2021 NCAA Basketball Conference Tournament Challenge

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...