We also came very close to Siena completing one of the greatest upsets of all time.
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SEC floating an idea to separate and have their own tourney. The storm is approaching.
And Santa Clara lost on an improbable shot
The late games tonight had some excellent basketball. Vandy-Nebraska was a back and forth thriller which came down to a final desperation shot that almost went in. High Point-Arkansas was also pretty amazing basketball and the opposing point guards, Acuff Jr. and Martin, put on quite the exhibition.
Those were two intense games. I was pulling for Vandy. Former Cornell player AK Okereke had a pretty good game for them. As for High Point - Arkansas, I was hoping Arkansas would lose, given that I dislike Calipari.
Okerere looked like he might pull it out. I also despite Calipari (as well as Pitino). High Point is really well coached, a shame that there are no longer any true underdogs left.
Florida goes down in the 2nd round. Oof. Iowa just out-muscled Floridaâs usually elite bigs for most of the game. Chinyelu and Hague were soft and awful tonight and thatâs why they lost. For once, it wasnât the guardsâ fault. Fland contained Stirtz and Lee scored an efficient 17 with 3 big treys
But man, that last possession was hard to watch. Probably not Leeâs fault (clearly a scripted play), but you gotta get a shot off, Golden.
a shame that there are no longer any true underdogs left.
Something fans have mentioned is that a lot of top midmajors lost in their conference tourneys, including Yale. Now that happened pre-NIL too, but it hurts more than ever now.
Maybe low/mid-major conferences should find a way to give their regular season champs a bigger advantage? Half-serious proposal: a Top 3 ILT.
#2 vs. #3 on Saturday. Winner plays #1 seed on the #1âs homecourt on Sunday. That way, the top seed only has to win 1 game and gets a rest advantage too.
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I was rooting for the underdog. Happy to finally see a meaningful upset today.
And what a tourney for the Big Ten. Already 6 teams to the Sweet Sixteen, with the possibility of one more.
Could alternatively take a page from the WCC. #3 vs #4 on Friday, winner plays #2 on Saturday, winner plays #1 seed on Selection Sunday. Four teams still involved, but seeding / performance in regular season matters much more.
These changes will never happen, in part because the Ivy League doesnât care that much about sending their best representative to the tournament, and in part because there are more teams clamoring for the lower seeds of Ivy Madness than those who want to give the top seed(s) an advantage.
I kinda like this
In that case, maybe the Ivy Madness can be over two weekends with 6 teams.
The last weekend of the regular season was only a single game for each team. Letâs move that game to an earlier single-game weekend, making it another back-to-back weekend. Now the regular season ends a week earlier.
This allows the first weekend of March to be a quarterfinals round: #6 vs #3, #4 vs #5. Top 2 seeds get byes. And the second weekend of March is like it is now: semifinals on Saturday; finals on Sunday.
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They should change the format. I love that penn won but Yale much more physically able to compete with the literal âbig boysâ
I hope/expect to get the top seed in future years
I previously restrained myself from making the oft-noted remark that the best way to assure a strong representative for the IL, on average, is to give the autobid to the regular season winner. But you opened the door, as the lawyers say. Obviously Yale would have put up a more respectable performance against Illinois in the fiurst round this year. The ILT is just terrible business strategy on every dimension, including product differentiation, expenses, attention diversion from the top teams during the regular season, and reduced win probabilities in the Big Dance.
But itâs popular! So is the current U.S. fiscal imbalance, but that doesnât mean itâs a good idea.
The statistics are pretty clear that NIL/transfer has reduced the number of upsets by mid-majors and increased the number of blowout games in the Big Dance. Still fun, but not as fun on Thursday and Friday. (I also think I detected some unfavorable-to-mid-major whistles this year, which didnât help.)
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Eh, thatâs a tough statement to make about Penn given that it didnât have one of its 2 best players available at all, and that the other one was essentially in sick bay and extremely limited.
May the same be said of every conference tournament?
Yes, many of the low-majors and mid-majors are probably screwing up by having conference tourneys. It was a great gimmick for multi-bid leagues, and a novelty for the ACC back in the day. But the TV/streaming exposure and iffy attendance are not worth the risk of the weaker team getting the auto bid in most one-bid leagues. (Giving the regular-season iwnner more byes and/or home-court advantage obviously mitigates the risk.)
The only good thing about the ILT compared to others is that only the top four get in. But the concept is especially dumb for the Ivies for all the other reasons I mentioned above.
All the more reason to doubt the âthe tournament winner is the hottestâ team argument for the tourney. It ainât necessarily so, any more than Jonah living in the whale.
Having 4 teams make the Ivy League tournament is great. It makes the second half of the season more exciting. Once Dartmouth has hosted, the league will most certainly put the tournament at the reg season champion. Thatâs enough of an advantage. Yale lost 3 games during the Ivy season and again in the tournament. We all thought theyâd run the table and they just werenât as good as everyone thought. They would have lost to Illinois too.