Climbing, BS, Blizzards and Graft

Wednesday brings us the beginning of 4 conference tournaments. Let’s dive in.

Summit- From Sioux Falls, home of Mary Hart, the Summit League takes the court to entertain us Wednesday night. 

As a hardcore Summit League fan, I am sad to report Nebraska-Omaha won the league this year. 180th in KenPom is 4th best in the league behind South Dakota State (120), St. Thomas (124) and NDSU (125). UNO went 6-9 out of conference but rode a hot offense to the league title. Whatever they figured out at the start of league play has worked.

The other 3 are pretty close as you can tell. St. Thomas long term desire is to join the Big East. Goals, have them, kids. Anyway, the pick is South Dakota State because the Dakotas should always rep this league.

Big South-  The Big South is taking its show to Johnson City, TN, home of Del Harris, who is still alive. High Point cruised to the regular season title and is 88 in KenPom. Radford and Winthrop are the only other top-200 KenPom teams and they’re 156 and 174, so, eh.

High Point has 2 wins over AAC squads and should seriously claim that league title as well. On an 11-game winning streak, they have the 25th best offense in the nation but a god awful defense. They’re the pick and I’d love to see them scare the daylights out of a 3 or 4 seed SEC team but my confidence isn’t high on this one based on a leaky d.

NEC- The NEC wisely plays all games on campus sites. KenPom’s worst conference, the prayer here is, Central Connecticut wins this thing. They actually have the nations longest winning streak at 12 games. At 173 in KenPom, that’s 100 spots clear of the second best team.

Watch this team, Duke fans. Feels like a potential round 1 opponent.

Ohio Valley- These teams are invading Evansville starting Wednesday night. Evansville is known as “Crescent City” or “River City” and was originally named McGary’s Landing.

SE Missouri won the league and is 203 in KenPom. Only 4 other schools are top 300. SIUE, UT-Martin, Little Rock and Tennessee State. None have a positive NetRtg. 16-seed city is what Evansville is.

The pick is SE Missouri because they really are the best team. The best team doesn’t always win. It’s one of the many paradoxes of life, like, you can’t always get what you want but you might get what you need. Paint it black, SE Missouri.