 way tie for wins and accuracy and won the tiebreaker with the SEC score After bumping around 1-4 over the past 3 days Dan Sohler lands in 3rd place Sam I am rounds out our top 4 with 15 wins and breaking a 2 way tie for wins and accuracy with closest SEC score (Free entry in 2022!) Thank you to everyone that played. It was a ch...

It's been 2 years since the last Selection Sunday. I won't be putting out the lengthy morning preview I promised, but the standings are updated with the (1) UCSB win from last night. Clickable links below to the blog and current standings: 2021 Conference Tournament Challenge Blog Standings (One Drive)  

After a wild day of conference tournament championship games we now officially have 25 tickets punched on Selection Sunday Eve. The Big West is still pending and will make 26 tickets punched once that game wraps up and I update the standings. We have had seeds 1-9, except for a 7, all win a conference tournament. It's been pretty wild over the past week with the change in conference tournament schedules, off conference tournament seeding and COVID impacts to this pool. We're seeing more 3 seeds or lower win conference tournaments than we ever have in the 11 year history of this pool. Let's take a look at our current top 4 heading into the final day: Tim is all alone with 14 total points and 17 max points SJS right behind Tim with 13 points, but only 16 max points Ryan also with 13 points, but an even lower 15 max points Dan Sohler rounds out the top 4 with 12 points, but does have 17 max points Sunday morning I will update the Big West conference tournament champion, scrub ...

In the morning/early afternoon championship games (4) Hartford  won its first ever America East conference championship while over in the MEAC (2N) Norfolk State is going dancing for the first time in 10 years. Absolutely nobody picked Hartford with yet another conference champion that we don't get any points for, but 44% of the pool was on Norfolk State. We finally crowdsourced a non number 1 seed conference tournament champion! On to the important stuff. The standing have been updated to include these 2 conference tournament champions along with the Tennessee and Michigan losses in the semifinals. Corey and Tim are starting to separate themselves, but we have a long day ahead of us. Clickable links below to the blog and current standings: 2021 Conference Tournament Challenge Blog Standings (One Drive)

Today is going to be a great day of conference tournament basketball and we will have 15 championship games today. Let's get the bad news out of the way first, we had our 7th team Friday bow out with COVID issues and that team is (2) Kansas from the Big 12.  Looking at our pool, 5 people selected  (2) Kansas  and will now take a loss which is reflected in the updated standings. The standings are also updated with the losses from Friday, which was a day full of big upsets.  Our terrible stats are now refreshed with 2 days of conference tournament action left. Nobody has an accuracy number greater than  34%   29.5% Nobody has more than  27   23  max points Nobody has a projected total of more than  14   12 Only 1 bonus point team has been awarded We still have someone without a point (Sorry B.I.) Our pool has lost a combined  32  37  points due to COVID Now let's get into the good news, we are going to have 15 con...

Less than 24 hours after Duke was eliminated due to COVID, the 1 seed Virginia is now out of the ACC conference tournament due to a positive COVID test. The ACC tournament is not doing well with COVID protocols as they have now had 2 huge games canceled within 24 hours. This is now the 6th conference tournament game canceled due to COVID across all conferences. Looking at our pool, 10 people selected (1) Virginia and will now take a loss which is reflected in the updated standings. The standings are also updated with the late game losses from last night.  Take a look at some of these refreshed current pool stats and for those that have been doing this pool for a while we've never seen performance this poor before. It gets worse every day.  Nobody has an accuracy number greater than 39% 34% Nobody has more than 30 27 max points Nobody has a projected total of 16 14 or greater Only 1 bonus point team has been awarded We still have someone without a point (Sor...

