3 More Conference Champions and a Change to our SWAC Picks

A total of 4 teams have now won conference championships and move on to the NCAA tournament.

The afternoon started off with the Big South championship game that featured 3 seed Coastal Carolina vs. 5 seed Winthrop.  11 people had Coastal Carolina which got a lot of people in the win and bonus column.

The next championship game took place in the Atlantic Sun conference where the 1 seed, North Florida, easily defeated USC Upstate.  North Florida has NEVER been to the NCAA tournament so this was a really cool win and this is the type of stuff that makes the madness (especially in Vegas) so exciting.

Everyone should watch "Putnam, The North Florida Dancing Machine"

Finally, in the Missouri Valley conference, 4 seed Illinois State was leading Northern Iowa for the majority of the game, but in the end number 2 seed Northern Iowa pulled it out.

We also saw a bunch of meaningful games played today that impacted our overall standings:

• Stony Brook upset Vermont by 2 points in the America East conference, while Albany hung on to beat New Hampshire
• In the Patriot League, 1 seed Bucknell was upset by Lafayette and 2 seed Colgate was knocked off by American University, so the championship game is a 6 vs. 4 seed
• In the Colonial and MAAC, both 1 seeds moved on to the finals (William and Mary and Iona)

The regular season officially ended today, all conference tournaments have or will be starting in the next few days.  Seeding on our pool spreadsheet is now officially complete.

Looking over the standings 18 players have at least 1 point, while Iannuzzi is leading the way with 5 total points.  Iannuzzi and Young are winning at a 40% - 50% accuracy rate which is crazy since the next best person is at 33%

We still have a really long way to go with multiple conference championship games almost every single night tomorrow through Selection Sunday.

Tomorrow we have 3 more championship games that will start to separate out the real contenders in our pool.  Although we do have a long way to go, if you don't start racking up wins by tomorrow you will quickly be mathematically eliminated.

Colonial

• 24% of us thought UNC-Wilmington would have won this conference tournament, they are not even in the championship game
• 6 players chose Northeastern, which is a 3 seed so bonus points are on the line, while 4 players chose William and Mary, the 1 seed

MAAC

• 68% of us picked Iona to win this conference and they will play a 3 seed in Manhattan
• We do have 2 players with Manhattan, so this is a critical game to start out the week

Southern

• Similar to the MAAC, we're all on the same pick, the 1 seed Wofford, 72% of us are counting on Wofford to win this conference tomorrow night
• Again, similar to the MAAC, we do have 1 player on the 10 seed, Furman, yes, that is the 10 seed playing for a championship
• If the 10 seed, Furman, wins tomorrow night, then Doug clinches the $40 prize for lowest winning seed, no one else has a 10 seed or lower

A couple reminders for those that read all the way through this:

• The SWAC announced today that all teams in the conference can participate in the tournament, so teams that were listed as ineligible are now eligible.  If anyone would like to change their SWAC pick for any reason, you may do that by letting me know before the end of the day tomorrow (Monday, 3/9)
• Please check your scores and make sure I have accurately calculated your totals, it's better to let me know now and get it fixed before catching it later and having to recalculate everything
• If you have not yet paid, you should do that within the next few days, ideally I would like to have all the money collected by Selection Sunday so I can pay the winners right away

Also, to make Dan Donegan happy so he'll quit bitching about college basketball moving the Hawks games to different channels, I am including this picture.

Anyways, enjoy the upcoming week of games, it gets really hard to keep track of this stuff now!