King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Conference tournament madness: It's fun to watch the small-timers if you don't mind rooting for the overdog. Plus: Chicago Olympics. And: Barry's big head.
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March 7, 2007 | It's conference tournament time in college basketball, as you may have gathered if you've been near a television set. We're transitioning from the smaller conference tourneys, which are mostly over, to the major conferences, which are just about to start.
That means we're moving from the moderately interesting conference tournaments to the big overhyped wastes of time. We've been over this before. And yeah, ACC fans, I know yours is pretty good even though the top 30 or 40 teams or whatever it is are guaranteed a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
You know what I hate about the three weeks leading up to the big Tournament? The seeming inability of the commentariat to get through them without using the clichés "punch their ticket" and "big dance" at least once per sentence. As in, "Winthrop punched their ticket to the big dance by beating VMI Saturday."
And let's not even talk about teams that are "goin' dancin'."
Here are the teams that have, er, qualified for the, uh, NCAA men's Tournament. Gee, that was hard.
Belmont (Atlantic Sun Conference)
Winthrop (Big South)
Virginia Commonwealth (Colonial)
Wright State (Horizon)
Niagara (MAAC)
Oral Roberts (Mid Continent)
Creighton (Missouri Valley)
Eastern Kentucky (Ohio Valley)
Davidson (Southern)
North Texas (Sun Belt)
Gonzaga (West Coast)
Pennsylvania (Ivy League)
All but Penn qualified by winning their conference tourney, including Wright State, Oral Roberts and North Texas on Tuesday night. The Ivy League sends its regular-season champ to the big -- to the Tournament. Go, Ivy League.
Conference tournaments underway are the America East, Big Sky, MEAC, Mountain West, Northeast, Patriot and WAC.
The big boys get going in the next two days, starting with the Big East and Pac-10 Wednesday. Also Wednesday: the Atlantic 10, Big West, Conference USA, MAC and SWAC. On Thursday, the ACC tournament begins, along with the Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and -- how'd it get in this group? -- the Southland.
I won't bore you again with why I dislike the major conference tournaments. Abridged edition: They're pointless -- but I do kind of like the smaller-conference versions.
Televised college basketball in the regular season is a steady parade of major-conference powerhouses. Without any particular effort, you can catch about a third of the schedule of any of the top three or four teams in any of the majors except the Pac-10 -- which has the worst TV contract this side of the NHL.
Conference tournament season is the one time of the year when it's possible without being an obsessive to catch the Wright States and VCUs and Eastern Kentuckys of the world in their natural habitats, not just when they're getting pounded by a 1- or 2-seed 1,000 miles from home in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.