Coming into today (10) Duke was getting hot and making a run in the ACC conference tournament until they ran into undefeated COVID-19 in the quarterfinals today. On behalf of the college basketball world, thank you COVID-19 for using your power for good. The Duke elimination also has an interesting impact to our pool. 3 people had Duke as a 10 seed and a Duke conference tournament championship would have given Tim, Ryan and Derek a bonus payout for lowest winning seed. Unfortunately, The Duke Blue Devils were not the only team impacted with COVID today. Our 5th COVID victim is the 1 seed in the MEAC, North Carolina A&T . 6 people in our pool selected (1S) North Carolina A&T and will now all get a loss. We knew coming into the conference tournaments that we would have to navigate through COVID impacts and so far over half the pool has lost a team due to COVID related decisions. We're still in the middle of our 3 day conference tournament championship game draught, but as c...

With (3E) Marshall , (2) Monmouth and (1) Siena all losing tonight this sort of resets our entire pool as the leaders had a heavy mix of these teams. A few other teams lost that had pool impacts but these 3 losses were key to ensure everyone gets back into the mix. Take a look at some of these current pool stats and for those that have been doing this pool for a while we've never seen performance this poor before. Nobody has an accuracy number greater than 39% Nobody has more than 30 max points Nobody has a projected total of 16 or greater Only 1 bonus point team has been awarded We still have someone without a point (Sorry B.I.)   A coach that is in my top 5 favorite coaches of all time is taking 9 seed Iona on a run through the MAAC, with one of his victims being (1) Siena. Clickable links below to the blog and current standings: 2021 Conference Tournament Challenge Blog Standings (One Drive)  

For those of you new to this pool, or for those that need a reminder, the next 3 days we will not have any conference tournament championship games. This is normal and the next few days become all about survival. 17 conferences are now in progress and 20 will be in progress come Thursday, 3/11/21. We will lose teams at a blistering pace and very quickly people will start being eliminated. Once you're mathematically eliminated from the top 4 I will gray out your name on the standings. But do not lose interest because bonus money is still up for grabs with total bonus points, lowest winning seed and guessing the correct (closest) score of the SEC conference tournament championship game. The SEC conference tournament game is typically the last game played before the selection show, giving everyone a shot at recouping their $50 buy in. I will continue to update and post standings multiple times each day, but the blog posts will typically drop off to 1/day and no more e-mails ...

Although the early set of conference tournament championship games tonight were not very exciting, the late games were great and we have seen some low seeds punch tickets. We had 3 early games and in the Northeast conference (4) Mount Saint Mary's controlled the game almost wire to wire and took out the 1 seed, in the Horizon League (1) Cleveland State immediately went up 10 points and never looked back and (6) Drexel was never really threatened by Elon in the Colonial. The 2 late games gave us (4) Oral Roberts immediately going up 20 points, blowing the lead, then winning at the end, while in the West Coast conference (1) Gonzaga had a scare but ultimately ended up winning by 10 points.                            Let's take a look at our current top 4: We have 4 players with 6 points, but Heffron takes over 1st place with 32 max points Izzy moves into 2nd place with 31 max points Corey also with 6 points, but 28...

Today we have 5 conference tournament championship games and some of these matchups are pretty wild when looking at the seeding. Bonus points are guaranteed to be handed out based on the matchups and our pool selections.  In addition to conference championship games today, we also will see major conferences tip off. The ACC first round starts this afternoon with one of the biggest surprises of the year, Duke playing as a 10 seed. We could potentially see Duke eliminated from the NCAA tournament 5 days before Selection Sunday. While not a power 5 conference, Conference USA also tips off today with only 1 game, (7W) Southern Mississippi vs. (6W) Rice. The other Conference USA game (7E) FIU vs. (6E) Middle Tennessee State was cancelled due to FIU failing COVID protocols. Middle Tennessee advances. For those keeping track this is now our 3rd conference tournament game cancelled due to COVID. Northeast 17 out of 30 are still alive in this conference with all 17 on  (2) Brya...

