Tournament Bid Thieves

[Bill Marsh]

In a year when 17 conferences have teams ranked in the RPI top 50. It should be more likely than ever that a lower ranked team will steal the conference's automatic bid in the conference tournament. And that may well happen. In fact, it probably will since it always happens somewhere.

But right now teamrankings.com isn't favoring a team outside the top 50 to pull off the upset. Duke is favored to beat Virginia in the ACC, but obviously they're going to the tournament with a high seed anyway. UConn with home court advantage is given a 40% chance in the American, but SMU is still the favorite at 50%. While UConn's 40% chance is the highest, the best chance of an upset is in CUSA where Old Dominion is given only a 25% of carrying regular season success through to a conference tournament title. In what appears to line up as a 3-way battle, LA Tech (22%) and UTEP (21.9%) are favored to be right there with them. The MAC is another 1-bid league which shapes up as a possible upset with Toledo (23%) right behind Buffalo (27%). Like Old Dominion, Buffalo would get consideration for an at-large bid if they lost the conference tournament.

The lack of many strong upset candidates is good news for projected bubble teams like Seton Hall and St. John's. The fewer auto bid thieves there are, the better for their chances.

You can find the odds for each conference at http://www.teamrankings.com/ncb/conference-tournaments

[gtmoBlue]

Since you opened this door, ol' gtmo will take the bait. One of my fav subjects.

'Nova will not make the BET Finals, again. Semi's: X over Johnnies, Jays over DePaul. Based on the most recent BE bracket, I expect Creighton to upset their way to the BET finals, vs X. Creighton "steals" the Big East's autobid. U heard it here 1st. The Jays have a long and storied history of taking conference tourneys, even in "down" year cycles. I expect no less this season. If the BE gets 6 or 7 NCAA bids, 1 of those bids belong to Creighton and if a better team gets bumped out... Oh well, they should have won more games and not worked their way onto the bubble. Love all y'all.

[Bill Marsh]

Since you opened this door, ol' gtmo will take the bait. One of my fav subjects.

'Nova will not make the BET Finals, again. Based on the most recent BE bracket, I expect Creighton to upset their way to the BET finals, vs X. Creighton "steals" the Big East's autobid. U heard it here 1st. The Jays have a long and storied history of taking conference tourneys, even in "down" year cycles. I expect no less this season. If the BE gets 6 or 7 NCAA bids, 1 of those bids belong to Creighton and if a better team gets bumped out... Oh well, they should have won more games and not worked their way onto the bubble. Love all y'all.

Go,Jays!!!