2021 NCAA Basketball Conference Tournament Challenge

I am going to lead with the good stuff today. We will have our first official ticket punched with the Ohio Valley conference tournament championship game between (1) Belmont and (2) Morehead State . Let's look at the details of this matchup and the impact on our pool.  24 out of 30 are still alive with 23 having Belmont. Belmont is favored by 5 points which makes me think we'll have an entertaining game at 7p CST on ESPN2. Even if Belmont wins, having 23 people getting a win doesn't make this a pivotal conference for our pool. Now, if Chris wins with Morehead State then this does become a pivotal conference for our pool. Before and after the game above we still have almost 30 conference tournament games today. 3 new conferences are tipping off today with the  Colonial , Northeast and Summit League giving us 14 conferences now in progress. The Northeast conference is getting right to the point and starting with the quarterfinals, putting us all at risk for losses immedia...

Only 3 losses in our pool today. These type of days do tend to pop up early on in conference tournament action when low seed are playing and higher seeds dominate the day. We had double digit conference tournament games today, but most were 20+ point blowouts by the favorites, leading to not many pool losses and overall boring games. In the Atlantic 10 Murder Mittens took a loss with (6) George Mason  getting blasted by (3) Davidson, Jack lost (3W) UT-Arlington in the Sun Belt as I'm sure the letters in the seeding confused him and 3 people took a loss with (3) Eastern Kentucky  in the Ohio Valley conference.         We also saw our 2nd team forfeit due to COVID with (7) Northern Iowa in the Missouri Valley conference, which means that (2) Drake automatically advanced to the semifinals. As much as I love losses in this pool I'd prefer the loss to be on the court, fortunately no one picked Northern Iowa. It's only a matter of time before a COVID forfei...

All day today we saw big favorites and higher seeded teams not only just lose, but getting destroyed in conference tournament play. In the Atlantic Sun we saw (2) Bellarmine, (3) Lipscomb and (4) North Florida all lose as favorites in the quarterfinals. The Atlantic Sun semifinals will now feature the 5, 6 and 7 seeds. The popular pick in our pool, which 71% of the pool picked, (1) Liberty is still alive. Absolutely nobody picked the 5-7 seeds so this conference for us is Liberty or bust. In the Big South (2) Radford was completely destroyed by (3) Campbell, while (1) Winthrop pounded on (5) Longwood. The Big South is the first conference to have its conference championship game matchup set. On Sunday, 3/7/21 we'll see (1) Winthrop take on (3) Campbell for a trip to the NCAA tournament. Brad is the lone person who picked Campbell and what a huge win this would be for him as it checks 2 boxes: lone winner and bonus points. The Campbell Camels may have my all time favorite hashta...

We are now approaching the point where 2-3 conferences tip off daily while other conferences move to the next round. It's going to start getting really fun now. 3 new conferences tip off today: Atlantic Sun, Missouri Valley (Arch Madness!) and West Coast conference. Additionally we'll have the following conferences continuing action: Atlantic 10, Big South and Ohio Valley. We are headed to a train wreck of losses today and I couldn't be happier. As always, keep reading as I'll do my best to highlight what to watch for in each conference as it relates to our pool. Atlantic 10 We have 4 second round Atlantic 10 games starting at 10:00 AM central time and as a general basketball fan all of these look like great matchups. Only seeds 6-13 are in play, however that impacts 9 people in our pool between (8) Richmond and (6) George Mason . In order of when they play the 4 games are below. (9) Duquesne DEFEATS (8) Richmond (13) Saint Joseph's vs. (5) Massachusetts (10) Rhod...

As soon as I published the last blog post I caused an almost immediate SOHLER FLARE because I was reminded within minutes that I forgot to preview the Patriot League games today. I have officially updated the master spreadsheet to account for the Patriot League conference tournament starting today. Let's go over the disaster that was the first round of the Patriot League conference tournament before recapping the Atlantic 10 and Ohio Valley conference tournaments. Patriot League (10) Lehigh cruised by (7) Boston in the only Patriot League game today. This game was a snooze fest. (9) Loyola Maryland advanced by (8) Holy Cross due to Holy Cross forfeiting due to COVID. Although no one in our pool picked Holy Cross I'm sure this is not the last we'll see of this scenario, it just happened to be a 8/9 matchup in a low major league making it not a big deal. Atlantic 10 A bunch of teams that only Dan Sohler cares about played today so no impact to our pool. (13) St. Joseph's...

If the 3 overtime games in the Horizon League last night did not get you excited for more post season college basketball, well then, today may not exactly do it for you either. The good news is that we have 2 new conferences tipping off today with the Atlantic 10 and Ohio Valley conferences. However the games look like duds from the pool perspective and outside of 4 total games between these conferences, we don't have any other conference tournament games. We're still a few days away from having so much conference tournament action that we'll be overwhelmed, but we'll take what we can get right now. Let's look at the summary and what to watch for with these two conferences. Atlantic 10 By the time you're reading this the (13) Saint Joseph's vs. (12) LaSalle game is probably almost over and the (14) Fordham vs. (11) George Washington game is about to begin. That's it. That is all we have with the Atlantic 10 tip off today so I'm not even going to bo...

Tonight was a bloodbath in our pool. The Horizon League quarterfinals handed out 24 losses in our pool with (6) Youngstown State , (5) Detroit Mercy and the biggest upset so far (2) Wright State   knocked out tonight. (1) Cleveland State, (3) Oakland, (4) Northern Kentucky and (8) Milwaukee all move on to the semifinals with only 6 out of 30 still alive in the Horizon League conference. The Horizon league   semifinals will be played on Monday, 3/8/21 and more pool losses are guaranteed. 2021 Conference Tournament Challenge Blog Click -->  Standings (One Drive) Let's take a look at our way too early top 4: Mattyboi jumps up 8 spots to 1st place with 0 losses Jenn Grimmer jumps up 9 spots to 2nd place with 0 losses Brad skyrockets 20 spots to 3rd place with 0 losses Heffron has a loss, but all his potential bonus points have him holding 4th place