We had a very surprising ticket punched tonight when (4E) Appalachian State knocked off (1E) Georgia State in the Sun Belt conference tournament. The weird letter based seeding does not do this upset justice because if the seeding would not have been separated by region, Appalachian State would be a 8 seed knocking off the 1 seed. Absolutely nobody in our pool got this one correct, chalk up 30 losses in the Sun Belt conference tournament for us. This picking winners stuff is hard. Over in the Southern Conference championship game (7) Mercer couldn't give us our second upset of the night and (1) UNC Greensboro ended up pulling off the win in the last 60 seconds. Only 5 people picked the number 1 seed, making this a fairly important conference winner for our pool. UNC Greensboro was not even on our radar or Team Rankings radar when predicting the conference tournament winner. These were not the only 2 conference tournament games, in fact, when looking at the few ot...

2 more conference tournament championship games will be played today in both the Southern Conference and the Sun Belt. Side note, I do hate when on a light day the championship games start at the same exact time. Both of these games will tip off at 6:00p central time time today, these conferences should coordinate and figure out the scheduling so they can feature their game or at least stagger tip offs by 1 hour. Enough of the rant, both of these games are important to our pool so let's look at the breakdown. Southern Conference Shockingly, only 5 out of 30 are still alive in this conference with all 5 on  (1) UNC Greensboro . It's amazing at how much we overthink some of our picks that we have a scenario where only 5 people are on the number 1 seed in a low major conference. UNC Greensboro is a slight favorite at 5 points, which is good news for the 25 people that will be rooting for (7) Mercer. Before the Southern Conference even tipped off, 44% of our pool picked ...

Based on the commentators of the 4 conference championship games Morehead State, Winthrop, Loyola Chicago and Liberty are all going to the Final 4. Anyways, this is meant to be a quick note to look at the current tickets punched and review our pool standings. We still have multiple conference tournament games wrapping up tonight and almost all conferences should have finalized seeding at this point, so expect at least one more update to the standings late tonight. I should have time to do a few lengthy blog updates tomorrow to lay out the next few days. Let's take a look at our top 4 after 1 week: I have no words, Chris Iannuzzi is 4 for 4 and in 1st place. The only thing going against him is his very low 27 max points Heffron is in great shape with 3 wins, but more importantly he has 37 max points Izzy is also in great shape with 3 wins and 35 max points Pizzy in 4th with 3 wins, but max points a bit lower at 32 Clickable links below to the blog and current standings: 2021 Co...

Sunday morning and into the afternoon we will have 3 conference tournament championship games starting with the Big South at 11:00a central time. At 1:00p central time both the Atlantic Sun and Missouri Valley conference tournament championship games will tip off. Let's look at each of these conferences and how these games could impact our pool. Big South 23 out of 30 are still alive in this conference with 22 on (1) Winthrop and 1 lone person in Brad on (3) Campbell . Winthrop is a huge favorite at 11.5 points, but if Campbell wins that ends up being 2 points for Brad which can make the Big South a pivotal conference for our pool. Before the Big South even tipped off, 65% of our pool picked Winthrop and Team Rankings gave Winthrop a 64% chance to win the conference tournament. Mattyboi and Brad will be the most impacted with a Winthrop win, dropping them to the bottom half of the standings. The last 1 seed to win the Big South conference tournament championship was Winthrop in...

The first ticket has been punched! (2) Morehead State started out hot and never looked back as they completely destroyed (1) Belmont. This was never even game and a huge let down for our first conference tournament championship game. In our pool Chris Iannuzzi jumps into 1st place all by himself as he was the only person to pick (2) Morehead State . Great job Nuzzi - I guarantee he is not reading this and forgot college basketball is even being played right now. We do have 3 conference tournament championship games tomorrow (3/7/21) so we'll see the standings change quickly. In addition to Morehead State winning the Ohio Valley conference championship game we had an action packed day of conference tournaments and some great non conference tournament games. But here we don't care about non conference tournament games. Most people were slaughtered today in the pool, but we had a few survivors. Let's look at what happened in each conference. All of the favorites in the Americ...